Surfcaster Players
John Fogg with Elemental and 12-String Surf
Blaine Weststrate of Trinity’s Tattoo
Bilinda Butcher
Bilinda Butcher’s sea-foam green
Scott Ian’s black Surfcaster
Scott Ian’s guitar was for sale!
Bilinda Butcher of My Bloody Valentine
Eddy and the Stingrays, Ontario, Canada
Andrew Prinz of the definitely not defunct Mahogany
Bruce Cockburn and his ’92 black Surfcaster
Bilge Kosebalaban of Direct-T with his Jackson Surfcaster
Comments
Charvel Surfcaster Guitars 
Tommy Victor of Prong on video “broken peace” uses a black surfcaster
Bruce Cockburn actually has two 1992 black Surfcasters. Here’s one of them:
Just wanted to update, recently bought another Surfcaster, this one a 1992 Cherryburst…will update with pictures, this one is for my “private” use, will not be taking it out with my band “Eddy and the Stingrays” (shown above, matching seafoam green Surfcasters), for “obvious” reasons :)
P Paul Fenech , notorious guitarslinger of the legendary Meteors plays one too
Spotted a surf-green Surfcaster in the latest Roxette video- nice to see a surfcaster in such a high-profile gig! Check it out-
Hi folks, don’t forget Louis Svitek of Mindfunk. See their best video for Godess with a Surfcaster.
http://www.youtube.com/user/Reslosound?feature=mhee#p/c/AE12F8F3E6241FE6/65/gn1xiSofSZY
You guys are the best ! Many thanks. Mahogany has 3 albums on iTunes, have a listen — almost all tracks feature 12-string guitar work. Check us out on last.fm, Facebook, and Myspace as well for concert and news on upcoming recordings. Rock!
Take care,
Andrew.
Andrew:
I had to replace all of the bridge screws on my 12-string Surfcaster when it arrived from eBay. They were all corroded – the previous owner must have had extremely salty sweat. Anyway, I kept the specs on all replacement screws. Here they are:
– saddle height screws take a 1.5 mm hex wrench
– saddle height screws are hex M3 (0.5mm thread pitch) x 6mm
– intonation screws are cross-head M3 (0.5mm thread pitch) x 17.5mm
– octave-string intonation screws are cross-head M2 (0.4mm thread pitch) x 3.5mm
Keep in touch and let us know where you are playing.
Regards,
Graham
Yikes! Sorry, man- I’m obviously a bit lax in my researching thorough-ness. Please take my comments above with a grain of salt, and accept my apology and admiration. I’ll probably buy an album or two to make it up to you, and get more familiar with your work.
You’re playing a 12-string, right? I can’t tell for sure from any of the photos around teh webz, but it looks like it in most of the shots. The saddle adjustment ‘worm’ studs are available from most industrial hardware suppliers- you may have to buy a bag of 50, but they aren’t too expensive. Just take one or two in and let one of the customer reps do the leg work. The Diamond 12-saddle bridge that came on the surfcaster 12s has become the standard bridge on nearly every 12-string produced in the last 15 years, so even worst-case you could pick up a new bridge under $30 and rob the parts you need- they are in plentiful supply.
Andrew from Mahogany here.
Concidentally, I am looking for those threaded adjusters in each saddle — would love to source some of those. Any ideas?
(Band is far from ‘defunct’, consistently active since ’97 — why the confusion when we are a global village — we’re playing next month, just Google us yeah lol !)
Kind regards,
Andrew Prinz
Mahogany.
The bottom band-Direc-t
you can reach to Direc-t from
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=%22direc-t%22&aq=f
From Bob Windsor, aka “Eddy” of Eddy and the Stingrays:
Lot’s of stories to tell, including one in which one of our members house was broken into, and his Surfcaster stolen (never did get it back), and our subsequent search for a matching replacement (finally found one in Kansas City).
Thanks for the website url, much appreciated……….BTW, we “love” these guitars, own lots of others but, as mentioned, haven’t set foot onstage without our matching “set” in over 20 years !!! (except for the 2 month “stolen” episode).
I will get back to you early next week with the serial # info…….lots of guitar shots, etc. on our facebook site as well…….we ordered the 3 matching Surfcasters from Steve’s Music in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada when they first came out, 1991 or early ’92 (serial #’s will confirm, as my memory isn’t what it used to be)….not sure what year the “replacement” was from, but it is a perfect match, other than the neck is slightly “thinner” than mine, for what it’s worth (not that my neck is thick by any means) :)
We always considered ourselves almost the “poster boys” for Surfcasters, even though our promo shot (the one we still use) is from 1988, so we we’re using Fender stuff at the time (hey, we never got younger looking than that shot, so still use it) :)
Over the years we get “countless” guitar players and others “interested” in our guitars approaching us after shows……between the pink jackets, sealskin shoes and seafoam green guitars, I guess we are hard to “ignore” (that was the general idea to start with)………people generally “love” the look, as weird as it may be, and while we initially chose the Charvel’s for the unique “visual”, we quickly found out these we’re real “keepers”, not only for comfort but sound as well (I loved the lipsticks so much, I put a set on my old strat for a while) !!!
We have two 6 strings and one bass, all seafoam green, backs are painted, logo is white, and both 6 strings have trem, but neither of us use it, my bar is stored in the studio somewhere, not sure about the replacement guitar…..all have 2 lipsticks.
Talk soon,
Bob Windsor aka “Eddy”
Thanks SOD. I’ll update the caption.
Graham: Aren’t you embarrassed that you didn’t think to look at the drumhead?
Great Lesson on the obvious SOD. I’m not sure why I didn’t think to look at the drumhead. Which also makes me wonder how much of life is sitting right in front of my eyes and I’m not seeing it. I’ll make the appropriate caption changes. Last mystery solved!
I’ve been aware of him, but I’ve never seen a picture of him with a real surfcaster. Can you lead me to a picture with a real surf?
Great site! I’m a bass player but I’ve always loved the Surfcasters. Wish I would have bought one when I had the chance years ago.
Anyway, don’t forget about Tommy Victor from Prong. He also used Surfcasters.
http://axestaticprocess.com/2009/03/09/a-blast-from-prongs-past/
The drumhead says ‘Eddy and the Stingrays.’ They’ve got some good droolworthy multi-surfcaster shots in their photo gallery.
http://www.eddyandthestingrays.com/
ONE mystery solved, ONE to go …
Who are the pink-jacket guys?
Thank you. The big mystery finally solved.
The “unknown surfcaster player” in the pic above is Andew Prinz from the now-defunct band Mahogany. They had some decent stuff in the mid-90s, although I admit I was never that much into them. They did some collaborations with another band I followed back then- His Name is Alive. Basically they sound like they grew up listening to the Cure.
Here’s a video link if anyone’s interested in hearing them. No surfcaster in it, though.
http://scottmcdonald.buzznet.com/user/video/2598881/