Larry Cragg: The Welder

Neil Young's Les Paul Guitar "Old Black" and Tech Larry Cragg

Larry Cragg, Neil Young's guitar tech, is referred to as "The Welder" in an article in The ToneQuest Report.

TQR: I read in an interview where Neil was asked how well Old Black stays in tune and he replied, “It doesn’t.”

Larry Cragg: It does if I tune it. When he tries it’s impossible. You can see him wildly wiggling the vibrato and then play the last chord in the song and it’s still in tune, and you can get through a lot of songs before it has to be tuned. What you have to do is not check to see if you’re in tune until after you wiggle the vibrato and see what note that is. If I can get him to wiggle the arm instead of trying to re-tune it with the tuning keys, it will go right back.

TQR: Well, how do you do that?

Larry Cragg: It is a hard guitar to tune in the first place, and every day I’m doing a whole lot of things to it that have to be done every day.

Thanks to Bad News Beat and Chuck on Rust!

More on Neil Young's tone and Larry Cragg.

“There’s a lot of frustration in trying to get music out when you’re the only one who hears it, especially if you have something in your head that’s not normal.” – Neil Young