Ted Greene with an ASAT

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Nice video! I miss Ted. When I was working with the Hellecasters in the mid 1990's I took a few lessons from him. He was really interesting. At the time I was charging $75/hr for lessons, but Ted charged me what he charged everyone, which was $18/hr. I asked him about why he didn't charge more. He said, and I quote: "$18/hr allows me to pay my rent, my bills and keep plenty of food in the house. It's good Karma. $16 isn't quite enough, and $20 would be just too over the top". I loved that attitude!

Another interesting thing about him was that he was an information junkie. Some might even call him a hoarder by today's standards. When you walked in his apartment you had to navigate thru stacks and stacks of newspapers, magazines & albums. You had to follow a path from the front door to his lesson room. He wasn't a slob though - he kept a clean apartment, there was just a lot of stuff crammed into it, mainly reading material.

He really didn't like leaving his apartment as I recall. I had to coax him to my house in Burbank to get him to lay down some guitar on a song of mine. I of course paid him but I had to practically force him to take the money. He brought down a really old 3 PU Guild Jazz guitar from the 50's. It had really thick strings like 13's or something. But the action was incredibly low, the lowest I ever saw on a guitar. But man, he could play! I recorded him direct thru an early POD and it sounded great! He could make any guitar sound great.

I miss him.
Will

That's one of my all-time YouTube favorites. I first stumbled across it while I was waiting for my first ASAT to arrive. It pushed the excitement/anticipation level over the edge!

Ted's playing was amazing. I was given a copy of Chord Chemistry in the late 80s, and am still learning from it. I was living in SoCal at the time, and wish now that I knew he was around there and giving lessons.

Will, that must have been wonderful getting to know him personally. There's a warmth and sincerity that comes through in all of his writings - even if he was just analyzing why some particular passing chord worked.

Ken

Will, that must have been wonderful getting to know him personally. There's a warmth and sincerity that comes through in all of his writings - even if he was just analyzing why some particular passing chord worked.

Ken

I had a copy of Chord Chemistry, and just to get Ted to sign it was an ordeal. He was extremely humble and felt embarrassed to even have to sign something. It was like he wasn't worthy or something. Just a quiet, monster player.

Will

Will,

Did you ever see any of the guitars he's surrounded by in the couple of photos in Chord Chemistry? I've always wondered about modding he (or somebody) did to them: 3-4 pickups on Les Pauls and Gibson archtops, a dozen or more switches on each one, etc. I haven't seen any of that in his video clips, though.

Ken

Hi Ken,
He never really gave me a tour. I'm sure he had some interesting ones, including what seemed like a nice 50's Tele, which he could make sound like an old Gibson L5.

Will

Awesome story Will, sounds like a very neat experience.