Eric Johnson Interview

Eric Johnson Strat

MPc: Not too long ago you worked closely with Fender to develop your signature series Stratocaster. I actually just finished reviewing these for our online magazine and have one on order for myself. What is your overall feeling regarding these instruments? Do the ones you personally use have any modifications or differences from the ones that appear in the stores?
EJ: I like them a lot. There are a couple of changes, minor changes, that we implemented in this design, such as a little bit flatter fingerboard and thicker frets. Also, having the tone control hooked up to the bridge so that I can balance out the EQ curve of the bridge somewhat with the neck where it’s still on the spectrum. And the headstock being at a little bit different angle so I can get rid of the string trees. You know, string trees are a real source of tuning problems.
Other than that I really just wanted to make an instrument that retained as much of that old fifties vintage as possible. It’s pretty much flat-on like Leo Fender had it in the old days, except for those several changes that I thought were somewhat passing changes in so much that they weren’t altering the guitar, they were just trying to make it a little more “modern” without taking away the magic from the inception of the original instrument.
MPc: You specified a lot of changes that many guitarists were extremely happy to see; for instance the nitrocellulose lacquer finish. The nitro doesn’t have an undercoat, does it?
EJ: No, and the guitar has been received really well. If there has been any criticism of the guitar, it’s been the finish. That’s because we’ve gotten so used to the big thick, plastic finishes that have come to be associated with guitars. But if you look at old violins and the way violins are made, they are finished with a very thin varnish. They are fragile and that’s just kind of the way it is. The point of that is to let the guitar breathe more. It comes with the territory that the finish is going to be just a little bit more fragile.
I have some old Strats, and they’re like that. They’re not painted to oblivion, but there’s a merit to that. Some people have been like “Oh man, this finish is too fragile.”
MPc: Well, if it sounds good, that’s the point right?
EJ: Yeah, yeah. Plus I like it when the finish gets funky anyhow (laughing).
MPc: Obviously some compromises have to be made when building an instrument for large-scale production and also in order to be offered in a particular price range. Where did Fender “hit the nail on the head” and where, if these compromises didn’t exist, would you have liked to see some differences?
EJ: Well, the weight thing. It fluctuates a little more than I would like it to. There is a ceiling on the weight, they can’t go over a certain weight and if it was many years ago when they had more availability of wood, then we could bring that ceiling down a little bit more. More than half of them out there are extremely lightweight, which is wonderful. But every now and then, from time to time, some of them are a little heavier than I’d like to see. But it’s just the availability of wood; it’s just tough nowadays. Unless we wanted to jack the price up crazy.
Actually, the price was going to be cheaper than it is now and we wanted to do the lightweight, grade A alder wood. And I wanted to do the extra contouring on the side and I wanted to do the quarter sawn, high-quality maple neck. Those were issues that I had two choices with when the guitar came out, either I was going to have to let go of some of the quality of that or we had to raise the price. I just elected to raise the price because that would be defeating the whole purpose of it; to put it out and let those things go. That’s the quality that those instruments used to be and I wanted to stick with that.
That’s why it’s whatever the list price is now, because even though it’s a production guitar, there are elements of the guitar that at the end had to be done by hand, which is a little different than some of their other production guitars. There is some hand sanding required for the extra contours and things like that. I guess the only thing is that I think we could have been a little more discriminating about the wood weight. But then the guitar would have been even more expensive.
MPc: When I was doing the research for my review of the Eric Johnson signature Stratocaster, I was trying to discern how consistent they were, and one of the things that I was doing was weighing them. They seemed to vary a bit; the one that I fell in love with was probably the one you would have fell in love with. It was probably under 7 pounds. It really bloomed when you played it.
In further discussion of the Strat bodies, I know that at one time you had said that you prefer one piece bodies whenever available. As the Eric Johnson Strat features a two-piece body, I wondered would it have been pretty hard for Fender to specify one-piece bodies instead for these guitars?
EJ: It would have, and I have kind of come off of that a little bit because I noticed that some of my old Strats are two-piece, and they happen to be great sounding. Sometimes I don’t know if once you figure out ,“Oh, this is what makes something sound good,” if tomorrow will come and prove you wrong. It’s almost as if it’s mojo. I really think it’s the inter-relationship of the sum of all the parts that makes it a beautiful instrument more than saying, “This one part needs to be like that,” because tomorrow you may be proven wrong (laughing).
*another interview below*
/*We all know about your quest for tone and your attention to detail. What did you do with Fender to make certain that the new Eric Johnson Signature Stratocaster is exactly to the specs you want in a guitar?*/

*EJ:* Well, I have a couple of old Strats that I've kept over the years that to me have the best tone. So, when we decided to do the Signature thing, Michael Braun from Fender came out to Austin and really studied the instruments that I particularly liked. He found some unifying things about them that weren't on the re-issue Fenders.

So we basically tried to make an old Fender that had some of the appointments that had been thrown away during the early '70s. We brought those things back and tried to get as close as we could to the original guitar with the playability you get with some of the new improvements.

/*And the pickups? */

*EJ:* I have some '61 pickups in one of my guitars and that's kind of the idea that we used. We went with a different copper wire and the way it's wound, it's a little bit more like the old style.