5 Minutes With THE Bender

unbridled · Joined: 09 May 2009 Posts: 50 Location: Montana

I saw Marty and the Fabulous Superlatives last night and it was a great show. Kenny has the chops, for sure, as does Marty.

The highlight for me was getting the chance to play Clarence. It was only about five minutes, but here are my impressions.

The body resonance is weird. It's a strange sensation and not what I'm used to and can only be described as the resonance you'd feel if you played a really poor/quiet acoustic or kind of like the feel you get from an Ovation. The vibrations are there, but there's a bit of a buffer.

Most of the vibrations you feel are from the neck, which is beautiful, a bit chunkier than I thought it would be, and has a profile that seems a bit thicker on the bass side and seems to be almost a compound profile, that I'm sure is more from lots of playing than anything else.

The string-pull is very smooth. I guess I expected it to feel rougher or something, but it's very nice and has a very long pull. There isn't a ton of effort needed to engage it, but you do have to lift your shoulder a bit to keep your fretting hand comfortable.

The Frankfurt chicken head is definitely showing its age, as is the guitar. I'm not inferring anything, but the masonite has held up incredibally well. The E bender Mooney installed fits in with the rest of the guitar, although it looks like it came from the foot of a washing machine.

It was just a great experience with my "Holy Grail" of guitars.

Marty is very nice. Oh, yeah, the other electric he played was Ronson's Essqire. It was tuned up to F and screams. His signal chain was Guitar>custom PB-1>Princeton.

[/img]

Brian · Posted: Tue Jul 14, 2015 10:52 pm Post subject:

That's way cool!

Do you have an idea of how much the guitar weighed?

thx

MickeyV · Joined: 15 Mar 2007 Posts: 35 Location: Los Angeles

No tab of acid discovered? Disappointed. Wink

Tony Trout · Posted: Mon Aug 03, 2015 8:35 pm Post subject:

I was also blessed to play that same guitar way back in 2008 and I was mesmerized by it. I couldn't work the bender for some reason. Actually, I did bend it a little bit but found the pull is really long. Some of the other guys here would know exactly the length of the pull, I'm sure. I used to know but I had forgotten. I think it's somewhere around 1/18 - but don't quote me on that. I'm probably wrong.

unbridled · Joined: 09 May 2009 Posts: 50 Location: Montana

The guitar is pretty heavy. I can't give an estimate but you definitely know it's there!