You know the look of a metal guitar – reach into a bag and grab anything by Ibanez, Jackson, or B.C. Rich and you’ve got one. Slipknot riff master Jim Root is largely opposed to those metal-looking guitars and for a pretty hilarious reason.
When asked why he gravitates toward non-metal-looking axes, Root tells Total Guitar (by way of Guitar.com): “I’m always looking for things to piss off metalheads! And apparently, also piss off Jazzmaster and Tele players!” He later added (perhaps jokingly) that “it’s a slab of wood with pickups and strings. Who gives a shit about the shape of the guitar?”
It’s also probably a lot easier for Root to get away with say, a Jazzmaster considering the overwhelmingly metal look of Slipknot on stage. As for why he loves Fender Jazzmasters so much, Root said it’s all about the balance… though he hated the way it looks originally.
“Fender sent me a Jazzmaster years before we talked about doing a signature model, and I really didn’t play it that often,” said Root. “I thought it was kind of awkward looking.”
He continued: “It played really well. And it sounded really good, but I didn’t think about it much. And then we were doing pre-production on something and I put one of my straps on it so I could stand up and play, and I was like, ‘Holy shit! This guitar is just so well-balanced.'”
“It felt so comfortable and easy to play because it was right in the pocket. So I hit Fender back up and was like, ‘I know you sent me this Jazzmaster a while ago, and I haven’t given you any input or talked about it, but I’m using it at rehearsal, and I’m loving it. It’s kind of awesome.’ They said, ‘Cool, do you want to do a signature model?’ And I was like, ‘Yes!'”
All that being said, Root certainly has some pretty metal-looking Charvels to his name alongside the Fender signatures. So y’know, a lot of this feels fairly tongue-in-cheek with some good points thrown in.
