Old Black is the name given to the main electric guitar

Electric guitar

An electric guitar is a guitar that uses the principle of direct electromagnetic induction to convert vibrations of its metal strings into electric audio signals. The signal generated by an electric guitar is too weak to drive a loudspeaker, so it is amplified before sending it to a loudspeaker...

 used by rock

Rock and roll

Rock and roll is a genre of popular music that originated and evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, primarily from a combination of African American blues, country, jazz, and gospel music...

 musician

Musician

A musician is an artist who plays a musical instrument. It may or may not be the person's profession. Musicians can be classified by their roles in performing music and writing music.Also....* A person who makes music a profession....

 Neil Young

Neil Young

Neil Percival Young, OC, OM is a Canadian singer-songwriter who is widely regarded as one of the most influential musicians of his generation...

. Most of Neil's electric guitar parts were recorded on "Old Black," though some were played on Gretsch

Gretsch

The Gretsch Company was founded in 1883 by Friedrich Gretsch, a twenty-seven year old German immigrant recently arrived in the US. Friedrich Gretsch manufactured banjos, tambourines, and drums, until his death in 1895. His son, Fred, moved operations to Brooklyn, New York in 1916...

 White Falcons

Gretsch White Falcon

The Gretsch White Falcon is a visually distinctive guitar commercially introduced in 1955 by Gretsch. While it has seen vast and substantial changes to its body shape and features through the years, and is currently offered in several styles, the White Falcon has always maintained a striking and...

. Young acquired Old Black in 1969 through a trade with one-time Buffalo Springfield

Buffalo Springfield

Buffalo Springfield is a North American folk rock band renown both for its music and as a springboard for the careers of Neil Young, Stephen Stills, Richie Furay and Jim Messina. Among the first wave of North American bands to become popular in the wake of the British invasion, the group combined...

 collaborator Jim Messina, who received one of Young's orange Gretsch guitars (Gretsch 6120

Gretsch 6120

The Gretsch 6120 is a hollow body electric guitar with f-holes manufactured by Gretsch and first appearing in the mid-1950s with the endorsement of Chet Atkins. It was quickly adopted by rockabilly artist Eddie Cochran, Duane Eddy, Eric Clapton, Brian Setzer and many others...

 Chet Atkins) in exchange. Other sources say he traded with another of his Buffalo Springfield bandmates, Stephen Stills

Stephen Stills

Stephen Arthur Stills is an American guitarist and singer/songwriter best known for his work with Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills & Nash . He has performed on a professional level in several other bands as well as maintaining a solo career at the same time...

, for a Gretsch White Falcon that Young had used exclusively up to that point.

Appearance and customization

Old Black is allegedly a 1953 Gibson

Gibson Guitar Corporation

The Gibson Guitar Corporation, formerly of Kalamazoo, Michigan and currently of Nashville, Tennessee, manufactures guitars and other instruments which sell under a variety of brand names...

 Les Paul

Gibson Les Paul

The Gibson Les Paul was the result of a design collaboration between Gibson Guitar Corporation and the late jazz guitarist and electronics inventor Les Paul. In 1950, with the introduction of the Fender Telecaster to the musical market, electric guitars became a public craze. In reaction, Gibson...

 Goldtop. It has been customized quite considerably: after the guitar had been left at a guitar repair store, the original bridge

Bridge (instrument)

A bridge is a device for supporting the strings on a stringed instrument and transmitting the vibration of those strings to some other structural component of the instrument in order to transfer the sound to the surrounding air.- Explanation :...

 pickup was replaced by a Gretsch Dynasonic single-coil pickup. Eventually a mini-humbucker

Humbucker

A humbucker is a type of electric guitar pickup, first patented by Seth Lover and the Gibson company, that uses two coils, both generating string signal. Humbuckers have higher output than a single coil pickup since both coils are connected in series...

 pickup from a Gibson Firebird

Gibson Firebird

The Gibson Firebird is a solid-body electric guitar manufactured by Gibson from 1963 to the present.-History:The Gibson Guitar Corporation released several new styles during the 1950s to compete with Fender's instruments, such as the Telecaster and Stratocaster. After success with the Les Paul in...

 guitar replaced the Dynasonic. The neck pickup has always been the original P-90

P-90

The P-90 is a single coil electric guitar pickup produced by Gibson since 1946. Having a more complex architecture and larger dimensions than Fender's single coils, it is occasionally mistaken for a humbucker.- History :...

 pickup, but it is covered by a metal P-90 cover, most likely from a Gibson ES-330. It was roughly resprayed to jet black, and received a new Tune-o-matic

Tune-o-matic

Tune-o-matic is a name of fixed bridge design for electric guitars. It was designed by Ted McCarty and introduced in the Gibson Les Paul Custom guitar in 1954. In 1955, it was used on the Gibson Les Paul Gold Top...

 bridge (not available when the guitar was produced) and a B-7 model Bigsby vibrato tailpiece. It would presumably also have had a white plastic pickguard

Pickguard

A pickguard is a piece of plastic or other laminated material that is placed under the strings on the body of a guitar, mandolin or similar plucked string instrument...

 at some point, as was standard on 1953 Goldtops. Old Black is notable for its metal hardware, including an aluminium

Aluminium

Aluminium or aluminum is a silvery white member of the boron group of chemical elements. It has the symbol Al, and its atomic number is 13. It is not soluble in water under normal circumstances....

 pickguard. The pickguard and back plates are chrome-on-brass. The tuners have been replaced with Schaller M-6 tuning keys, and the rest of the hardware is mostly nickel

Nickel

Nickel is a chemical element with the chemical symbol Ni and atomic number 28. It is a silvery-white lustrous metal with a slight golden tinge. Nickel belongs to the transition metals and is hard and ductile...

-plated. The headstock

Headstock

Headstock or peghead is a part of guitar or similar stringed instrument. The main function of a headstock is holding the instrument's strings. Strings go from the bridge past the nut and are usually fixed on machine heads on headstock...

 displays a partially painted-over mother-of-pearl

Nacre

Nacre , also known as mother of pearl, is an organic-inorganic composite material produced by some mollusks as an inner shell layer; it is also what makes up pearls. It is very strong, resilient, and iridescent....

 inlay

Inlay (guitar)

Inlay on guitars or similar fretted instruments are decorative materials set into the wooden surface of the instrument using standard inlay techniques. Although inlay can be done on any part of a guitar, it is most commonly found on the fretboard, headstock —typically the manufacturer's logo— and...

, sometimes referred to as a "wheat stack", rather than the typical "Les Paul Model" silk screened

Screen-printing

Screen printing is a printing technique that uses a woven mesh to support an ink-blocking stencil. The attached stencil forms open areas of mesh that transfer ink or other printable materials which can be pressed through the mesh as a sharp-edged image onto a substrate...

 logo, along with single-ply binding around the headstock, although it has fallen off. There are several possibilities as to how the guitar ended up with these modifications. Most likely is that the neck was replaced by Gibson sometime between 1961 and 1968. In 1961, Gibson replaced the commercially unpopular Les Paul model with the guitar we now know as the SG. Les Paul

Les Paul

Lester William Polsfuss —known as Les Paul—was an American jazz and country guitarist, songwriter and inventor. He was a pioneer in the development of the solid-body electric guitar which made the sound of rock and roll possible. He is credited with many recording innovations...

 was not happy with the new version of his namesake guitar, so he ended his endorsement of it. When he ended his endorsement, Gibson was not allowed to put the silk-screened Les Paul Model logo on their guitars anymore. Although rare, there are several examples of 1950s Les Pauls that were sent to the Gibson factory in the 1960s for neck replacements, and they all have the "Wheat Stack" inlay on the headstock.

Condition

Old Black has seen considerable wear and tear, with most of the black paint removed from the mahogany

Mahogany

The name mahogany is used when referring to numerous varieties of dark-colored hardwood. It is a native American word originally used for the wood of the species Swietenia mahagoni, known as West Indian or Cuban mahogany....

 neck. A white tape pinstripe

Pin striping

Pin striping is the application of a very thin line of paint or other material called a pin stripe, and is generally used for decoration. Freehand pin stripers use a specialty brush known as a pinstriping brush...

 extends down the back of the guitar neck

Neck (music)

The neck is the part of certain string instruments that projects from the main body and is the base of the fingerboard, where the fingers are placed to stop the strings at different pitches. Guitars, lutes, the violin family, and the mandolin family are examples of instruments which have necks.The...

 but it has been pulled off from the body, resulting in the removal of a jagged strip of body wood down the back. An additional round aluminum access plate is present on the back of Old Black, approximately underneath the bridge, the purpose of which is to access the locking screws underneath in order to adjust the intonation of the guitar.

Other modifications

Old Black has also been customized with a small toggle switch in the front of the guitar, between original pickup volume and tone adjustment knobs. This switch is not a coil tap

Coil tap

A coil tap is a wiring feature found on some electrical transformers, inductors and coil pickups, all of which are sets of wire coils. The coil tap are points in a wire coil where a conductive patch has been exposed .When the coil taps are disconnected, the coil operates as normal...

, as would commonly be assumed, but rather is a switch that allows Young to bypass the potentiometer

Potentiometer

A potentiometer , informally, a pot, is a three-terminal resistor with a sliding contact that forms an adjustable voltage divider. If only two terminals are used , it acts as a variable resistor or rheostat. Potentiometers are commonly used to control electrical devices such as volume controls on...

s and capacitor

Capacitor

A capacitor is a passive two-terminal electrical component used to store energy in an electric field. The forms of practical capacitors vary widely, but all contain at least two electrical conductors separated by a dielectric ; for example, one common construction consists of metal foils separated...

s and send his sound directly to his amplifier

Instrument amplifier

An instrument amplifier is an electronic amplifier that converts the often barely audible or purely electronic signal from musical instruments such as an electric guitar, an electric bass, or an electric keyboard into an electronic signal capable of driving a loudspeaker that can be heard by the...

 (a late-1950s Fender Deluxe).

Additional modifications from the original factory condition include the addition of a Firebird pickup installed in the bridge position (not just a covered P-90 as once thought), a metal truss rod

Truss rod

The truss rod is part of a guitar or banjo used to stabilize and adjust the lengthwise forward curvature , of the neck. Usually it is a steel rod that runs inside the neck and has a bolt that can be used to adjust its tension...

 plate, and a screw-fender washer combination replacing the standard strap knobs. Old Black has rarely been seen without Neil Young's famous peace symbol

Peace symbol

A number of peace symbols have been used in various cultures and contexts, one of the most ancient being the olive branch. The dove and olive branch was used by early Christians and was later adopted as a secular symbol. It was popularised by Pablo Picasso in 1949 and became widely used in the...

 and dove

Dove (disambiguation)

A dove is a type of bird.Dove may also refer to:People:*Dove , feminine given name in the English language*Dove , surname in the English languagePlaces:* River Dove, Barnsley* River Dove, Derbyshire...

 guitar strap, which has also seen modifications over the years—most notably, its attachment to a Levy's wide guitar strap.

Usage

Most of Young's electric guitar parts have been recorded on Old Black (with the notable exception of The Ditch Trilogy

Ditch Trilogy

The Ditch Trilogy refers to a trio of rock music albums by Neil Young made in the wake of his chart-topping best-seller, Harvest. The moniker derives from a quote by Young, printed in the self-penned track-by-track liner notes to his career summary compilation Decade of 1977...

) though some were played on Gretsch White Falcons and Nashvilles

Gretsch 6120

The Gretsch 6120 is a hollow body electric guitar with f-holes manufactured by Gretsch and first appearing in the mid-1950s with the endorsement of Chet Atkins. It was quickly adopted by rockabilly artist Eddie Cochran, Duane Eddy, Eric Clapton, Brian Setzer and many others...

, as well as Fender Telecaster

Fender Telecaster

The Fender Telecaster, colloquially known as the Tele , is typically a dual-pickup, solid-body electric guitar made by Fender.Its simple yet effective design and revolutionary sound broke ground and set trends in electric guitar manufacturing and popular music...

s, a Gibson Flying V

Gibson Flying V

-External links:*, , , , and , from the Gibson website*, a June 2001 article from Guitar Collector magazine*, a tribute site that lists all models and re-issues and most notable players**...

and other, newer Goldtops.

External links

• An interview with Young's guitar tech, Larry Cragg from thrasherswheat.org
• Neil Young's Sound from thrasherswheat.org, with a picture of Old Black