Blake Mills – Heigh Ho

"I spent an hour and a half just playing it...I said 'what is the deal with this guitar'...it had this amazing sort of conversation quality...It's one of those guitars that talks back to you when you're playing it," says Blake Mills, about his Barney Kessel Custom, at around 30 minutes into this video.

In an interview with the Fretboard Journal magazine, starting around the 33 minute mark, Mills says that Mike Cornwall, an LA-based guitar repairman and tech, built Mill's Coodercaster.

Cornwall was Mills' guitar tech when Mills was playing with Lucinda Williams, and the two built the guitar which Blake says is "obviously heavily inspired by the Coodercaster, (but) the neck pickup is different. The neck pickup was something that was in a guitar that Val McCallum had lent to me."

Mills describes the pickup being kind of mysterious; it took a lot of research to find where it came from. Mills goes on to say in the interview that the pickup "was on a single model of hollow body Guyatone guitars. The guitars themselves are not great instruments usually, so I don't have a lot of guilt about pulling the pickups out of them." Blake does not reveal the exact model Guyatone... Aside from the neck pickup, Mills said the guitar was "made from parts Mike found while we were on the road." The guitar has a telecaster neck, and the bridge pickup is "from a Valco" lapsteel inside the housing of a Lollar copy.

In the video "Blake Mills Performs 'If I'm Unworthy'" by Fender, Blake Mills is shown using the Fender 'wide panel tweed' Deluxe Amp 5D3.