Carl Moreton

For many years I have taken my guitars to Doug for a variety of repairs and set ups and was always extremely pleased with the results.

It was probably about 5 years ago when I decided that I wanted to treat myself to a nice guitar. I talked to Doug about making me a 335 style guitar and he said he'd love to make one. I never actually commissioned him to make it, I called in one day and he said he'd started work on the neck so I just thought well that's fate.

The guitar was gradually built over about 9 months and when finished I said to Doug, "I am going to miss coming here to see the state of my guitar...!" Doug replied, "Well, you'd best let me make you another one then duck...!" That is classic Doug talking.

As a result Doug build me a custom Telecaster, which is built to look like a Telecaster custom, but is contructed like a Les Paul for sustain and grunt. Both the 335 and the Telecaster custom have become my main guitars. I have several other brand factory built guitars - Fender etc, but I now only use them when recording in my cubase studio. If I was to gig tomorrow, I'd take my Wilkes guitars.

Last year I also took delivery of the legendary 2009 model Answer guitar. Doug designed this guitar specifically for use in the studio and has been used by Dave Gilmour, Big Country, Wang Chung, Tim Renwick to name but a few.. It is absolutely fantastic for studio use as you can change the sound to suite any recording requirement.

My last addition to my Wilkes collection was a superb lapsteel guitar. Doug had a blank cheque in the design process and went for an art deco mahogany look and feel. I have to say that playing one of these isn't quite as easy as I thought. But it has featured in one of my soon to be aired recordings.

I am considering a Les Paul at the moment..... mmmmm...

I am also due to start gigging again in about a month and have just started firing the fender up and moving m finger..

Carl_Moreton@hotmail.com