One of Adrian Belew’’s most famed wasn’t relic’d through years of touring like you'd think – it was a DIY cosmetic job to fix what the veteran guitarist deemed to be an ugly guitar. Speaking in the new issue of , the former King Crimson guitarist explains how pickup maker Seymour Duncan essentially abused its now-adored relic’d finish out of the 1969 Stratocaster after he’d bought the instrument for a bargain price. “I went to a local used guitar store and was poking around,” Belew remembers.
“And in the back they had this kinda ugly Stratocaster hanging on the wall – like a brown sunburst. I said, ‘How much for this one?’ They said, ‘It doesn’t have a case, so we’ll give it to you for $285.’ A pretty good buy, I thought.
” The guitar would later star, alongside Belew, on the front cover of , but not before Duncan helped fix its less-than-desirable brown finish in a slightly brutal fashion. “I called up Seymour when I was back out in California, and I said, ‘What am I gonna do? I have this ugly-ass guitar.’ He said, ‘I know what to do.
’ He got in the trunk of his car and took out all these things – files and a screwdriver and spray paint and lighter fluid. “He laid it on the lawn, and before I could say anything, he took the lighter fluid out and squirted it on the face of the guitar and set it on fire,” Belew continues. “I said, ‘Well, I guess I’m committed now!’ “Then he went to work.
He dragged it through the gra.