{"id":926717,"date":"2026-10-13T14:34:18","date_gmt":"2026-10-13T14:34:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/926717\/"},"modified":"2026-10-13T14:34:18","modified_gmt":"2026-10-13T14:34:18","slug":"troy-van-leeuwen-on-how-12-string-guitars-help-make-a-perfectly-imperfect-sound","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/926717\/","title":{"rendered":"Troy Van Leeuwen on how 12-string guitars help make a \u201cperfectly imperfect\u201d sound"},"content":{"rendered":"

Queens Of The Stone Age\u2019s<\/a> Troy Van Leeuwen<\/a> has pretty great taste. Between custom Echoparks<\/a>, double-necked offsets and his very sought-after signature Jazzmaster<\/a>, he\u2019s rarely seen playing a guitar that doesn\u2019t make you go \u201coh, what the hell is that\u00a0and how do I get one?\u201d And now, for one more guitar in his arsenal, that question just got a lot easier to answer.<\/p>\n

While it started life as a custom-shop build, the new Troy Van Leeuwen Telecaster<\/a> XII is not a high-end custom recreation, or even a mainline Fender<\/a> model: it arrives as part of Squier\u2019s<\/a> ever-creative and weird Paranormal series, a perfect home for its mashup of design elements and unique approach.<\/p>\n

I chatted to Troy about the origins of the guitar, how J Mascis<\/a> paved the way for affordable signatures, and how the very nature of a 12-string gels with the perfectly imperfect approach of the new Queens record Perfecth.<\/p>\n

\"TroyImage: PressWhere did this guitar originate?<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a little backstory that goes back to when I first started working with fender on my Jazzmaster. This was right when our record \u2026Like Clockwork\u00a0was coming out. There was so much 12-string on that record that I was like, I should probably have a double-neck guitar, you know \u2013 my idea was to have a Jazzmaster on the bottom and an Electric XII on the top.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was talking to Paul Waller, a Master Builder at the Custom Shop<\/a>, and he was like, \u2018This is probably gonna take six months from concept to playable guitar.\u2019\u201d We were about to hit the road, and I was using a Burns<\/a> Double Six reissue for my 12-string. Paul basically said, \u2018Why don\u2019t I build you a 12-string Tele instead?\u2019 \u2013 which was perfect, really, as I had always wanted a 12-string Telecaster, I just never saw one.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo he took some measurements, and four weeks later I had this Custom Shop Telecaster 12-string, in a copper relic finish! Between myself and Dean [Fertita] we used that guitar a bunch \u2013 recording, live, what have you. So that\u2019s how that particular guitar started. Recently when I was chatting to some of the guys at Fender, they were maybe talking about doing another signature. I just went, \u2018we should do this 12-string Tele!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\"SquierSquier Paranormal Troy van Leeuwen Telecaster XII. Image: PressWhat was the benefit of working within the Squier range rather than making this a Fender release?<\/p>\n

\u201cMy very first electric guitar was a Teisco<\/a> Del Rey \u2013 that guitar always holds a special place in my heart! It was cheap, I got it from a garage sale for like 60 bucks \u2013 and it didn\u2019t sound like anything else. So to me, to do something with Squier was important \u2013 there, J Mascis blazed the trail for us, really.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt became about getting something out there that\u2019s really simple and affordable for kids to try, too \u2013 I didn\u2019t have a 12-string until I was in my late 20s! The new guitar is super accessible and simple. Plus, it\u2019s a Tele. There\u2019s a reason that guitar has been around for 75 years. It\u2019s classic, it\u2019s simple, it always sounds good!\u201d<\/p>\n

What makes you reach for a Telecaster over a Jazzmaster?<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s just a different kind of twang, you know. With a Jazzmaster, it\u2019s more of a surf twang, the Tele, it\u2019s more of a country twang. And if I grab a Jazzmaster, I\u2019m probably gonna use the vibrato system, because it\u2019s one of the best for staying in tune if you\u2019ve got the right bridge, which for me is the Mustang bridge. The Tele is more straightforward: it\u2019s a slab, it\u2019s squared-off, it\u2019s no-frills \u2013 the Jazzmaster gets you this plethora of other stuff, but with the Tele, you know what you\u2019re gonna get.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"SquierSquier Paranormal Troy van Leeuwen Telecaster XII. Image: PressHow do you make 12-string sounds fit well within a Queens Of The Stone Age song when it comes to writing and recording with them?<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of what we do in Queens with 12-strings \u2013 because there\u2019s three guitar players, myself, Dean and occasionally Josh<\/a> \u2013 it\u2019s usually single-note stuff. Especially focusing on the higher strings, for more of that ringy, doubled character. I guess you would call it a Middle Eastern sound. You can\u2019t really get away with a lot of lushness\u00a0with three guitar players. There\u2019s not room for a lot of big, giant chords because it fills up the signal and the mix, and so with a 12-string in particular that\u2019s why it\u2019s more single-note parts.\u201d<\/p>\n

How has your approach to dialling in tones changed over the years?<\/p>\n

\u201cThe older Queens stuff was leaning more on that big hollow-body, humbucker sound. But over the years, it\u2019s definitely widened and sharpened at the same time. With single-coil you can get this clearer overdriven sound, if you\u2019re pushing the amp with the right sort of boost. The cleans aren\u2019t completely clean, and the overdrives aren\u2019t searingly saturated \u2013 there\u2019s this happy medium, and that\u2019s where I hang out these days, I\u2019m definitely leaning on the single coils.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Troy<\/p>\n

A 12-string arguably sounds great because it\u2019s a slightly imperfect instrument, even more so than six-string guitars \u2013 always slightly out of tune with itself. Was that an approach you wanted to take generally on Perfecth, given the name?<\/p>\n

\u201cWith this new record, it\u2019s another examination of simplicity. Most of it was plugging straight into the amp without a lot of effects, even if there is a time and place for reverb and stuff. I\u2019ve been using this really cool SG Systems amp, and it has a built-in Maestro<\/a> phaser \u2013 it\u2019s incredible, because you can plug it in and either have it phasing, or dial it in like a notched frequency thing. But it\u2019s really liberating to just plug straight in on a record like this, and let it do the magic.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs we\u2019re also producers and guys that might jump in the mix, too. So you can kind of pre-mixing the record by deciding what tones are going to go down straight to the tape. There\u2019s a song on the record called Insignificant Other, and it\u2019s a seven-minute song that we recorded live at, well, probably 3am. It was take two. All of us in the room, no effects. Doing that you have to go, \u2018Those are the frequencies Josh and Dean are going to live in,\u2019 and so on. It\u2019s when you start taking stuff away as part of that, everything opens up, and it feels more natural.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The new record is taking a lot more of an analogue approach in a time where a lot of music is moving away from that.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll take it further than that: the name of our record is Perfecth, which is basically saying there\u2019s no such thing for us. On Insignificant Other\u00a0there are mistakes that we kept \u2013 some of those were happy mistakes, what you might call \u2018magic\u2019, and some of them are just us feeling it out in the room.<\/p>\n

\u201cGuitars are absolutely not perfect. They shouldn\u2019t actually work. When you combine all the elements, a wooden neck, metal frets, metal strings \u2013 it\u2019s never going to be truly in tune. So for us, we\u2019re examining the human experience by doing things that are perfectly imperfect, perfectly human. I mean, people are using AI and that\u2019s fine or whatever \u2013 but it\u2019s just boring. It\u2019s fucking boring!\u201d<\/p>\n

Find out more about the Squier Paranormal Troy Van Leeuwen Telecaster XII at fender.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Queens Of The Stone Age\u2019s Troy Van Leeuwen has pretty great taste. Between custom Echoparks, double-necked offsets and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":926718,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[64,63,153780,105,493919],"class_list":["post-926717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-electric-guitars","tag-technology","tag-telecaster"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/926717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=926717"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/926717\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/926718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=926717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=926717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=926717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}