Sonic Youth are selling stage and studio played gear via the online gear retail giant Reverb, with the store now open and stocked some super-rare vintage effects units, some super-weird gear, and Lee Ranaldo’s first-ever electric guitar.
The Hagström II is not much to look at it. Ranaldo was a teenager when he got it and painted it black when he was in high-school (when he was playing through a Sears & Roebuck combo amp). It is a slightly odd S-style with mismatched tuners, two single-coils (the Hagström III had three, and so on…), and four slider switches for selecting them. It looks like it was sourced fresh from of a pawnshop window in a bad neighbourhood.
After Ranaldo got his first Fender, that was it. He didn’t play the Hagström again. But this remains a historically significant – and functioning – instrument, if only because it was a makeweight in the deal that helped Ranaldo sourced the guitar amp that would become the backbone of his tone.
“The good story about this guitar that’s kind of apocryphal, is that, at some point, my first band, The Fluks [later known as The Flucts], was playing. I needed an amp,” explains Ranaldo. “I traded this guitar and 60 bucks to my drummer at that time, David Linton’s, sister, who had a Super Reverb amp, an early ‘60s ‘blackface’ Super Reverb that become my first ‘target’ amp.
“That basically set the precedent for exactly what I wanted to play out of for the rest of my life. Most of Sonic Youth’s career, I used a Super Reverb amp and they all got those targets painted on them, and this was responsible for me getting the first one so it’s pretty cool on that level.”
Maybe one of the biggest surprises in this sale is to find an acoustic guitar so normal, and so high-end. But the Taylor 314e is just that, and was played by Ranaldo when Sonic Youth supported Neil Young. Ranaldo was not one for C/D/C open chord progressions.
The distress to the guitar’s top is not from his strumming patterns; that was made by tapping the heel of his bow in time with the music. You could probably get it fixed, says Ranaldo, but then surely the scars are part of the appeal.
Sonic Youth was a tough gig for gear. All their guitars bore scars. Most of these items are what vintage collectors might call “player’s grade.” Ranaldo would use his guitars as percussion, like his “Jazzblaster,” the Jazzmaster he modded with humbuckers from his Telecaster Deluxe. Hit it through a loud amp it’ll make a cool sound. Yes, he’s selling one of those.
But the effects and miscellanea is where things get really cool. Some of these you might remember from Ranaldo’s appearance on EarthQuaker Devices’ Show Us Your Junk YouTube segment.
As Thurston Moore told us back in 2023 upon the launch of his memoir, Sonic Life, Ranaldo was the effects guy in the band. And Ranaldo has some good ones for us here.
There is a weird flanger pedal that a fan in Russia gave him, which looks like an old cassette recorded with a big old integrated footswitch. A safer bet might be his old Foxx Tone Machine which is covered in green electrical tape and a Confusion Is Sex sticker that suggests it has seen decades of use – way cooler than the original fuzzy plush covering on the enclosure.
But there are two units that will definitely grab people’s attention (and money), an original Mu-Tron Bi-Phase and its accompanying pedal, and the Ludwig Phase II Synthesizer which was famously heard on the Diamond Sea – “This is another item that people kill for. This is the sound of Diamond Sea,” says Ranaldo. “This is such a preposterously cool item.”
There have been loads of clones of the Mu-Tron over the years – Behringer just did a controversial budget version – but this an O.G. and it is, well, it is huge. Good luck finding space on the pedalboard for it. But it doesn’t get much cooler. It saw a lot of action after Sonic Youth moved into their studio on Murray Street, NYC.
“Need I say more. One of the most coveted pedals,” says Ranaldo. “I used this a lot, all through mid-period Sonic Youth, once we had established our own studio. I probably got this around the same time as Echo Canyon, used it on A Thousand Leaves and Washing Machine.”
There’s a beat-up electric auto-harp that is missing most of its keys but is nonetheless will be of particular interest to Sonic Youth fans. Ranaldo used it for Inhuman, on their 1983 debut album, Confusion Is Sex. Also from that era is a custom-built Parametric EQ.
This is the third time Sonic Youth have sold stuff via Reverb but we think it might be the first time you can get your hands on Ranaldo’s chord stamps, literally stamps that he would press into his notebook and jot chord shapes down on when writing. With so many alternate tunings, you need a system, right?
Check these and more out at the Official Sonic Youth Shop on Reverb.
You must confirm your public display name before commenting
Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.