Respected country musician and songwriter Vince Gill has spoken about his favorite guitar – an old, battered white Telecaster from 1953 that he has played for over 40 years.
In an episode of Robert Baker’s YouTube podcast “Guitar Stories,” Gill revealed that he bought it for $450 back in 1978. “I’d never had a Tele before and I was crazy about what James Burton and Albert Lee were doing and that chicken-picking thing and pulling strings like a steel guitar, and I said to myself, ‘I’ve got to get one of those.'”
“There’s something about this guitar – it has a voice of its own… I don’t think I’ve ever found anything that speaks to me more than this one.”
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Gill owns many other Teles, but Baker said, “I’m not that attracted to them and I don’t know why that is, other than the way they play and sound. And it feels good in my hands. Most Teles from the early ’50s have pretty big necks.”
He also shared a little tip he picked up from country legend Roy Nichols. “He would take the tone control and turn it down until it was really bright. The familiar brightness of the Telecaster would disappear and just get a little bit darker – then you could turn the amp up a little bit brighter and the frequencies that the amps boosted weren’t nearly as high as the highs of the tone control.”
In a forty-minute conversation, he also talked about his economical approach to soloing. “Telling a story is just as important as the song you’re singing,” he says. “I was young and I played a solo on someone’s record once, and the guy came up and said, ‘That was impressive. Let’s try it again. This time, try to play only half of what you can.'”
“So over the years I’ve always tried to correct myself. If I play something with eight notes, I think, ‘Can I do it with five notes and say more?’ And then I just keep carving until what I’m playing speaks. There’s nothing more uninteresting than someone screaming about something they shouldn’t be screaming about.”
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Gill is currently with the Eagles, but doesn’t play the ’53 Tele with them – “I don’t have a real Telecaster for this gig – I do play a lot of rhythm guitar though. So I thought I’d let her come home and rest a bit.”
