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- Hey, I'm Troy van Leeuwen
from Queens of the Stone Age,
and I'm here at Fender
and we're checking out my new signature model Jazzmaster.
Hope you like it.
(slow music)
I kind of wanted to go for something a little different.
I have two custom shop guitars
that have like a copper relic color.
One's a 12 string tele
and one's a six string tele
and I just kind of started getting into the color itself
because it's kind of a rare Fender color
and I also have an Aztec Gold Jazzmaster.
So I kind of started getting into these
more metallic sort of finishes
and for this color it's called Copper Age.
I kind of went kind of between,
it's more of a copper of course,
but I wanted a little bit of that gold aesthetic
more than the pink of the regular Fender copper.
So this is what we came up with
and to me it's kind of like a restomod color,
if you're into car culture,
basically guitars and cars all share the same colors
and so this is more,
just a modern twist on a classic.
As the juxtaposition to the Candy Oxblood,
this is more of like the brighter side of Troy van Leeuwen,
which I pay homage to the desert.
That's where my band comes from
and you know it kind of hearkens back
to my youth when I was,
before I was even playing music, you know
I'm a Californian kid so I'd water ski
and I'd go to the beach,
and all that stuff that people would never know about me
if they have seen me play live.
Usually I'm the dark figure
and playing all the scary, reverby parts,
but so to me, it was kind of like a,
I wanted to go for something different,
so having like a maple neck
makes the guitar sound a little brighter too.
So it's kind of coming out of the darkness a little bit,
showing a little bit of my softer side, I guess.
(slow music)
Basically they're the 65 pickups.
I mean, I like the way they are.
I don't like to hot rod these pickups
because I use a lot of pedals to do that for me
and I want a clear, present signal
and so that's why I just decided to maintain
the stock pick ups, you know, just keep them.
The reason that I picked this guitar to play live,
over the years, the changing of the tones of our band
has become brighter, wider, more ambient for my playing
and so I used this circuit a lot
mostly because I play other instruments
so I have to have a kill switch sometimes.
So I just have to click it like that
and then I can go to keyboards or lap steel
and click right back
and so that's how I mainly use the circuit,
but there are so many songs,
they are tone switches in between verses and chorus.
Like I'll need the middle pick,
the middle position of these pickups to be on
and then I'll need the creamy, sort of base circuit.
So if I have it on, it's just easy to flip you know?
So it's really a performance thing
that I've really discovered about this guitar,
that it's really super versatile,
and the floating tremolo.
I mean it stays in tune.
I never have a problem with it.
So it's kind of the perfect guitar
for what I do in the Queens.
(slow music)
On my vintage Jaguar, and I have a 62 Reissue Jazzmaster.
They both came with the original bridges
and I've always had a problem with them
because I played too hard
and they had always flop off the saddles
and I'd constantly be in the middle of a song readjusting.
So after playing a Mustang, I was like,
"Why isn't this on this guitar?"
It just seems like a perfect marriage,
especially for someone like me who
twangs the shit out of a guitar.
So that's why I picked this bridge.
I remember seeing, I think there were Jaguars
that had a maple neck with block inlays
in the sixties and seventies
but I've never seen a Jazzmaster with one,
unless I'm missing something
but I just figured if I'm going to go for a different color
and a different aesthetic, why not try this maple neck?
And it turns out of course
it makes the guitar sound a little brighter
and it's got more of a shlang to it,
which I like, because like I said before
the cleaner, the better the signal
and then I can just do whatever I want with my pedals.
So yeah, it looks cool too.
I just know what I like and it just seems
like it's not too big and it's not too small.
It's kind of right there in the middle.
Well, there is a couple of reasons, I guess,
why I started playing Jazzmasters.
First of all, like I said before,
in the Queens, our tones have evolved over the years,
where there's the stapled Queen's rhythm tone
that Joshua has and my tone has become more
of a wide spread sort of ambient
yet wirey kind of tone that has to cut
and has to kind of maneuver around what he does
and so yeah, single coil pickups are a no brainer for that,
but I found myself needing to use a tremolo a lot
and you know, I've always looked at
these guitars and always thought,
"You know, that's what the cool kids play."
It's like all the grunge guys,
like J Mascis and Life.
There are some more.
All those guys, they played Jazzmasters.
So I was like,
"I want to try and be cool like those guys."
Sure, I'm still working on that, but it's basically, yeah.
I mean, it's become this versatile instrument
that kinda does everything I need.
and it takes a little tuning as well
since it's got a longer scale.
We tune down to C sometimes for some of the earlier stuff.
It really takes it.
It doesn't go out of tune.
(upbeat music)
I like to have a guitar that's balanced.
I need to have the weight to be perfect
to the way that the neck feels.
I can't have a guitar that drifts down
like this neck heavy.
I just feel like I'm holding it up and playing it
and maybe I'm just too lazy for that
but for me, this shape and this neck length and everything,
it just sits perfectly on my body
and so I could just rip right into it.
Yeah, it's a very well balanced guitar.
You know, if I'm writing and I'm creating,
I don't want to look at a stand full of guitars and go,
"Hmm, what do I want today?"
I sort of gravitate to this guitar because it does,
it's got such versatility.
I can get what I want out of it right away.
The first guitar, electric guitar I got
when I was probably 14,
was a Teisco Del Rey.
I forget the model of it,
but it had single coil pickups and it was trash.
I mean, it was like 30 bucks
and it lasted for about a year
but there was something about that guitar,
which is kind of another offset feeling guitar
with single coil pickups that I was like,
"Hey, there's something interesting about this."
I couldn't afford a Fender
or a Gibson or anything like that,
so to me, that kind of shaped me a little bit
to gravitate back towards this style of guitar
because of those early days
and so it's kind of a full circle thing.
(slow music)
Now, when you're that age,
you don't ever think you're going to have like a
signature model from Fender.
So it's kind of a dream come true
and then on top of that,
to have it reimagined and come out
with a new color and a new look,
I'm a lucky guy, I guess.
(slow music)