The Current's Guitar Collection: Kollin Johannsen of The Colourist, Fender Jazzmaster 1962 reissue
by Luke Taylor
February 05, 2014
Kollin Johannsen is a guitarist with of The Colourist, a pop-fuelled indie-rock band out of Orange County, Calif. When The Colourist played an in-studio session at The Current, Johannsen took a few minutes to tell us about his guitar.
It looks like you're playing a Fender Jazzmaster.
That is correct, yeah. I have a Jazzmaster. It's a '62 reissue.
Do you remember when and where you got it?
A couple years ago. It's not too old. I honestly don't remember where I got it. I think it was in a shop rather than online. It was a love-at-first-sight kind of thing. I played a Jazzmaster in the studio and I loved it.
Have you made any modifications to it?
I switched out the pickups to Lollar P-90s. I think it contrasts with [front man] Adam Castilla's tone a bit better. And then I have a Mustang bridge on it so the strings aren't slipping all over the place. But I thought I needed a little bit more -- not grit, but something else in the pickups, so I switched those out and that was the main modification.
Did you do those mods yourself or did you have it done?
Oh, I had it done. Although I preferred the white pick-guard rather than the tortoiseshell one and the gold Cruz body and all that stuff. So I switched out the pick-guard myself.
You've got a lot of effects — which ones are your favorites?
I guess the POG just because you can really change your tone with a POG. Sometimes I use it just to make — not a chorusing effect — but to make it almost sound like there's more than one guitar playing in a rhythm, even though that's not what it does. I kind of use it that way.
And then I have the Aqua-Puss slapback for the delay, which I use for some songs like "Yes, Yes" and stuff like that.
What's your band's approach to arranging songs?
It's seriously all different. I can be at my house with a recording program, make a riff, bring it in, then everyone else will do their thing to it or vice versa. Or you just have root notes — it always varies. I love it. It's cool.
