wow great article for us gearheads. they grill dan on his gear choices on el camino.
here are a few excerpts:
Q:what guitars did you use on El Camino?
A:i used my '53 les paul, an old Danelectro coral hornet, a Rickenbacker 12 string, a solidbody Harmony stratotone, and an old carvin bass.
Q:whats the story on [your red harmony hollowbody]?
A:its a harmony that says "by heath" under the logo on the headstock. i dont know the model, but its a kit guitar they made for two years, and ive been using it forever. Ill try something else, and its just not the same.Thats my number one stage guitar for when we're playing as a duo and doing stuff from our first 5 records, because it sounds bigger and fatter than any other guitars, even though its got single coil pickups.Its a little too bloated when you add in a keyboard player and a bass player because that hollowbody rings out and those pickups have a lot of low end. i tend to pick up a thinner sounding guitar when we have the rest of the guys on stage.
Q:what guitar did you play, and how did you cop that twangy tone[on lonely boy]?
A: I used the bridge pickup of a 1958 stratocaster through the ampeg gemini II. I blew the speaker in the amp during the sessions, and you can hear it rattling and buzzing in places on four songs, including the very beginning of lonely boy.i liked a little bit of that shredded sound at first, but it got nastier as the rip got worse, and eventually i had to replace the speaker.
Q:the next guitar part is a melody played in atleast two octaves, How did you get that wild sound?
A:thats a Farfisa organ doubling the guitar line. What glues everything together is playing guitar like Junior Kimbrough with my index finger on the high note line and droning the low note with my thumb.On the first part of the riff im droning the E string and then on the second half i switch to the A string. Blending that with the Farfisa combines into one weird sound.
Q:Do you have a primary fuzz pedal on the record?
A: the entire record was pretty much done with either a Japanese octave-fuzz from the '60's called a Shin-Ei Companion, which is my favorite, or a Marshall Supafuzz, which i also love.
neato. i foam at the mouth for nuggets of info like these 
so much soul, I couldn't get much sleep.
-*Black Keys Fan Lounge resident Luthier/guitar GEEK*-
