CHRIS BUCK

The Cardinal Black guitar maestro spins tales of a bargain ’62 Strat and how the P-90 is criminally underrated…

What was the first serious guitar that you bought with your own money?

“The first proper guitar I really remember aspiring to for a very long time was my Les Paul. I had a Squier Telecaster prior to that, then I graduated up to an Epiphone Les Paul that my old man very kindly bought me – and then it was the Les Paul.

“I was a huge Slash fan when I was growing up and so I was intent on getting a bona fide Gibson Les Paul at some point. It was sort of hovered over my head as an incentive to do well in my GCSE exams by my parents, as long as I met them halfway on it. Of course, the first thing I did with it played a gig at a club in Newport called TJs. I opened up the case to proudly show it to the rest of the band and stuck it through the ceiling in the venue, taking a big lump out of the corner of the headstock. I surreptitiously tried to cover it up with black masking tape so that my old man didn’t notice…”

What was the last guitar that you bought and why?

“The last guitar I bought was a bit of a strange one. It’s a rare Gibson that they only made 150 of, which is an ES-355 signature model made for this guy called Shinichi Ubukata. He’s in a couple of Japanese bands and obviously very well respected there, but doesn’t seem to have much of a profile outside of his own country. Dave Grohl picked one up and there are rumours as to how heavily involved he was with the design of the guitar because it’s quite similar to his own model – a kind of Trini Lopez thing with the diamond f-holes. I stumbled across a picture of one on Instagram a year or so, I guess, and I was really intrigued by it right away.”

What’s the most incredible find or bargain you’ve ever had when buying guitars?