Duck (guitar)
The Duck guitar is the name given to Yngwie Malmsteen's 1972 cream-colored Fender Stratocaster guitar. It is known as the Duck owing to a Donald Duck sticker pasted onto the headstock of the instrument.[1][2]
Duck Guitar
The Duck Guitar was originally a 1972 Fender Stratocaster finished in Olympic White. Over the years, the paint has faded to a cream-colored Aged Vintage White finish.[3] The Duck has appeared on several of Malmsteen's album covers and in various magazine interviews.[1] The standard pickups have been replaced by DiMarzio pickups.[1] The fingerboard is made of maple and is scalloped.[4] The frets are jumbo-sized Jim Dunlop 6000 frets.[4] The guitar currently features a mint-green pickguard. The Duck guitar has various stickers pasted all over its body—a Donald Duck sticker at the headstock, a sticker with the words "Play Loud" on the front, and Ferrari prancing horse logo stickers on the back.[2] The guitar has numerous paint chips missing due to wear and tear over the years.[3] It also has several cigarette burns around the headstock.[2]
Fender now makes a Yngwie Malmsteen Stratocaster signature series, which are replicas of the original Duck guitar, minus the stickers and burn marks.[5]
History
This guitar was originally purchased by Malmsteen in Sweden in 1978, while he was still a teenager. Around 1980, Malmsteen apprenticed at a luthier's shop named Tord's Guitar Verkstad[6] and encountered a 17th-century lute that a customer had brought to be repaired. This lute had a scalloped neck, which intrigued Malmsteen enough to try scalloping the neck of an older guitar in a similar manner. The results were impressive, prompting him to try the same technique on some of his better guitars.[7]
Around this time, he also replaced the standard frets on the fingerboard with jumbo frets. The guitar was refretted at least once in 1987 when a fan, throwing a half-empty bottle on stage in Anchorage, Alaska, struck the guitar, causing the 17th fret to pop out of the wood.[2]
Originally, Malmsteen replaced the bridge and neck pickups with DiMarzio HS-3 pickups,[2] leaving the middle pickup as the original Fender pickup. In recent years, the neck and middle pickups are DiMarzio YJM models, and the bridge pickup is a DiMarzio HS-3.[4]
The stickers on the guitar's body were applied over the years; the Donald Duck sticker on the headstock dates from some of his earliest photographs with the guitar.[8] The guitar has gradually accumulated paint chips, cigarette burns, and grime from its extensive use on the road.[2][3]
In a 1994 interview, the guitarist mentioned that the instrument had suffered damage from being thrown in the air and not always caught. He also stated that the headstock had been broken and replaced at least six times, and that he had put out cigarettes on it several times.[2]
Malmsteen considered retiring the guitar due to the damage it had sustained, but he has since used it on several album tracks, as mentioned in a 2001 interview with Guitar World Magazine.[9]
Malmsteen prefers cream-colored guitars and owns several models (including several Strats, one with gut strings like a classical guitar and another double-neck 6/12-string). He has also mentioned that the "Duck" Strat is not his favorite Stratocaster, but for some reason it is one of the best-sounding guitars he owns.[2]
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 "The Duck - 1972 "Play Loud" Strat". Yngwie Malmsteen. Retrieved 2016-08-18.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 "Interviews". Yngwie Malmsteen. Retrieved 2016-08-18.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 "Archived Copy". Archived from the original on 2009-09-17. Retrieved 2016-08-19.CS1 maint: Archived copy as title (link)
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 "YngwieMalmsteen.net". Archived from the original on 2009-01-21. Retrieved 2016-08-19.CS1 maint: Unfit url (link)
- ↑ "Archived Copy". Archived from the original on 2009-01-16. Retrieved 2016-08-19.CS1 maint: Archived copy as title (link)
- ↑ "Archived Copy". Archived from the original on 2009-09-28. Retrieved 2016-08-19.CS1 maint: Archived copy as title (link)
- ↑ "The official website for Yngwie Malmsteen". Archived from the original on 2013-01-22. Retrieved 2016-08-19.
- ↑ The official website for Yngwie Malmsteen
- ↑ Untitled Document
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