#1
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Django
What was Djanjo`s guitar of choice?
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#2
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Selmer, originally a "short scale" (roughly 25.5") D hole (Grand Bouche), later a long scale (roughly 26.5") O hole (Petit Bouche)
Strung with silver plated copper wound strings, like Savarez Argentines. Gauges are very light, usually .010s or .011s. |
#3
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He also famously showed up places without a guitar, relying on some bystander to have one that he could borrow. Pictures of him with Epiphones, Gibsons, probably others. I don't think he paid for many guitars...
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Brian Evans Around 15 archtops, electrics, resonators, a lap steel, a uke, a mandolin, some I made, some I bought, some kinda showed up and wouldn't leave. Tatamagouche Nova Scotia. |
#4
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He hated American archtops, and I guess if you were used to the Selmer, you'd know why, they're night and day different playing and sounding. Also an interesting aside, by all reports Django didn't even know how to tune his guitar--which is crazy, because he had an amazing ear. But I think he always relied on his brother to tune it for him. Interesting fella, Mr. Reinhardt was. |
#5
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It was Selmer #503.
Here's #504, formally owned by Joscho Stephan: I've never understood how to make music with them as they are tactilely & aurally very odd. The neck is a rounded 2 x 4 for all intents & purposes, but thankfully they made perfect sense to Django, et al. Regards, Howard Emerson
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#6
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While I've never played an original Selmer, only copies(and I own a lowly Eastman DM1), I do think they work really well for acoustic swing jazz, played with a flatpick. The percussive 'attack' punches right through the mix.
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#7
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A blonde Gretsch Synchro 400, exchanging licks with Harry Volpe (on an uber-rare prewar Synchro 400 with a Rancher-style triangular soundhole - reportedly the inspiration for Johnny Smith's 1-of-3-known Epiphone Emperor Concert, re-necxked by John D'Angelico in the 1950's): A postwar ES-300, identity of sultry chanteuse unknown: A script-logo L-5: - and two Epiphones - the blonde Zephyr used in the El Rondo sessions of 1946 and this late-40's Deluxe Zephyr (of disputed provenance, but consistent with both his preference for blonde instruments and its similar stylistic cues to his Levin - note also the unusual-for-the-time compensation of the bridge saddle, which suggests the use of lighter-gauge strings and possibly a plain G):
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"Mistaking silence for weakness and contempt for fear is the final, fatal error of a fool" - Sicilian proverb (paraphrased) |
#8
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