Whole lotta strummin’ goin’ on
Learning guitar from Ramon “RJ” Jacinto is as tricky as learning kung fu like David Carradine in that old TV series. This is how you make an A chord, Grasshopper.
I am at RJ’s house in
“These are my first US-made guitars which my mom bought me when I was 15 — my Chet Atkins Gretsch Touchtone 6120, which (former Stray Cat) Brian Setzer currently uses, and, my favorite, Fender Jazzmaster,” Jacinto says. Other guitars and amps were seized during martial law. Cronies were after all sultans of swipe.
RJ wants to talk about his latest line of Tribute Guitars. “We came up with RJ Guitar versions of legendary guitars such as this Rickenbacker model preferred by The Beatles and The Byrds. We want people to own their dream guitars at five or 10 percent the cost (laughs).”
Other Tribute Guitars are six-string “homage” to the Mosrite bass (with Bigsby tremolo arm), Jaguar, modified Telecaster, Flying V, and the Gibson Les Paul — all at pocket-friendly prices. “The brand-new Les Paul would cost about $3,000. The RJ Tribute Gold-Top Les Paul costs P10,000.” So, a guy can fulfill his dream of looking like Jimmy Page in The Song Remains The Same without, you guess it, bartering his soul with the consequence of eternal damnation.
The RJ Tribute Les Paul is made from mahogany with a maple top. RJ proceeds to play Allman Brothers’ Jessica with it.
He picks another guitar from the arsenal: the first RJ Guitar ever made. “This one was made by Rudy Disipulo. Roadtone and push-button pa ’yan. It was made in 1987.”
Jacinto points to a red vintage one. If Stevie Ray Vaughan had his “No. 1” (a Strat that looked as if it was dragged through the highways of broken-down
During gigs, Jacinto switched from Fender to Gibson, depending on the numbers on the set list. If he wanted a trebly single-coil sound, he used a Strat (ideal for surf music). If he wanted a fat, mellower hum-bucking tone, he went for a Les Paul (which he used in Muli). It was a bit of a hassle. So, RJ and Rudy started studying how the pickups work for both guitars, counting the number of magnet-wire wounds, etc. (I could almost imagine them tinkering in a laboratory like two mad scientists.) After experimenting on various pickup combinations, the duo created a guitar with a nifty pickup-switching mechanism.
“With the RJ Super Vintage Guitar, I could switch from the Strat tone to the Les Paul tone,” says Jacinto, playing a Shadows arpeggio in one moment and then picking a Chuck Berry riff the next to demonstrate the versatility of the guitar. “Or you could get a Mark Knopfler in-between sound,” he adds, as he plucks Dire Straits’ Sultans of Swing, with pick lodged between fingers.
The Super Vintage Guitar, which boasts “21 sounds,” was unavailable in the stores for a long time, but RJ Guitar Center is bringing it back.
“This was one of the main reasons why I set up a guitar factory in ’87. I wanted to improve on present (Filipino-made) guitars.” Before the factory in
He explains, “Before, selling Filipino-made guitars was like selling Filipino-made golf clubs (laughs). It was difficult. The local guitar manufacturers at that time were content in putting out low-quality guitars. We wanted to come up with world-class guitars. Now, people are asking us custom-make guitars for them. A lot of expatriates go to RJ Guitar Center and buy around 20 guitars to bring back to their countries. Sometimes people come to us to rewind pickups for them. We are being asked to improve the imported.”
Great musicians like Dondi Ledesma and Joey Puyat own RJ Guitars, even folk legend Heber Bartolome plays a teardrop-shape RJ guitar. “We even created a guitar in the shape of a San Miguel Beer bottle for SMB,” he says.
So, can ordinary mortals like us become a Wally Gonzales, Joey “Pepe” Smith, or Mike Hanopol someday?
“I would advise kids who want to learn the guitar to get an acoustic with a pickup, very little difference (in price). They could plug it into their home stereo or karaoke machine.” And start playing, say, Enter Sandman, which was the Horse With No Name of my generation.
Customers could also get RJ Guitar’s starter model, the RJ Rokker that costs P5,000, or the dark-wood RJ Guitar Strat priced at P4,700. Or they could avail of the store’s guitar-and-amp sale packages for about P7,000. RJ Guitars also offers guitar lessons in branches such as SM Mall of Asia, Galleria and Glorietta.
“I recently went to Ateneo and held a ‘Learn Guitar in 30 Minutes’ session. I gave guitars to around 20 to 30 kids and taught them three chords. Once they mastered the chords — eight beats on A, four beats on D, four beats on A, and then the E to D blues turnaround — I sing La Bamba, Twist and Shout, or Blue Suede Shoes (and do a little solo). I tell them to learn how to strum first to learn to play rhythm. Don’t attempt to play lead first.”
RJ tells me he’s still learning the instrument. A surprising bit of fact. He admires how a guitar player like Eric Clapton has gotten better with age: from his fiery, wah-wah drenched solos with Cream, to his back-to-the-roots picking with Derek and the Dominos, to his blues duets with B.B. King, to his more refined fretwork as a one of rock’s elder statesmen. The proof is in the listening.
“You know what, the important thing is how to deliver the note — not how fast you can play. The guitar solo has to tell a story, hindi ’yung banat ka lang ng banat.”
That reminds me of what the late great Joe Zawinul once said about the musicians in the seminal fusion band Weather Report: “We were storytellers.”
Jacinto concludes, “What makes a great guitar player? How you bend it, how you phrase it, how you express yourself — that’s what’s essential.”
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RJ Guitars Tribute instruments are available at RJ Guitar Center in Robinsons Galleria (635-8142 or 635-9275), Glorietta 1 (813-1316), SM Dasmariñas,
