TeenBacLieu

Matthew Sweet is GetBack's guest blogger all week. Here's an acoustic performance of "Let's Love" from his new album, Sunshine Lies. Click here for another.

As a teenager in high school I had the incredible opportunity to go on a Lion's Club student exchange program. Almost as a lark I had filled out some forms in math class, not expecting to ever hear anything more about it. "What country?" I put England. "Why?" I wrote, "To see where the Beatles came from."

Unbelievably, I was given a scholarship to go to England for the summer and stay with families there. I'll write about the U.K. trip in another post, as it is relevant here only to explain how I ended up in amsterdam for the first time.

Before continuing on to our host countries, we all flew to Amsterdam, spent a couple of days sightseeing (more gouda, anyone?), and soaked up the amazing-ness of Holland and the Dutch people. During this visit I passed a shop that was closed, with a window full of very strange-looking alternate universe electric guitars that I now know were 1960s Italian models.

Years later, when I toured Europe as a recording artist, we usually stopped in Amsterdam to play shows, and I would always try to look around for the shop with the strange guitars. I could never find any trace or even a lead (remember, this was pre-Internet).

Then in 2003, in Amsterdam with the Thorns opening for the Dixie Chicks (loving the Chicks for their recent insult to Bush), I wandered into a normal-looking guitar shop. There in the back, like a shining Excalibur, was one of those guitars from my teenage memory.

I traded the shop owner an acoustic guitar I had for his odd electric. He took me for a beer afterward too (um, as he saw it, I think the deal was very much to his benefit, though I would never regret it). Over the beer he wrote down a very important piece of information on a coaster that I will share with you now: www.fetishguitars.com.

Soon I was learning all about my new baby, the Meazzi Hollywood Jupiter, an Italian-made electric guitar from the early '60s that was WAY ahead of its time.

Essentially based on a Fender Jazzmaster scale and body shape, the Jupiter introduced many amazing features, which I will try to list below.

Suffice to say, many famous guitarists came to visit this guitar at a Santa Monica shop where I had the neck pickup rewired. It is very rare.

Why it's great:

It's beautiful.

Feels and plays great.

Has giant sliders to mix the neck and bridge pickups and to set rhythm volume. This is an amazing way to mix pickup sounds, has to be tried to be appreciated, you can dial it in "just so."

Has a mercury switch inside it. Huh? When you put the guitar upright (on a stand or against your amp) there is a tiny glass globe inside the back with a drop of mercury in it. When upright, it mutes the guitar as the mercury falls and bridges a contact at the foot of the bulb. Cool. The Jupiter left turning down one's guitar or amp to the non-Hollywood European mid-'60s electric guitar crowd.

Has a 9-volt battery underneath the Meazzi logo plate, which powers the rippingly bright bridge pickup, which, by the way, can melt anything in its path using its ultra treble sound. A 9-volt guitar preamp in the early '60s (1963) was very ahead of its time.

Speaking of time (I should say space) - I'm out of it for today!