Me and my guitar: Bruce Soord, The Pineapple Thief

The unsung hero of modern British prog, Bruce Soord, shows us his custom spec’d Kingdom...

“I was lucky enough to be able to have this built by a company called Kingdom in Bristol. I learned to play on a Marlin Sidewinder and I was really a Strat guy, but someone gave me a Telecaster and I just fell in love with the sound. But I couldn’t use it live because the pickup output was too low. So I went through a nerdy phase of trying out pickups and getting different scratchplates and all that malarkey.”

Finish

“It’s matt black, which I like because I think looks really mean. What else can I tell you about it? It’s got my surname at the 12th fret. I think Kingdom are making these, but you don’t get my name on it. You wouldn’t want my name on it!”

Hardtail

“I’ve always gone for the hardtail bridge because the way I play live and throw the guitar around all over the place, it really has to behave itself, so a trem is reserved for the studio. It’s a string-through body and it’s really light, which I like because when I’m running around on stage I can hold it up and being an old man I can still do it after 90 minutes.”

Neck

“I fell in love with the neck of a Highway One Telecaster, it was the best neck I’d ever played – really easy to play with jumbo frets. So I went up to the guys at Kingdom and asked if we could spec the neck just like that one. The neck is solid maple with a rosewood skunk stripe. It’s a really nice, fat and easy to play.”

Pickups

“Because I’d been through my nerdy pickup phase I knew exactly what to ask for, and these are Seymour Duncan JBs. For me it’s the perfect balance between high output and tone because the kind of styles we do range from clean, crunch and driven to very driven, but I didn’t want to lose that Tele tone.”

Killswitch

“I’ve also got a killswitch here. Just a little indulgent, posey thing on stage!”