The Weekly GAS: James Tyler Studio Elite HD
As a young guitarist in my teens and early twenties, I didn’t really like Fender Stratocaster’s. I always wanted something different to what I saw everyone else playing, or it’s more likely that the people in bands that I liked at the time weren’t playing very traditional looking guitars and I wanted to be equally as different. I think our tastes evolve over time and eventually, I’m convinced many guitarists gravitate toward the tried and tested, traditional and more vintage look and feel of guitars from bygone era’s.
This is evidenced particularly in my tastes, as my current lineup consists of a Fender Broadcaster reissue, which was released in 1950, a Gibson Les Paul R8, modelled on the Les Paul’s that were produced in 1958 and a Fender Stratocaster reissue that replicates the details you’d see on a typical Stratocaster built in 1957.
With all that said, I still have a taste for the extraordinary, different and downright polarising. Whether that be a penchant for strange colours, finishes or shapes, I just like guitars that are different.
Enter the James Tyler Studio Elite HD. For a long time, this was my dream guitar. I remember seeing a James Tyler guitar for the first time in the December 2004 edition of Guitarist magazine where they extol the virtues of how great a guitar it was, it was finished in the beautiful ‘Arctic Mint Shmear’ (below). I thought that it looked incredible and was my perfect Stratocaster style guitar, but at the time, there was no way I could afford such an incredible instrument.
James Tyler became a famous luthier in the 1980’s and was renowned for building guitars for famous session musicians. Many people attributing their unique 80’s sound to the wonderful guitars Tyler had made for them. Tyler guitars became the super strat’s to own.
As I mentioned in a previous story, I never used to like single coil guitars, mainly due to the style of music I was playing at the time, relatively heavy, palm muted rhythms that never translated well with the Squire Stratocaster that I played at the time, I was put off by Stratocasters for a long time because of it. The Tyler solved that issue because it offered the beautiful curves and aesthetic of the Stratocaster (body, we’ll come back to the headstock later!) but it also had a humbucker.
The finish was part of the allure. Being young and naive, I didn’t find those vintage solid colours found on Fender Stratocasters particularly ‘cool’ and being in a band, wanting to make an impression on the local scene, I felt that I needed to make a statement. So the peculiar ‘Shmear’ finishes found on James Tyler guitars felt new and unique, it was unique and still is (with the exception of a similar approach made a few years back by Suhr, with slightly different but equally cool results).
If you take a step back from the 70 or so years of solid colours that have been drummed into us as consuming guitarists, and forget what we know, a small part of you might be able to enjoy these guitars, finish and headstock included, for what they really are…incredible works of art. As you can see, each one is absolutely unique.
That headstock.
Okay, this is quite possibly the most polarising headstock that’s ever graced a guitar. I think it’s fair to say that I’ve only ever read negative comments about this headstock shape. I don’t know if that says more about the forums or websites that I frequent, or if it is genuinely just too unique a shape for guitarists to handle.
The thing is, as I mentioned in a previous post, so many of us have become accustomed to the vintage, tried and tested look and feel and the way guitars have been for years, that we can sometimes dismiss new ideas. And this is very much the case here. The iconic and might I say, beautiful, Fender Stratocaster headstock has been in existence since the 1950’s, so it’s heavily endowed into popular culture and when we think of guitar shapes and headstock shapes, Fender’s and Gibson’s are at the top of that pile. So introducing something different, that bucks that trend, is always going to be met with criticism.
I’m not saying that I’m a huge fan of the ‘trigger finger’ design, it’s certainly grown on me in recent times and I quite like it now, especially now I know the story behind it. But I feel that people look at it with blinkers on, with no real urge to being open minded to it. Same with the finishes. You either love them or you hate them.
Talking about ‘trigger finger’, I’ve no idea if that’s how people refer to the headstock design, but was told a story by a dealer, that James Tyler was fed up of people custom ordering guitars from him, asking for a Fender style headstock, that he made a trigger finger sign with his hand and that’s the design that he came up with to nip that option in the bud. That isn’t true, but it adds to the somwhat ‘avant-garde’ nature of Tyler guitars and the folklore and mystique that surrounds them.
Rich Renken, General Manager at Tyler Guitars, took the time to explain to me the real reason for the headstock shape here (Massive thank you to Rich for taking the time and for reading this article. Prompting the addition of the information below.):
The headstock story you heard is definitely not true but a super fun tale for sure.
Jim modded guitars by completely breaking them down and building them up so he started getting bodies and necks from Kubicki so that would save him time building them up.
At first he didn’t put a logo on the headstock. People said they wanted some kind of logo so he came up with his logo based on a lawyers stationary. It had the lawyer’s name repeated down the left edge that had vibe. So he put the logo on the first few Tylers with Strat headstocks.
He never liked doing that so after he started having Anderson make necks and bodies for him he designed his own headstock. The nub is so the guitar hangs straight in a hook, he ducked in and ran across the bottom of the name and then came up and around. The logo and desire for it to hang straight informed the design.
Again, if you rewind and think about it as if what you know about guitars wasn’t a thing, you might be open to the idea of a funky looking headstock. Or at least, not so dismissive of it.
More importantly, how does it play?
So, with the unimportant aesthetics out of the way. I got to play a James Tyler Studio Elite HD a month ago. Wow.
I have slowly but surely been coming back to the importance of just enjoying what you enjoy, liking what you like, no matter what others think. This has been a bit of a hangup of mine over the years and my current lineup of guitars are so bland, normal and traditional looking that I feel as if I’ve lost the enthusiasm and uniqueness in my collection that I held in such high regard in my youth. So recently, the pang of owning a James Tyler and even a PRS Custom 24 has come back in a big way.
I watched a superb video of R.J. Ronquillo saying that he’s finally bought his “bucket list guitar”, a Tyler, and I was thinking…that was my bucket list guitar! His was beautiful and sounded sublime. All the amazing features and sounds he could get, incredible. He also had a custom upgrade including two little switches next to the pickup selector, one of which selects all three pickups at the same time, the sound it made was just what I needed for one of my songs. I want one!
I came away from the shop quite sure that I’d never buy a James Tyler and that it was no different to my old Suhr and would offer me nothing more than my old PRS could. But I couldn’t help but think about how nice it was to play and how beautiful it sounded. How well made it was and how cool it looked. I fell in love with it and I’ve been wanting one, again, for weeks now!
This purchase is inevitable, in ‘Black and Blue Shmear’ (below)…or maybe ‘Malibu Beach Shmear’…or ‘Tuckerberry Shmear’…too many choices! Watch this space!
What are your thoughts on James Tyler guitars? The headstocks? The finishes? Let me know in the comments.
