Growing up in Herefordshire with a Wurlitzer jukebox in his living room meant that Neil Ivison’s relationship with music was cemented at an early age. Although he distinctly remembers Little Richard’s scream kickstarting an obsession with the crackle of old vinyl records, his “lightning bolt” moment came on 16 December 1991 – “I still remember the date!” he admits – when his mother and DJ father took him to see the mighty Status Quo at Birmingham NEC.
尼尔回忆说：“我在接下来的18个月里上学，穿着我父亲从演出中给我买了我的现状T恤，这是我珍贵的财产。”“巧合的是，与此同时，音乐老师成立了吉他俱乐部，放学后教吉他。我直接在那里，首先是一首歌，其中包括“我只需要三个和弦来演奏这些，不用担心其余的！”
Then at high school, members of staff that had their own band helped Neil and some fellow students put a group together, mentored the fledgling act for a summer and organised an end-of-term concert. Playing in front of 300 screaming kids was mind blowing,” he recalls. “At that moment, any chance of academic qualifications went straight out of the window, I was obsessed!”
Tech Support
经过the time Neil left school, he’d already been playing in function bands for about three years. “I’d already got a ‘job’, so to speak. I did go to college and get a diploma in sound engineering but, in rural Herefordshire, I didn’t really have many options available to me so I ended up selling parts for tractors for three years while doing three or four gigs a week in the evenings. Then, by chance, I got a call from a guy I knew who needed a guitar tech urgently for a gig at Download Festival. So I jumped at it.
“那是在周日早晨的主要舞台上，主唱唱了整个场景，悬挂在舞台上方，背上有四个肉钩！然后，吉他手砸碎了他的吉他，放火了……那是我对吉他技术的介绍！随后进行了另一次巡回演出，我意识到我绝对喜欢在旅途中，无论我是在比赛还是作为船员，所以在接下来的15年中，我都兼顾了两者。
“我喜欢旅行，友情，当事情出错时的恐慌，脚上的想法或我们与赔率发生的伟大演出的兴高采烈。随之而来的是需要学习如何为各种不同玩家设置，维修和维护工具。通过播放音乐和巡回演出，我遇到了一些了不起的人，多年来去过一些了不起的地方。实际上，我想说的是，酒吧学校的朋友和我与之长大的人，我的大多数朋友通过弹吉他（包括我的妻子）直接或间接认识的大多数朋友！因此，我确实以成年后的生活来称赞吉他。”
Stripped Down
Given that his collection betrays a love for no-nonsense, workhorse instruments such as Telecasters, Juniors and Specials, we wonder how far Neil’s personal gear choices have been informed by his experiences as a guitar tech. “It just came from my need for a functional guitar when playing myself,” he says. “I’ve never been one for lots of switching because, nine times out of 10, I’m the frontman/singer too so, the less to confuse me the better – I’m easily confused!”
Although primarily a fan of single-pickup electrics, Neil is “learning to love” the neck pickup on his ’65 Telecaster: “I was watching That Pedal Show when they did a vintage guitar episode and Dan [Steinhardt] was playing a ’64 which sounded great, so I decided I needed to find one and this one came up at the right time. It just sounds spectacular through any amp you put it through. It’s pretty raunchy – almost like an SG if you dig in with some dirt. I love it! The week I got that, four songs seemingly just fell out of it so I’ve nicknamed it ‘Magic’! My pal Charlie Starr from Blackberry Smoke loves that guitar too, I took it up to a show in Birmingham for him to use and he fell for it big time, so he has first dibs!”
When it comes to influences, Mick Ralphs was a major one for Neil: “I’ve always been a massive fan and he used a Les Paul Junior for most of the Mott The Hoople and the early Bad Company albums so a Junior was a no-brainer, really. I’ve had a good few now, both single- and double-cuts but the single-cut Les Paul Junior, for me, is the perfect marriage of style and functionality. It literally only has the bare essentials to function, needs nothing else and just sounds otherworldly!
“一个很棒的微音P-90确实可以尖叫，但只需将音量吹回去，它会清理低语，听起来几乎像是声音。即使放置音量和音调控制也对我来说也是完美的。那个50年代的雕刻桃花心木脖子非常适合我的黑桃手，一个好的大三学生只会振动您的手……我有一对夫妇有可能从中获得RSI的危险！另外，那50年代的两色调阳光均搅动了我的腰部！电视黄色也一样……和樱桃红！”
Building Blocks
话虽如此，尼尔目前还没有1950年代的大三学生。他承认：“我卖掉了最后一个资金来资助其他东西，但是我确实有一个'57特殊的特色菜，它带着一个奇异的银/金色饰面来到我身边，所以我将其恢复到了原来的电视黄色。那把吉他具有50年代后期的脖子雕刻，感觉就像家一样，而P-90是我听过的最富有表现力的人，它们具有顶端，几乎是三维的闪光。”
优质的Juniors are rising in price, and this was in part the motivation for Neil to build his own tributes, under the Ivison Guitars banner. “The other part being that I’m totally obsessed with Juniors and Specials!” He laughs. “So I’ve started hand building vintage-accurate guitars from the measurements taken from 50s Juniors and Specials that I have owned in the past.
“我有一个’55，’56，’57和几个’59双切割，我精心测量了每个人，这样我就可以尽可能接近老式的吉他。一个想法是，一个演出的玩家可以将它们拿出来，而不必担心要拖曳5,000英镑的吉他可能会受到损坏或更糟。花了很长时间才能让他们听起来我想要的方式，但我相信他们在感觉和语气上一样接近，与现代材料一样，与老年人一样。”
光辉岁月
The 1989 Gibson ES-335 in Neil’s collection has a storied history linked to Rockfield Studios in Wales, where Neil has recently been recording with his current band, Americana outfit Stone Mountain Sinners. “There’s a shop in Hereford called Head, Hands & Feet that was literally a porthole into the music world for us young guitar players from the outlying villages.
皮特（Pete）从莫特（Mott）的瓦特斯（Pete Overden）瓦特斯（Watts）通常会在那里有一些怪异而出色的复古吉他，他在靴子销售或跳蚤市场上发现了一些吉他。
“有一天我在那里，我16岁，一个碰巧是诺埃尔·加拉格尔（Noel Gallagher）的吉他技术的小伙子进来掉了吉他。这家商店曾经租用吉他和放大器前往Rockfield Studios，而这335个在90年代初期是常规的。Charlatans，Bluetones，Teenage Fanclub和Bryan Adams以前都使用过它，然后Noel Gallagher雇用了它作为早晨的荣耀会议。他需要一个带有大胸衣的吉他，并且喜欢它，因此再次要求它用于现在的某些Be，这也是我第一次看到它的时候。
“当时我根本不喜欢绿洲，我实际上是喜欢朋克乐队，尤其是后院婴儿和溜溜球。那些家伙都使用了335，但是当我要求看一下并打开案子时，我的直接想法是“查克·贝里”！我必须拥有它！las，老板科林说它不是出售的。因此，我只是在接下来的两个月里badge依他，直到他放弃并勉强将其卖给了我！从那以后我就已经有了。
“I just wish I had some written provenance of all the records it’s been on! The thing I find with a 335 is that it is incredibly versatile. It’ll do jazz and blues… even country. But if you wind it up through a Marshall or what have you, it’ll out-rock a Les Paul… in my humble opinion, of course!”
热玻璃
当涉及放大器时，尼尔的口味同样是无用的，优先考虑简单，建立质量和可靠性。尽管“沿着踏板兔子滑倒了一段时间，毫发无损地出来了”，如今他没有使用很多脚步盒。他解释说：“我喜欢从放大器中获得一种出色的，分手的声音，然后使用吉他音量旋钮清理。”“就我个人而言，我认为放大器所拥有的部分越多 - 切换，增强，中切割，深层开关等等，它只是抢夺他们的语气。
“As with guitars, I like an amp that has just enough parts to function and function well – this might be a throwback to my time as a tech, the ‘there’s less to go wrong’ mentality, but I just find that a simple amp sounds better to me. The boutique amp builders seem to follow this trend, too, so it just confirms it to me. I like the fact that you can contact the builder directly if there’s a problem, you don’t have to email ‘customer services’, you go direct to the organ grinder.
“我记得当我的朋友格雷厄姆（Graham）获得无与伦比的DC30时，这只是我们见过的最美丽的放大器，它的建造就像是坦克，听起来令人难以置信！与多通道组合相比，在控制方面几乎没有任何内容。它只是您需要的东西，别无其他。我花了10年的时间来负担得起，但我做到了！”
Neil’s number one amp for the last decade has been a Bad Cat Black Cat, “which is essentially a DC30 that Mark Sampson built after leaving Matchless,” he says. “In fact mine is one of the very first and it is full of Matchless-branded parts! That’s the number one ‘go to’ amp. I’ve just picked up a Matchless Lightning Reverb that is outstanding too.
“我也是高帽放大器的忠实拥护者。我目前的Tweed声音有爱/讨厌的事情，懒惰的J 20非常出色 - 多年来我有四个J 20和两个J 40！- 但是我发现这不适合我目前的工作，所以我再次回到EL84S。我可能最长的另一个放大器是橙色小恐怖的第一批奔跑之一。同样，它是如此简单和可靠，听起来很棒！我花了我比坏猫的飞行箱要少的！我们是一个有趣的一堆，我们的吉他成瘾者！”
新添加
上述的米克·拉尔夫斯（Mick Ralphs）的影响力对尼尔来说是一个很大的影响力，而他现在拥有一对明星的吉他。“I have a 2002 R8 Les Paul that was his main guitar for about 10 years – the guitar he was playing the first time I saw him live actually – and a pal from The Fretboard forum alerted me to an ’86 Esquire that was for sale in London so I bought that unseen.
“当时我正在度假，不得不等两个星期才能得到它！米克（Mick）在吉他方面是个臭名昭著的修补匠 - 他喜欢尝试不同的拾音器，像我们所有人一样的接线和cetera - 它已经升级了锅和一个杀手桥的拾音器，我不确定它是什么，但是听起来很棒！无论如何，当我拿到它时，我取下了刮擦板 - 米克（Mick）将其涂成黑色，以匹配他的原始’57 Esquire - 在下面他写了“ Bad Company Mick Ralphs的财产”。惹恼！’我认为所有权的真实出处并不多！”
当我们的对话结束时，我们问了不可避免的问题：您要在接下来添加什么？尼尔说：“嗯，这不是最真实的意义上的'集合'，更多的是一系列定期使用和演唱的乐器。”“对于我的银行余额来说，我通常更喜欢老式吉他！除了在架子上覆盖灰尘，没有使用吉他，我更不喜欢吉他。
“如果有人有一个，我正在寻找另外50年代的单切少年……但是圣杯将是米克·拉尔夫斯（Mick Ralphs）’57 Esquire。它是在我最喜欢的两张专辑中使用的，在我们的婚礼上的第一支舞蹈中，它被使用了……但是我认为这不会很快发生！您知道，在这一刻，我实际上对自己拥有的东西很满意。下周再次问我……”
Tones Of Home by Neil’s band, Stone Mountain Sinners, is released on 1 October. Visitwww.stonemountainsinners.co.ukto find out more