Our goal was to design a guitar with more personality than a typical solid-body by building what amounted to an arch-top guitar with a much smaller sound cavity. The guitar he plays now was built in 2002. The guitar's wiring harness and controls are painstakinglįrom The original prototype of this guitar was built in 1987 in collaboration with Trey Anastasio, and was the guitar he played until 1996.
Trey's primary Languedoc (before the koa one) has a top of European curly maple - preferred by cello builders - and the back and sides are padauk with no back bracing. The cello-style tail-pieces are all hand carved ebony. Bone was used for the nuts and two piece bridge saddles and bases on the first two guitars, and bronze was used for the saddles of the koa one, for a more brilliant sound. The shaped headstocks (with chrome plated Schallar tuning machines all on one side) have multiple binding and black faces with exceptional mother-of pearl inlay work depicting Trey's dog Marley. The laminated curly maple necks are set and glued to the body with carved heel-joint, and have 24 fret, bound ebony fingerboards with a 25-1/2" scale. The tops, backs and F-holes have multiple layers of white and black binding. (The padauk and maple/spruce guitars are made of bone, but the koa's is bronze to give it a more brilliant sound.) The hand carved, arched top hollowbodies have a shape reminiscent of a scaled down Fender Starcaster. Languedoc states that "The koa guitar is the best of all of them because the wood has the most elegant and solid sound of the three."Īccording to Guitar World (12/98), "Each has a carved top and bottom (with minimal interior bracing), exquisite fingerboard inlays, and six-in-line headstock, a custom tail-piece, and a hand-carved bridge. In 1997, it completed the transition to his main axe, leaving the two blonde ones as backups. He used this for the first time in October of 1996, and sporadically for the remainder of the year.
The saddles are bronze on this guitar as opposed to the bone of the first two. The finish on this one is a darker, redder stain, with a slightly different headstock shape, different (even smaller) inlays, and two chrome-covered humbuckers. This guitar is all koa with a maple neck, and the same tapered body shape as the second one. Trey's third and current Languedoc is a koa hollowbody built during 1996. Paul put the single coil pickup from the spruce guitar into this one, replacing the vacant hole in his old one with a plastic cover.ģ. The upper and lower bouts of this guitar are also not as curved as the original.
There is a slightly different inlay on the headstock, and the inlay on frets12 and 24 are larger while the rest have been thinned down. This one has the same natural finish as the first one but the body is made from padauk (as opposed to spruce). Trey's second Languedoc, built in 1992, became his main guitar in the beginning of 1993 primarily, until late 1996. When #2 was complete, Old Reliable became his backup guitar.Ģ. Photos from 1992 show Trey using the spruce guitar with the plastic pickup cover, indicating that construction had begun on #2. When Paul began to build Trey's second guitar, he removed the single coil from the middle, and covered up the hole with plastic. This became Trey's primary guitar until his next one was built in 1992. The back and sides are spruce and the top is maple. Paul built it from a combination of spruce and maple, with 2 humbuckers and a single coil in the middle. This blonde beauty was built in late1987 for Trey when he told Paul that he wanted a fatter sound. "Old Reliable," Trey's first custom electric guitar. (A second bass was stolen during the summer of 1992.)ġ. Three Electrics: Trey Anastasio has three Languedoc guitars, all built by Paul Languedoc, soundman for the band who also built Mike's bass. Prior to that, he used a pearl-white solid body Ibanez (which he used to write "I Am Hydrogen" in his father's basement), last seen at his bachelor party jam session. If you have any additional pics or updates, please email them to me! The first guitar Trey got made by Paul Landuedoc was a short-scale travel guitar he took to Europe with Pete and Dudley (both also of Space Antelope). I would like to thank Brian Brian Brown (Trey's tech) and Glenn Goldstein from Hard Truckers for the updates.
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