Jack Zucker qui raconte une anecdote assez rigolote:
“After the first lesson when I tried coming to the lesson with an L5s, I came to my 2nd lesson with my L5. Pat was happy that I brought some sound but told me I should stuff the guitar with cotton to get a more percussive sound out of it and reduce the feedback. He recommended going to an upholstory store and buying about 10 yards of upholstory stuffing. He told me to buy some black velvet to put under the F Holes so it looked "normal" from the audience.
After the lesson, I stopped on the way home at a local upholstory in maryland and picked up 10 yards of cotton. It was somewhat amusing because the woman at the store kept asking me what I was using for and after several times of attempting to change the subject I finally told her I was using it to stuff a guitar with...I got about a 10 second blank stare from her but I bought the cotton and was excited to get started.
Using a drum stick and a pulled-apart wire coat hanger, I got about half of the cotton in there and used a couple black socks under the f holes as a disguise. I really liked the sound. Along with my .016 - .058 roundwound strings, it really nailed the pat martino tone! [sidebar] I was playing a polytone with a JBL in it at the time. Even though the JBL was 2x the original speaker's impedance, it was so much more efficient that I didn't lose any volume. I used the guitar at a gig that week and was very happy that not only was there no feedback, but the tone sounded amazingly like Pat's!
The next week at my lesson, the first thing he did was looked at my guitar and smiled and asked how I liked it. He then took his finger and pressed against the sock in the F hole and then frowned. "You need much more cotton in there man!", he said. "You should have so much cotton in there that when you press against it, it should feel as solid as a rock!"
I went back home and using the drumstick, I pushed as much cotton as I could into the base of the guitar and was able to get the entire roll of cotton into the guitar. The next week, Pat was happy. Believe it or not, that L5 weighed about 12lbs with all the cotton in it.
The first time I did this I pulled a wire loose from one of the pots. I had to pull the stuffing out, fix the wiring and start all over again!
I have stuffed a lot of different guitars over the years including L5s, Johnny Smiths, GB10s and even my Pat Metheny PM120. I haven't done it for years though. My '63 Barney Kessel can get really loud before feeding back!
...BUT THE SOUND...
Whenever I tell this story, I always get forumites asking why I don't just use a semihollow or solid body if I'm doing that. I don't know the physics but if you ever decide to stuff your archtop guitar, you will discover - like I did - that it still sounds like an archtop guitar. It still has that beautiful, velvety lilt to it. It just sounds more percussive and fatter.”
