Fender Telecaster

Bruce Springsteen in the house! I can’t afford one of these, but I pick them up at the guitar store all the time and play them. Boy, does it play smooth! The texture is just so sweet-sounding and I’d like to get into adding some of that into my songs, so I’m hoping to get one at some point in the future.

Gibson SG Double Neck
Truth be told, all of my guitars are falling apart. I have a Gibson SG Double Neck that’s a 12-string on the bottom and six on top. I love the grit and punchiness of this guitar, and it is just badass in general, but I rarely play it out because it is so damn heavy. It literally pulls all of my body weight backwards and forwards, and I have fallen over a couple of times. In terms of writing, the 12-string helps me find melodic guitar lines really easily.

Danelectro
The Danelectro I have is really more nostalgic for me than anything else. It was the first electric I ever bought; I got it for a couple hundred bucks. It’s a Japanese reissue and I haven’t changed the strings in years, but it seems to fit with the style and sound. I mainly use it when I am recording single-note lines that are more chirpy-sounding.

Fender Jazzmaster
This is the guitar I have been using ad nauseum for six years or so. I love its clean tones for certain kinds of tapping parts, and I also love it hooked up to different distortion pedals. The neck is nice and long–that helps me go way up on the neck for tapping and not have to worry about my arm getting stuck on the body. But since I have used it into the ground, it’s definitely on its way out. The guitar is bowed, so in certain places the strings are muted, and it’s a real bummer to me.

Ibanez JEM (with LED)
I want the LED Ibanez that lights up like a laser light show. [Hella’s] Zach Hill and I saw one at the music store in Sacramento, and it was just calling out my name. It was $5,000, so it was sad leaving the store that day without it.

Marnie Stern’s This Is It… is out now on Kill Rock Stars.

MP3: “Transformer”