Tommy Can You Hear Me
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Or rather, Tommy we can certainly hear you.
And we are very glad that we can hear him because he sounds so darn good.
Meet Tommy, he takes care of the many appointments, parts and accessories required for each and every guitar we create here at Anderson Guitarworks. And he is also our photo assistant extraordinaire. Very important stuff.
Editor’s Note: We are talking about Tommy F. Not to be confused with Tom Anderson. Yes, we do have two different Tom-Toms in the same building.
So now what we need to ask, “Is Tommy some kind of a nut?”
What!? Nooo!
Not Tommy. In fact, Tommy is one of the nicest people we know. A really great guy.
But what is some kind of a nut is his bold and beautiful Top T Icon—his own personal guitar. The Anderson guitar he chose to build for himself. Put together as he requested. This is Tommy’s personal “Ande” and it features a…Walnut top.
See, we were not kidding about the nut part of this tale.
Tommy is just one of those guys who makes everything he touches sound good. A soulful player—for sure.
He chose Walnut to top the Swamp Ash back of his Top T Icon.
He says, “Walnut is so vocal. Guitars that have some brightness in their tonal pallet can be so vocal sounding—they just sing.”
His personal, preferred perspective on this comes from years of live playing and recording. He loves the way T-shape guitars hang around with him (literally hang while playing) and how a touch of brightness with the Walnut/Swamp Ash body combination can cut through the mix without loosing its full nature.
Wrapping his hand around a Large 50’s V neck backshape gives Tommy something substantial to hang on to while the V shape does not completely fill the entire hand but yet benefits from the low rumble a big neck can add to an instrument’s sonic signature.
The defining features of a Top T Icon is its Traditional T composition, 3 saddles and bridge plate that surrounds the bridge pickup. But, with a gorgeous wood top of Maple, Koa or in this case Walnut. A beautiful amalgamation for the ultimate manifestation of an exotic and traditional T all together in one wonderful instrument.
It’s vintage pickups all around for Tommy with Anderson TV1 and TV2 in the neck and bridge positions respectively. Vintage level power, and no more, but wound to sound full bodied and musical within the real vintage realm.
And by now you have undoubtedly noticed the variant Pickguard. Where did it come from? Sourced by the accessory master himself for an altered Pearl look. (Or he found it at the bottom of an old stack of raw pickguard material.) I guess we could call it Tommy’s Mysterious Stratocumulus Cloud Pearl. Or 50’s Kitchen Table Pearl. Either way, this unobtainable material is over 30 years old. Like an archaeological dig into some ancient Pickguard civilization. Very adventurous.
It is just his way when he says..”Let’s see what my guitar has to say about that,” right before he begins to play. This is Tommy, and his Ande soulfully conveying (musical) emotion.
GUITAR SPECIFICATIONS:
