Neko Case

When asked about the most important gear she brings on tour, Neko Case immediately points to the 1960 Fender Jazzmaster. Previously, the guitar belonged to Case's favorite guitar player of all time, Pops Staples.

But more than its sentimental value, Case speaks of the guitar's lower register, which she says helps her with vocal tuning: "Low end is a really hard thing to capture at a live show sometimes, if you're singing. It's a vibration that's not that easy to make with your own body sometimes."

Plus, she simply adores it. Short on superlatives, Case let her imagination run, describing it as "a sleek panther covered in maple syrup shaking in slow motion." - (http://www.marketplace.org/2015/07/17/tech/neko-case-talks-about-her-favorite-guitar)

In this picture Case can be seen playing a Hummingbird.

"[...] finally, a rarer-still, custom-ordered 1967 Gibson SG Special tenor with two original four-pole P-90s. The instrument was purchased from Elderly Instruments in Michigan. It quickly became a favorite, and she’s put it to non-stop use since about a week after it came off their wall. “It’s been my main guitar,” she says. “It’s the best sounding electric I have, for sure. The Gretsch sounds as good but the Gretsch sounds different, and I don’t want to take the Gretsch on the road any more. The SG is light, it sounds great, the pickups are great. It’s been my buddy.” - Neko Case on her tenor guitar collection: Fretboard Journal #2 cover story (Summer 2006)

"Case admits she stumbled upon the tenor guitar by sheer luck. “It was 2000, and I had made part of Furnace Room Lullaby at my friend Don Kerr’s studio in Toronto,” she says. “He had a tenor guitar and I had never seen one before. For years before that I had tried to play six-string guitar, but I have really tiny little hands and I could never really get going enough for it to sound like music. It was really hard for me to stretch my fingers like that. I just remember picking [the tenor] up and my hand fitting around the neck so perfectly. So I went home to Seattle and I bought a tenor guitar [a Gibson TG-0].”

After playing the Gibson acoustic for a while, Case went after something a little harder to find: an electric tenor guitar. “I realized on tour that I was having a hard time being heard amongst my amplified brethren and I thought I could really use an electric guitar,” she recalls." - Neko Case on her tenor guitar collection: Fretboard Journal #2 cover story (Summer 2006)

The guitar was a vintage Gretsch Duo Jet tenor from 1959. “I went into the store and asked about the guitar, and the guy was really snotty with me,” she remembers. “He said, ‘I’m saving that guitar for Rick Nielsen of Cheap Trick!’ And then I heard this voice go, ‘Let her try it out, he’s probably not even going to buy it!’ It was Tom Petersson from Cheap Trick, who happened to be in the store! And he saved my ass. The store owner didn’t want to look bad in front of Tom, so he let me try it and I loved it. I started making payments on the guitar. The owner was such a weird, cocaine cowboy--I don’t know if he’s a cokehead or not, but he sure acted like one--he was really condescending and alienating. And he tried to tell me the guitar was part of the Tsumura collection, which I kind of believed, but I’ve seen the Tsumura collection books and my guitar isn’t in there. What he didn’t realize was that the guitar had belonged to Ry Cooder. There was a receipt for Cooder in the case from a repair store in Los Angeles!

“I had to pick up the guitar right before my 30th birthday, and it was funny because I had show in London,” Case says. “It was my first time I had ever been to London, the show was on my birthday, I get the Gretsch on stage and it doesn’t work! I was so angry. I took it back to the store’s repair shop three times and the metalhead guitar dudes couldn’t figure it out, so finally I opened it up myself and noticed it wasn’t grounded properly and I fixed it myself, which I should have done in the first place. It just goes to show you that it’s really good to stay away from those kinds of guitar stores.” [...] During the election [of 2004], Ry Cooder was in town,” Case recalls. “A friend of mine who was a politician was at a rally with him. He called me up to say, ‘Hey, Ry Cooder remembers that guitar [the electric Gretsch]! He’s really bummed out that he sold it, too!’ I passed along the message that if he ever wanted to use it, he could.” - Neko Case on her tenor guitar collection: Fretboard Journal #2 cover story (Summer 2006)

“I went to Vintage Instruments in Philadelphia,” she says. “They set me up with this Martin guitar (a 5-17T), the luthier put in a pickup for me and she was ready to go.” - Neko Case on her tenor guitar collection: Fretboard Journal #2 cover story (Summer 2006)

In this picture she can be seen playing her 1958 Gibson Les Paul tenor (TV yellow).

The guitar, a 1960 Gibson Epiphone Texan model, has been one of Case’s favorite guitars for many years, and was used extensively on her Fox Confessor album. She recently donated the guitar to Catamount Arts in support of the Northeast Kingdom regional arts center’s fundraising efforts. Paul Rigby and I used this a TON making “Fox Confessor”. I’m only putting it up for auction because I care so much about Catamount and I have enough guitars! It’s sounds and plays like honey. – Neko Case

The guitar was sold in 2012

“I started out with a Vox Pacemaker, which I really love,” she says. With an EL84-driven, single 10” speaker, Vox never really caught on with the mainstream as a tube amp, but it still puts out a respectable 17 watts of power and has the classic Vox sound. “I had to use a Gibson reverb tank with it because it didn’t come with reverb, which is pretty essential,” she explains." - Neko Case on her tenor guitar collection: Fretboard Journal #2 cover story (Summer 2006)

“I’ve since moved on to a Carr Rambler amplifier because it’s a lot sturdier and more reliable. My Vox is getting old, it’s been on the road for so many years and the Carr is great. It has all the power I need, the sustain and the reverb are just untouchable. It’s small but it’s fucking loud. I’m not the kind of person who needs a great deal of balls, but it gives me a great deal of balls nonetheless. That’s all I use. I don’t use any pedals or anything.” - Neko Case on her tenor guitar collection: Fretboard Journal #2 cover story (Summer 2006)

"Case also has a soft spot for vintage Garnet tube amps--going so far as to pay tribute to them with one of her projects (the self-released EP, Canadian Amp). “I was turned on to the amps by Dallas Good of the Sadies,” she says. “He plays Garnet amps and he has a great sound.” When her musician pal Reid Diamond of Shadowy Men on the Shadowy Planet succumbed to cancer in 2001, his Garnet Revolution One found a new home at Case’s house." - Neko Case on her tenor guitar collection: Fretboard Journal #2 cover story (Summer 2006)

According to Fishman Neko Case is using this pickup system on acoustics.