“Years later, he saw me playing it and he was mad at me. He said I took advantage of him. I was like, ‘You were gonna throw it away…’”: Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy on his greatest gear bargains –and why Billy Gibbons now owns his two of them

This month in Bought & Sold, we’ve got a real maven of guitar gear on the horn, Mr Jeff Tweedy of Wilco. The country-leaning indie rock tone guru knows a good instrument when he sees one – and he knows when he’s got one in his hands that’s a little rich for the show.

Here, he talks all things electric and acoustic guitars and offers a little advice for anyone who is in the market for a new guitar. He’s a vibe.

What was the first serious guitar you bought with your own money?

I bought a late-’50s Gibson J-45. I’m not sure of the exact year, maybe a ’57. But it had been stripped and it was still just barely something that I could afford [laughs], it was like $600. I still have it. It’s the one that has ‘Wilco’ spelled out in stickers across the neck. I got the stickers at a stationery store.

What was the last guitar you bought, and why did you buy it?

Geez… I buy a lot of guitars. It’s kind of a gross amount of guitars [laughs]. I bought a Martin 00-18 from the first year that they made them. I collect those from that weird period in the late ’50s and early ’60s. It’s gotten to be famous as the ‘Kurt Cobain guitar’, but I just like them, so whenever I see one, I try to get it.

What’s the most incredible find or bargain that you’ve ever had while buying guitars?

I have to credit my mom with this one. When she got it in her head that I was really serious about playing guitar, she’d look for them at auctions and garage sales. She went to a farmer’s auction, like an estate sale, and she got a ’56 Gretsch Duo Jet for 70 bucks. And then she got a ’50s prototype ES-350 with three pickups, which was probably one of the first guitars with three P-90s. She got that for 120 bucks.

I mean, a lot of the guitars I own would sound like fantastic stories now, but they didn’t feel cheap at the time [laughs]. I bought the Epiphone Casino for 100 bucks, and I use it all the time. The neck had snapped off and the guy didn’t think it was going to be fixable.

I told him I’d buy it and I did. And then, when we came back years later to St Louis, and he came to our show, he saw me playing it and he was mad at me. He said I took advantage of him. I was like, ‘You were gonna throw it away…’

What’s the strongest case of buyer’s remorse you’ve ever had after buying gear?

There’s a ton of stuff that I own that I haven’t used as much as I thought I would. But I don’t know that I really get sad about stuff like that. I figured out that if I hang onto it, eventually I’ll find a use for it. Or somebody else will come through our studio, pick it up and fall in love with something that I’ve never really made a connection with.

Have you ever sold a guitar that you now intensely regret letting go?

Oh, yeah, tons. I traded the two guitars I mentioned earlier that my mom got at the auction. Uncle Tupelo was going on the road and Jay [Farrar]’s amp was broken. We didn’t have time to fix it, so I traded one of those for a Fender Twin for him.

The other one I think was at the same place, but I can’t remember what I got for the 350. But I know where they are because Billy Gibbons came through town in St Louis, I think it was at Silver Strings guitar store, and they told me that he bought both of them. And I did talk to Billy, and he confirmed that he has those guitars.

What’s your best buying tip for anyone looking to buy their ultimate guitar?

I guess you should play a lot of guitars. You should go to guitar stores and really get a good grip on what the differences are, you know? Before you buy a Rickenbacker, you should really know what a Rickenbacker is all about.

There are guitars that people buy because they see lots of people playing them, but they’re not all created to do everything. So if you have a specific task, you probably know what you’re looking for.

If you just want an everyday guitar and have a dream of being a certain type of guitar player, you should get your hands on one. Try to learn about how different some guitars are from year to year. The shape of the body does not necessarily mean it’s the same guitar at all.

What were you looking at the last time you stopped and looked in a guitar shop window, or browsed online?

I spend an insane amount of time doing that. It was maybe 20 minutes ago that I was doing that! I have a list of stuff that I’m looking for and, lately, it’s Japanese guitars from the late ’70s and early ’80s. I have been really enjoying those and have a bunch of them.

I’ve been swapping them out for the Gibsons I play live because they’re getting ridiculously expensive – I don’t mind taking [the Japanese guitars] out on the road because they’re supposed to be used, and they’re tools – but I feel a bit self-conscious when I get handed a guitar that I can see somebody in the front row going, ‘Oh, my God, that’s an expensive instrument.’

I don’t like that feeling [laughs]. So the Grecos from that era are what I’ve been playing a lot. If you see me playing an SG, it’s usually a Greco.

If forced to make a choice, would you rather buy a really good guitar and a cheap guitar amp, or a cheap electric guitar and a top-notch amp?

A shitty amp is useless. I could probably get sounds that I enjoy out of a cheap guitar and a good amp. But I think it could go both ways… it depends on the cheap amp. Some cheap amps, to me, sound better than the most expensive amps. So it’s all relative.

If you could only use humbuckers or single coils for the rest of your career, which would you choose, and why?

Can’t we have both? I know it’s a hypothetical question… For the last 20 years or so, I’ve probably played single coils on records more than anything else, and my main thing in the studio has been an Esquire top-loader.

Jeff’s Go-To Rig

My main guitar right now – and everything I’m about to say contradicts what I’ve said [about single coils] – is a Jaguar with one humbucker in it. It was Candy Apple Red, but it was pretty bad when I got it, so I stripped it but left the headstock red.

My friend Woody [John Woodland], who invented the Mastery bridge, helped me put together this Jaguar a long time ago. It’s got a Mastery floating tremolo and it’s just a magical guitar. The pickup is this sort of underwound humbucker, so it’s not super-saturated.

My pedalboard is almost all Fairfield Circuitry stuff. I’m probably one of the only people who has a ’board that’s all one manufacturer [laughs], but I just started out making it that way because I liked the way it looked… I have added one pedal to it that’s not Fairfield, which is a Rose Electric Audio Console Overdrive. It has what looks like Neve [console] knobs on it and it’s a really great overdrive pedal.

As for amps, when I’m with my band doing solo material, it’s just a ’50s Fender Deluxe. There’s a specific period that I like, and I have a couple of them as backups. For Wilco, I have a Fender Vibrolux that’s been modified – it’s basically been made to be like a standalone Fender Reverb – and then a narrow-panel [5E3] Deluxe.

• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

Andrew Daly is an iced-coffee-addicted, oddball Telecaster-playing, alfredo pasta-loving journalist from Long Island, NY, who, in addition to being a contributing writer for Guitar World, scribes for Bass Player, Guitar Player, Guitarist, and MusicRadar. Andrew has interviewed favorites like Ace Frehley, Johnny Marr, Vito Bratta, Bruce Kulick, Joe Perry, Brad Whitford, Tom Morello, Rich Robinson, and Paul Stanley, while his all-time favorite (rhythm player), Keith Richards, continues to elude him.