Relaxed and an exteriorly unemotional man, Zappa is a humorous and informative talker with many oblique and entertaining views. We began by talking about his guitar collection.

I have several different kinds of acoustical guitars, and they all have different sounds and different modifications. I have a fretless and a Coral sitar which has been modified and various other guitars which all do special kinds of feedback and things like that.

How do you use the guitar by Rex Bogue with transducers in the neck?

I don't use it live because the neck transducers feed back too much. He also built me one from scratch but at the moment it doesn't feel right. It's hollow bodied with no f-holes, a very resonant guitar, and it's got two kinds of pre-amps in it and a mass of electronics. And it sustains for months. It's also got slanted frets and a lot of other things. But one of the reasons it's hard for me to play is because the dots on the neck are invisible, and I'm very neck dot orientated. It's got that vine crawling up the neck and I can't tell where the fuck I am on it. I look down there and have to think too much where my hand is. (read more)