I play a few different guitars on Náquera, but the Ibanez Musician is the one I play the most. It appears on six out the eight songs on the record (the exceptions being “Flamebait” and “Critical Mass”). The MC-300 is an incredibly versatile model, thanks to the two tri-sound coil tap switches, each of which controls a single Super 88 humbucker—one at the bridge, the other at the neck.

Each pickup is able to be set between full humbucking (high output, thick mids, great sustain), single coil (faster attack, less low-mids, and more touch sensitivity, like a Strat), and parallel humbucking (where both coils are active and hum cancelling but working in parallel for full, but still clean tones) modes. And then you can split the two signals so one switch is set to one mode and the other to another, but it’s kinda unruly when you’ve got, say, heavy bass tones on the neck and bright clean highs at the bridge, honestly.

What this versatility means, though, is that you can completely shift the vibe of a guitar part when a song demands it without having to switch guitars. So you can rip a solo, switch the pickups halfway through and it sounds like you’re trading off with a different guitar player. (I did this on the song “The Angle,” for instance.) Or you can hold down a thick rhythm part and then thin it out for a more delicate part (I did this on “Two Right Feet” between the verse and chorus, for example.)

Technically, it means you can even overdub the same guitar over a part played on exactly the same guitar and get a pretty distinct pairing, although I feel that different guitars have such different characters, even in the way you approach the neck or the pressure of the pick, that two guitars are always better than one, if you have that luxury, when overdubbing. (How many guitars is too many guitars? One more than y’already got! As the old joke goes.)

You’ve then got your regular pick-up switch, in addition, which lets you switch traditionally between neck, bridge, and middle positions. So that means triple the options from the already mind-frying array of possibilities offered by the tri-sound system. For what it’s worth, my go-to setting is parallel humbucking, middle pickup position, amp treble set to six, amp bass set to two—kinda plinky, kinda twangy—and then flick up to single coil for reedier cleans.

The neck on the MC-300 is 24 3/4″ so it’s a shorty compared to, say, the Eastwood SP-I that I also play on the record, which has a 25.5″ neck, and it’s pretty broad, too, making it feel more like a Gibson than a Fender. But it’s so touch-sensitive that it feels more like playing a Strat than, say, an SG, and it’s such a relatively lightweight guitar for a hippie sandwich that, all in all, it’s something of a dream to play.

Thanks to Miguel Matallín for maintaining this beautiful relic for me.