For all you guitar geeks: the 1953 Vega arch-top is along for this run of European dates. It started making some funny noises onstage the other night in Copenhagen, so I called ahead to Germany for some guitar tech recommendations. Today at MusikGalerie in Gutersloh, Germany, the esteemed PER opened it up. I've only had this guitar for about three years. All this time I had just assumed someone had gone in there and re-wired it at some point since the mid-fifties, but we laughed when we saw that the original switches, pots, and soldering from over sixty years ago were all still going strong (apparently, in those days, shit was made to LAST). Well, almost all of them. Per located the likely trouble spot and bypassed the neck pickup's volume pot (so it's locked in at full volume) until I get back to NY and have all the electronics re-done. It's all ready for the first date in Germany tomorrow night.
Thank you PER!