Don Felder’s education with the Eagles is the reason he has an extensive collection of electric and acoustic guitars and equipment. It’s not just Gear Acquisition Syndrome.
His current studio setup includes a total of 19 instruments and 15 amps, but none of them are simply gathering dust. Instead, he employs them all to pursue the kind of results he achieved with Eagles classics like “Hotel California.”
“I loved and learned a lot playing in a band that had three electric guitar players,” Felder told Dr. Music, adding that it applied equally to his time alongside Joe Walsh and Glenn Frey as it had to his stint with Bernie Leadon and Frey.
“You can’t all play Gibson Les Pauls at the same time,” he continued. “The tonality of it — you can’t separate them. They’re just too unique.
“So if I play a guitar track on a Les Paul, I need to play another part on a Strat or a Tele or on a PRS or on different pickups. It’s always a different combination, so you don’t wind up with everything on the same bandwidth.”
He cited an example. “If I played a Les Paul, Walsh played a Strat, Glenn would play his Les Paul Junior that had different pickups. And we had these different amps. You could really define exactly the tone and the player in their own little space.”
Felder noted, “You need to place things sonically in separate positions. That was the [biggest] thing we learned making records where we had three guitar players playing at the same time.”
Of course, Felder’s guitar history goes back further than the Eagles. As he recently told Guitar Player, while growing up in Florida he crossed paths with everyone from Duane Allman to Tom Petty, Stephen Stills and his old Eagles bandmate Leadon.
Which is likely why he thinks it takes more than 10,000 hours of practice to become a solid guitar player.
“Well, 10,000 hours is only the beginning,” he said. “That gets you there, but you’ve got to stay there. Any time you start resting on your laurels when it comes to playing, you’re making a big mistake.”
Felder’s current North American tour dates run until November 6.
