Sitting in one of the studios at the Gold-Diggers recording facility in Los Angeles, FINNEAS tells Consequence who doesn’t own “a particularly large number of guitars. And I have even fewer in the studio, which is really a testament to the kind of musician I am. I have like one or two proper acoustic guitars, one or two proper electrics, and then I have this guitar, which I play a lot.”
The guitar that is currently being “played a lot” is the FINNEAS Signature Acoustic Telecastera collaboration between the Grammy and Oscar-winning musician and Fender.
FINNEAS says his relationship with Fender dates back to at least 2019, before he and sister/creative partner Billie Eilish were “playing particularly big venues.” That’s when he started playing an Acoustasonic: “I played it for that whole year on tour. I played it at Coachella with Billie. I played it at SNL“And yet they were willing to give us these fantastic custom finishes on the Acoustasonic, which I really enjoyed.”
So when the opportunity arose to create his own custom guitar with Fender, “the Acoustasonic seemed like a really obvious choice” for FINNEAS. “I don’t consider myself, nor does anyone else consider me, a particularly extraordinary guitarist,” he admits. “I’m a songwriter and producer. So in terms of doing whatever I feel qualified to represent, [the Acoustasonic] “It’s an instrument I’ve toured with a lot and I wanted to make a version that had some additional features for recording.”
Features included on both the standard and limited edition models are extensive, including an Acoustasonic Shawbucker combo magnetic pickup and a Fishman under-bridge transducer; an onboard chorus effect; and a variety of voices ranging from electric to acoustic. (The limited edition includes 10 voices, while the standard includes six.)
“For me, this is a unique instrument because of its versatility,” says FINNEAS. “I think it’s an amazing stage guitar, amazing to play live. It sounds great. It has all these different permutations. We added a chorus function to the acoustic and we added a phaser function to the electric – it’s a cool little magic trick that you can do without having to step on a pedal or have the FOH do it or run a bunch of software.”
Plus, he continues, “As a studio instrument, those things are really useful because you don’t have to have anything. I did a little demo today where it was just the guitar, no effects at all, where I did all this multitrack work. I did two acoustic tracks on the acoustic setup and put an electric pickup in. And then I did the chorus mode, the phaser mode. It was like having all these tools in the toolbox on one guitar, so I got excited about it.”
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