Peter Cook builds (1970s)

TTony

New member @BAJD mentioned in one of his intro posts that he had some guitars built by Peter Cook, and I suggested that he posted a pic or two.

With the various challenges of photos hosting, etc, he asked me to post them on his behalf.

The LP was a '78 build, and has a solid Rosewood body.  Yup!



Firebird from 1976


and this from 1979.


I'm guessing that he liked his guitars on the heavy side ...

Plectrum

I dread to think how much a Rosewood LP would weigh.

dogload

That 'Firebird' looks interesting

victorludorum

Love that 12 string bridge!

BAJD

I have always liked heavy Les Pauls.  Back in the mid '70s I read a review in the Guitarist magazine or what ever its forerunner was, of a British built guitar called a "Pack-Leader" - built by Terry Packer.  The review was written by Martin Barre and he raved over it.  It was built from solid rosewood (body) with maple striping that ran from the base of the body all the way through the neck.  I thought this looked really cool and drove all the way from Sussex to Leeds to buy one!!  When I got it I found it to be VERY neck heavy and unbalanced. It also had a very flat radius fingerboard and I just couldn't get on with it so sold it (at a loss!!) but I liked the concept so took the idea to Peter Cook to use for a Les Paul.  Peter built in the active / passive options he used in his own design of guitars plus a switch to allow the polarity of one of the humbuckers to be reversed to get that classic "Peter Green" tone.  It therefore had an excellent range of tones and I found it very playable.   At the time I was playing a mix of covers music in a couple of bands in the Sussex area however, in '87 I gave up gigging and sold off all my equipment (Stupid boy!!).  I returned to playing ten years later but the guitar had long gone.  I have had several Gibson Les Pauls since I returned to playing but would be very happy to see this guitar back in my collection.

The Firebird was an interesting guitar.  All came about when a friend of mine found an unused, unfinished Firebird body in a shop he had just taken over in Worthing.  I always fancied a Firebird but they were out of production (in the mid-'70s) and originals were rare and rather expensive.  I read a series of articles about British luthiers in a guitar magazine at that time.  The articles were mainly about acoustic guitar builders but then along came one about Peter Cook.  I looked him up, went to see him and asked if he would build me a guitar about the body I had found.  He said "No" but would build me a complete guitar from scratch.  I went for it and included a two humbucker plus Strat single coil (in the mid-position) combination with switches to allow any combination of pickups, in and out of phase selection, and a single volume control positioned to allow violining.  I also specified the long Gibson Vibrola tail-piece and Grover machine-heads.  I liked the guitar but found that because of the very long scale of the bass E-string it would very quickly lose its "twang" and sound rather dead.  That was really the only issue I had with it.  Another guitar I wouldn't mind getting back but no idea where either of them are now.

EricTheWeary

Wow for the guitars ( and those curtains) and good to see a young Brian Cranston on bass. 

prowla

Funny; it just popped into my head today that Ash (who is a member) has/had a red Peter Cook Precision (made from Mighty Mite parts) for sale.

impmann

Pack Leader guitars!!! Wow haven’t heard that for a long time. Heavy!!! Great sounding though!

Philly_Q

EricTheWeary said:

Wow for the guitars ( and those curtains) and good to see a young Brian Cranston on bass. 

He's barely changed!

Great looking guitars, and very much of their time with the heavy bodies and all the extra switches.  Thanks for sharing the photos of them and your equally remarkable shirts!