“This photo featured in Guitarist Magazine as part of my press interviews around Sonic Temple album and tours.
At that point I hadn't yet changed the front of the Marshall cabs to the more vintage style that I prefer but what's mostly interesting to me is that there's a cream Les Paul that I remember doing a lot of the recording with on “Sonic Temple”. It has a little silver cover near the volume controls where the switch used to be after a previous owner had added "coil taps"… which in layman’s terms make the pick-ups sound more like single coil Fender pickups. I really don't know what ever happened to this, though as many of you know I don’t tend to hoard guitars and move them on when they are no longer part of my key recording and live gear.
Next to it is another cream Les Paul Custom that has a Floyd Rose Tremolo which was one of the guitars I used on the “Electric” sessions, and it had originally been wine red (and I'd been told it had been Steve Vai's when he played with Frank Zappa, but I have absolutely no evidence of that being true) but I got it sprayed black in London. Unfortunately, it wasn't a particularly good paint job, so I had it redone in a cream finish. That guitar ended up at the Hard Rock in Las Vegas as part of their collection.
The other guitars are obviously the Gretsch White Falcon, the Black Country club (cut off in the photo) and I’m wearing one of my Ronno inspired Les Paul Woodies.”
Billy – October 2025