Sum 41 guitarist Deryck Whibley has been reunited with his beloved Iggy Pop Telecaster after it spent the last 20 years on display at the Hard Rock Cafe in Florida.
Whibley had appealed for its return in February after successfully recovering his long-lost mid-’70s Gibson Marauder in time for the band's final world tour. Now his highly sentimental Tele has followed in its wake.
“I first picked it up during the Does This Look Infected? Era,” Whibley explains on Instagram. “At the time, I’d just started playing Fender, and all I had was one black Telecaster. I called them from the road in the U.S. and asked if they could send me a backup – no requests, no special instructions, just ‘send me something fast.’ A couple of weeks later, this pewter grey Tele showed up, and I instantly connected with it.”
The guitar quickly became his weapon of choice, and he used it for “some unforgettable moments” in his career, most notably when they joined forces with Iggy Pop in the early 200s. The band had been invited to guest on the singer’s 14th album, Skull Ring, and they brought their collaborative track Little Know It All to the David Letterman show to celebrate its release. The Tele was there every step of the way.
It was also played at the MTV Awards in Miami in 2003, after the band stayed “up all night shooting the music video the night before”, Whibley recalls. It took a beating on the Warped Tour that same year.
“I was happy to have it on display at the Hard Rock for so long; it felt like part of my history belonged in their collection,” the guitarist-turned-producer adds. “But getting it back now, after all these years, feels like being reunited with a piece of myself I thought was gone forever. It feels amazing to plug it in again.”
At some point, Whibley replaced its sole stock pickup with a Seymour Duncan SH-4 JB humbucker. In the video, he puts the guitar through a Wizard MC II 50-watt tube amp head.
“The guitar has been locked in a glass case for the past two decades; it's been so long since I've seen it,” he says in the video, looking lovingly at the axe. It shows signs of extensive use with chipped paint a common sight all over, while a raft of stickers, including one of the Pixies, adorn its top.
“The coolest thing about this is that it came back in the original case I sent it in,” he continues. “It still has the strings on it that I sent it in with. I mean, this thing is like a time capsule. It just feels like home in my hands again.”
And as one commenter says, it was a guitar that boosted Tele sales tenfold at the time, sending a legion of pop punk fans down the T-style rabbit hole.
Last year, Whibley donned Steve Jones' Sex Pistols Les Paul for the band's last-ever European show just months after he splurged on a historic Goldtop Les Paul. The guitar he bought has featured on some of Ozzy Osbourne, Hole, Korn, and Social Distortion’s most iconic recordings.
