“This is an intensely crafted ‘Super Guitar’ with a separate piezo output…”: Dweezil Zappa’s huge gear auction is full of utterly unique guitars, including his Hot Rats Gibson Les Paul, a Madonna-clad Jackson and a true one-off custom PRS
Dweezil Zappa has announced a huge new guitar gear auction via online platform, AnalogR, including a whole host of unique electric guitars, amps and effects pedals befitting one of the world’s most distinctive players.
The headline item is likely a Custom Shop recreation of Frank Zappa’s Hot Rats Gibson Les Paul (carrying an estimate of $35,000 - 75,000), which was built in the early 2010s under the watchful eye of Gibson’s head luthier Jim DeCola and aimed to recreate the heavily customized instrument used on Zappa Sr.’s album Hot Rats.
The listing, rather brilliantly, describes it as “an intensely crafted ‘Super Guitar’ with a separate piezo output”, and shares some further insight on the build from Dweezil…
"My father famously played a Gibson Les Paul gold top during the recording sessions for his classic album Hot Rats,” says Zappa.
“The guitar was stolen from him while on tour in Europe between 1969-1970. I worked with Jim DeCola at Gibson to faithfully recreate the guitar in exacting detail. I added a few things the original did not have, a piezo pickup and a modification to the Bigsby bridge to make it easier to re-string.”
The instrument was used on Zappa’s 2020 tour dates, in which the band performed the entirety of Hot Rats.
“We made it as era-specific as we could, so it looks beat-up and it has the missing knobs,” Zappa explained to Guitarist in 2020.
“My dad’s Goldtop had P-90s, with that Tele pickup jammed in right next to the bridge. But as much as I love the sound of P-90s, I don’t love the noise that comes with them. So I basically have humbucking P-90s and a Tele pickup, all made by a Canadian guy called Tim McNelly. I can make them single coil with one switch, but I can also make them go out of phase in different ways.”
Other standouts in the sale include PRS’ very first Dweezil Zappa signature guitar (est. $35,000) build. It is signed by Paul Reed Smith and features the individual wood grain selected by Zappa.
“I wanted to do something that was different from the regular shape of PRS,” explains Zappa.
“I said, ‘What other things have you made? Show me some shapes.’ And they had made a mandolin. I said, ‘Let's just make the mandolin shape, but big, like a guitar… This is a one-of-one. It has all of my ideas that have come to life in this single instrument.”
Elsewhere, there’s a Jackson Dinky finished with the cover of Madonna’s True Blue album (est. $35,000). It featured on the cover of Dweezil’s album My Guitar wants to Kill Your Mama and is signed by the Queen of Pop herself.
Then there’s a Cornford MK-5 head and cabinet used on his first Zappa plays Zappa tour, a vintage Gibson Barney Kessel, a Fender Duo Sonic Supra 56 (featured on Zappa’s own records and Lisa Loeb’s Cake and Pie), a Fender Jeff Beck signature model (modded with a trio of Custome Chandler Lipstick single coils) and some weird and wonderful pedals, including the sought-after Korg Miku guitar/vocal syntheiser and a host of boutique boxes… Suffice to say, the list goes on.
To check out the full Dweezil Zappa gear auction, set to end on Friday (April 5), head to AnalogR.
