Replicas - Bodies

Armed with his disc sander (seriously - you can still quite clearly see the disc sander marks on the back of his guitar!), he removed the hardware, stripped the paintwork down to the wood, and painted his guitar green using bog standard garden furniture paint bought from his local DIY store!

But is there anymore to be said about the actual bodies of the Quo guitars? Read on...

Francis's guitar is shown on the left and Rick's on the right.

If you are ever lucky enough to hold these guitars, you will immediately notice a big difference in weight. Rick's is much heavier than Francis's.

Rick's is a real 'work horse' of a guitar, and the body has been made from solid Ash. The pronounced grain and lighter colour, unique to Ash, can be clearly seen in the photographs above and below right.

Francis's guitar is much lighter.

Some articles we have seen have the guitar down as being made from Alder. Others, have the guitar made from 'Swamp Ash'.

'Swamp Ash'  is lighter than regular Ash (or 'Baseball Bat' Ash), and this difference in weight is caused by the amount of water absorbed by the tree. The weight (density) of any piece of Ash is down to where the tree grew, and then to which portion of the tree was used to make the guitar (since more water is absorbed at the foot of the tree).

Ash is usually heavily grained, and for this reason was almost solely used by Fender throughout the 1950s for the famous 'Blonde' Telecasters. Ash was still the choice for the early custom finishes produced in the late 1950s.

Custom finishes were common place during the 1960s, and with custom finishes such as 'sunburst' there was no need for spectacular grain patterns, so Alder was often used as an alternative to Ash.

Rick's is now so pronounced (the grain having worn away over the years) that as you run your fingers over the wood it feels almost as if grooves have been 'cut' in the body.

The natural 'colour' of the wood on his guitar is hidden underneath a varnish. The grain pattern varies quite dramatically across each of the three pieces of wood that makes up the body. The upper section carries a heavy 'Ash-like' pattern (above left) while the larger middle section is less defined.

Even having held the guitar, and seen the wood 'up-close', its not that easy to come to a definite decision!

The biggest clue is therefore probably in the age of the guitar, and even that is open to debate. The neck and neck plate date the guitar as 1965. The original bridge pickup is dated 1958, and Tonto, Lloyd and Francis himself all report the body as dated 1959...

We know that Francis's guitar was originally a 'sunburst'. The likelihood is that a 1959 'sunburst' Telecaster would have been made out of 'Swamp Ash' , whereas a 1965 'sunburst' would have been made with Alder..

Tony's preference is to use 'Swamp Ash' for his custom built Rossi replicas, and the heavier 'Baseball Bat' Ash for his copies of Rick's guitar. As Tony puts it, 'As a general rule of thumb, the tonal characteristics of Ash are loud and surprisingly bright. It gives a strong mid-range with a nicely crisp lower end, or bass, and a long sustain. There's a very good chance that Rossi's guitar is Swamp Ash, and anyway, Ash is more traditionally the wood for Telecasters.'

The heavy brass 'domed' knobs seen on Rick's (right) were not typical for mid-60s Telecasters, and were more usually found on guitars from the early 1950s.

Rick's guitar hasn't been seen with a switch tip fitted since the mid-1970s, when he first began to use the white Tele on stage.

Francis also didn't worry too much about a switch tip until he began to use a Start type black switch tip in the early 1990s.

Since the Heavy Traffic tour his guitar has always been seen fitted with a 1960s style 'top hat' switch tip (see above).

The pickups are set in the same way on his WYW guitar, only this time the coloured labels clearly mark the location of each pickup (right).

What is interesting is that the positions of the 'Blue' and 'Silver' pickups were reversed on the 'Down Down' guitar (left).

The new pickup is shown on the right.

Tony receives dozens of e-mails asking what type of mounting plate is used for the bridge pickup on the Quo guitars, and where they can be bought from.

Well, this plate is nothing more than the original 'ash-tray' bridge cut in half!

The 'ash-tray' bridge gets it's 'name' from the clip on cover, which always came as standard with the older Telecasters.

The cover was almost always removed by guitarists, kept in the guitar case, and then (legend has it) often used as an ash tray!

When Francis decided to adopt a Gibson 'tune-a-matic' bridge, and Rick the tail-piece arrangement, the original bridges were simply cut away as shown in the picture above.

The one exception to this within the Quo guitars is the 'Down Down' guitar used by Francis.

This guitar was originally fitted with a Bigsby bridge unit. A pickup plate for a Bigsby is shown on the left, and you can see the distinct flat plate with the curved edges on Rossi's guitar on the right.

Francis got around this problem by widening the bridge routing in the body, and you can see this extra cutting protruding out of the sides of the bridge plate in the photograph below left.

Tony can fit the pickup in the same way if asked to do so, but normally he will remove the existing pickup mount plate and replace it with one he has made himself, which is shaped specifically to fit the existing bridge pickup routing. This allows the action of the pickup to be adjusted in the usual way (see right).

Rick's (left) has been covered by a black sticky film, which is gradually being worn away by his 'power chording'.