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Just a piece of wood
Music Radar has an interview with Steve Morse, where he talks about various modifications he made to his guitars over the years. Like the rather irreverent but practical grinder mod he has done in 2000 after breaking his wrist right before performing with Deep Purple at the Montreux Jazz Festival.
But speaking to MusicRadar earlier this month, Morse said that the cast really did impede his movement, and it inspired one of the most drastic mods he has ever made to an electric guitar. If you saw him on that 2000 tour, you might not have noticed. His EBMM Steve Morse signature model looked as it always did, with its unorthodox four-pickup configuration. What we didn’t see was the mod he made to allow him to play like he did.
“I broke my wrist, right before a Purple show and I couldn’t reach some of the notes on the neck with the cast on,” he says. “So I got a grinder and cut down the heel of it to help facilitate that [access] – including the steel plate. I took the steel plate off and ground that down and well…”
Read more in Music Radar.
Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing
That is just a snipped of the full show performed in Montreux in 2000. I’m still looking for the entire thing. Many years ago it was available in really bad quality somewhere. I remember that there was a young kid playing Smoke on the Water with them with his black Telecaster. That “Swiss cheese Hammond B3” Jon plays is one of the ugliest looking Hammonds in the world, but it’s also really funny given the occasion. Just a few days earlier, Steve has hurt is wrist or something (maybe it was even broken?). It wasn’t one of his best shows and therefore, I guess, the concert hasn’t been released officially.
October 29th, 2025 at 22:29