@boltelectricsound and the Art of the Vintage Guitar Pickup To...

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@boltelectricsound and the Art of the Vintage Guitar Pickup

To see more of James’ vintage guitars, amps and pickups, check out @boltelectricsound on Instagram. For more music stories, check out @music.

“A good old instrument to me feels like a neighborhood bar that’s been around for years,” says James Alexander (@boltelectricsound), who spends his free time making custom guitar pickups and repairing amps out of his home in Knoxville, Tennessee. “It’s got a spirit to it and a history that I like. Every time I work on a great piece of equipment I just think of how lucky I am. I get to fix it, play it to make sure it works, sit with it as long as I want and then I give it back. I don’t have to own it. I used to buy and sell this stuff all the time because I could never decide what I wanted. But now, people just bring it to me and I get to try it out. They’re appreciative and I’m appreciative and it works out.”

No surprise that James is big on the old stuff – worn-in, classic equipment that was made to last. He even learned the old-fashioned way, teaching himself how to fix things thanks to a soup-to-nuts textbook.

“I had no formal electronics experience, so I ended up getting an old naval electronics book,” he says. “And the thing was so good because it is dumbed down. It’s like ‘electricity is like water and water comes from the sky.’ It starts at the very bottom. I have never taken a class on it, to tell you the truth. It’s really just been trial and error.”

– Instagram @music

by via Instagram Blog