Josh Homme on why he uses cheap gear with Them Crooked Vultures
Through his four decades playing music with everyone from Kyuss to Queens of the Stone Age to Them Crooked Vultures, Josh Homme has rarely stepped out on stage with priceless vintage gear. While some of the biggest players in the world gravitate toward classic Fender models or antique Les Paul Gibsons, Homme’s arsenal reads more like a second-hand shop: Maton, Motor Avenue, Epiphone, and Teisco.
Homme’s gear philosophy focuses on one thing and one thing only: utility. If a guitar or an amp sounds good, it doesn’t matter if it’s a mint condition collector’s item or a garage sale hunk of junk. The cheapest guitars are treated with the same care as the vintage ones, and priceless amps aren’t handled with kids’ gloves.
“The $300 Epiphone that I have, it’s one of my most faithful and greatest soldiers,” Homme revealed to MusicRadar in 2010. “It’s the best hammer I have in my tool bag, because that’s what I do: I hammer. I’m self-trained and I play because that’s my religion: music”.
Homme doesn’t completely shun vintage gear; it’s just that his tastes tend not to run parallel with what collectors prefer. “I have a Gibson ES-225, which I really like. Of course, it’s the noncollectable model in the Gibson series, because there’s a dog-eared P-90 in the centre position, but that’s a great position, because it has the milkiness of the neck sound and enough cut from the treble position. It also works great acoustically, so you can mic it as an acoustic and add this extra pluck to the tonality”.
“They’re glass case material! We don’t have any display items,” Homme explains. “I have a ’65 Teisco that will rip your ears off. We have a philosophy, which is about using the worst stuff incorrectly; it just disproves ‘two wrongs don’t make a right’, because you can absolutely do that. That Teisco for example – is that the best guitar ever made? It’s terrible, but there’s something to that; it’s got a certain thing”.
“That goes for amps too,” Homme adds. “I’m doing what I’ve already heard a number of times from guitar people is blasphemy. I have a 1938 Gibson EH-185 [amp] on the road. There are probably no more than 400 of them and this is the most mint condition one I’ve ever seen. And it’s out here! The other night I tripped and spilt vodka on it. It shouldn’t drive, but that’s not the point. These things aren’t meant to be wiped with a diaper”.
Check out ripping ‘Monsters in the Parasol’ on his $300 Epiphone down below.
