While Alice in Chains’ Jerry Cantrell is a highly successful guitarist, he recently admitted in an interview with Metal Hammer that he is not a die-hard gear collector like many of his fellow musicians.
Unlike, Joe Bonamassa – who has reportedly over 600 guitars – Cantrell says he has “maybe 100.”
“I think the last guitar I got was from Gibson. They gave me a pink champagne sparkle Flying V,” he said.
“I still buy guitars but I’m not like Joe Bonamassa or Kirk. Kirk [Hammett] will spend a quarter-million, half-million dollars on a guitar. He’s got Peter Green’s guitar; Slash has a few of them too: some pretty spendy ’59 Les Pauls. I think 12 or 15 grand may be the most I’ve ever spent on a guitar.”
While Slash may have a sizable collection of his own, in an interview last year he explained that you don’t need a ton of money to find a good instrument.
“Spending too much money for something is just absolutely not worth it,” he told Reverb. “There is a line there that you cross where you are just spending money for the sake of the name or the label, or whatever it is. So I figured you have to spend a little bit of money for quality. But you don’t have to spend exorbitant amounts of money for it.”
Bonamassa also emphasized in a recent interview with The Zak Kuhn Show that the sound of an instrument is much more important than the price:
“You don’t have to spend a lot of money. A Peavey Classic 30 will get you home. It doesn’t have to be bourgeois.”
“I’m the king cork sniffer, I’m telling you that. And I’ve seen Robben Ford play rented Twins and sound like Robben Ford. You’re gonna sound like you. I’ve also seen him use the Dumble and it sounded amazing. But he also sounds amazing to a rented Twin. He’s Robben Ford. And that’s really the bottom line.”
