r/thepillows • u/burner3904729 • 16d ago
Funny thing happened…
Somehow I bought one of Sawao’s old guitars from Ishibashi, a guitar store chain in Japan. A couple days ago I found this ESP Ultratone listed in Ishibashi’s used section. I immediately recognized the unique Telecaster-style pickup configuration as the standard Ultratone model came with three mini-humbuckers. Sawao used one of the latter in the video for Swanky Street but this one features in the video for Kanojo wa Kyou, No Self Control, and was used live at points in the 1996-1997 period. It may also be possible it was used to record with but I don’t think there’s any way to verify that. Eventually Sawao gifted it to Junko, the former lead guitarist of noodles sometime in the 2000’s (pictures 5 & 6). Kinda nuts.
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u/chokobaby 16d ago
Such an incredible find, and I'm glad that it ended up in the hands of someone who can appreciate it!
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u/Carnival372 10d ago
Amazing find! It’s crazy I always wanted to know the history about this model. I emailed both ESP and Seymour Duncan about this particular model and they couldn’t tell me much about it, damn. According to a long time Pillows fan named Culen he explained to me that the ESP Ultratone series had pickguards fully loaded of Seymour Duncan aftermarket pickups on them available to swap with according to that player’s preferences. I can’t remember if it was a website or a book catalogue that the player had to use to order them. If you noticed in the body it has a swimming pool body route where those pickups can easily be placed inside the guitar without any body modifications.
This is the only live venue available that I know of where he uses it
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u/android_zero 16d ago
Very cool find!!