Warren Ellis Signature Tenor from Eastwood Guitars

guitarz.blogspot.com:

I was watching Later with Jools Holland the other night, and was intrigued by the session from Grinderman whose Warren Ellis was making an incredible sound with what appeared to be Fender Musicmaster or Mustang but with just four strings (see YouTube clip below - OK, so he's obviously using a lot of loops there too).

So, a quick search shows that it's actually the new Warren Ellis signature model tenor guitar from Eastwood Guitars. The alder body is offset like a Mustang rather than an even-waisted Musicmaster, although like the latter it has just a single pickup in the neck position, in this instance it's a blade style pickup. As is common with tenor guitars it has a shorter than usual scale-length of 23", for which the Fender student-model stylings seem all too appropriate.

G L Wilson

Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 9th year!

Airline 3P DLX by Eastwood

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OK, it's easy and most of our readers already know Eastwood's reissue of this Airline rejuvenated by Jack White (before he became an idol and switched to custom Gretschs), but I like this guitar a lot.

It's somehow the perfect anti-Fender/Gibson guitar, and Eastwood's replacement of the original Airline 'res-O-glas' body by a chambered mahogany one upgrades the cool but cheap vintage guitar to a modern quality one. And it still has the many Italian style knobs and switches above the strings we enjoy so much, plus the very special shape (who would dare to design this nowadays?), the german carve, and the strong presence of 3 pickups in line with a Bigsby trem.

Some say that Eastwood pickups are not the greatest (the demos I heard convinced me though) but there are many replacement pickups out there - and it would make sense that one wants to personalize this kind of guitar since it's not mainly noticeable for the specificity of its sound!

bertram

Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 9th year!

Eastwood Airline with Jaguar trem

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I said this already here: some don't but I do like Eastwood's work of reissuing beautifully designed vintage guitars, such as this Airline 2P DLX (I just don't like the new Breadwinner but I'm a Breadwinner owner and fan, of course...).

So this guitar has the chambered mahogany body and the humbuckers specific to the Eastwood Airline model (opposed to the "Res-O-Glas" body and wide single coil pickups of the original Airlines), but is another step away from the old school one with the addition of a Jaguar trem (Eastwood usually use Bigsby trems, but don't have them on the 2P models) and a new bigger custom pickguard.

But you know, who cares about original model, when you made the guitar that suits you!

bertram

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Eastwood Guyatone LG-200T

I've already written here how much I appreciate the work of Eatswood, reissuing guitars from more creative times and places - so plenty of 60s Japanese ones, like this Guyatone. I don't think that there are many other guitars built recently that have this kind of combination of 4 pickups, not to mention its interesting shape.

(Hey Mr Robinson, I say a lot of good about your company, can you please send me an Eastwood Wandre Doris? A Deluxe one, black with a vibrato - thanks).

bertram

Return of the Breadwinner

Last June I commented that Eastwood's proposed Breadwinner re-issue was not going to happen. Well, now it seems that the situation has changed and Eastwood are already taking orders for their Breadwinner tribute guitar which has already been shown at NAMM 2009. I guess that for whatever reason, Ovation (now owned by Fender) had changed their minds about allowing the re-issue.

Other than the obviously different-shaped headstock, there are quite a number of cosmetic features that are, quite frankly, inaccurate, and if I was shelling out best part of a thousand dollars for one of these, I'd want it to be a much more faithful replica than the guitar we see in the image above. I see from the specs that Eastwood are making trem-equipped models available, something that the originals never had.

If I was in the market for another Breadwinner I think I'd prefer to track down an original which could theoretically be cheaper than this Eastwood, although some retailers are already hiking up the prices of the originals. I bought my own 1976 Ovation Breadwinner back in 2006 for a little over £300.

Kudos to Eastwood for responding to public demand and making this re-issue available, but why the high price and why wasn't attention to detail better?