by cockroach » 26 Nov 2010, 15:07
HI Xose
I no longer have any Beat Instrumental magazines, but the BI interview is quoted almost in full in the book by Mike Read -The Story of the Shadows- which may be easier to find than that issue of BI...there's not really any other references to the Ramirez guitar anyway. But maybe Hank must have needed a classical guitar, perhaps to record 'Guitar Tango'? If that was when and why he bought a Ramirez, he certainly chose one of the best Spanish guitars.
Regarding the comments on the Shads tuning problems, perhaps there weren't many knowledgeable guitar repair people around who knew much about adjusting Fenders back then. As people have said, those bridge saddles look wrongly adjusted- tidy and neat in a row, but wrong! Mind you, I always got the impression that it was mainly due to Bruce's neurotic perfectionism at the time which led him to think he was out of tune- he has more or less admitted this in interviews..then he paid John Rostill to tune his guitars, and as he said later, he's been OK since they invented electronic plug-in tuners!