The ‘Mickocaster’ guitar had a bit of an auspicious beginning, being as it started it’s life as the only thing I could afford at the time after a robbery from a gig in Victoria BC.

Christmas into New Years of 1989, our then newly assembled band ‘Cease & Desist’ with Marc LaFrance on drums, Brent Howard Knudsen on guitar and myself on bass scored a gig at The Strathcona Hotel in Victoria BC. We were to play there the week of December 18th to the 23rd, then go home to Vancouver for Christmas then return on the 28th to play through until New Years Eve on Sunday the 31st.

It was a pretty good payday and it resulted in basically two weeks worth of work with time off to enjoy Christmas at home with our respective families.

Brent and I were ‘switch hitters’ within the band so we’d either play guitar or bass for a set depending on what songs we wanted to do at that time. I had my own guitars, Brent had his own guitars and we shared the bass.

Before we left, we locked up Brent’s Custom Double Neck Iverson, my White Larrivee bass, my ‘No Name’ acoustic guitar with a pickup installed and my electric guitar in a basement ‘cage’ for safe keeping while we were gone home for Christmas. That particular guitar of mine was basically my first attempt at a ‘Mickocaster’.

To tell the story of that original guitar:

In 1981, that particular guitar started out as a cheap but great natural wood grain Ibanez Blazer. Years earlier my friend and ‘Trama’ crew member Kenny Cheatwood had taken that woodgrain body into an auto body shop and had it painted a gloss white. With the original Ibanez PAF pickup in the neck position, I had installed a ‘zebra coloured’ Seymour Duncan JB (Jeff Beck) model pickup in the ‘bridge’ position that sounded wonderful.

One day in about 1982 I went to my luthier in North Vancouver (the famous Paul Iverson), and I suggested that I’d like to keep the Ibanez neck but possibly attach a real Stratocaster body on it. Paul had the answer. Brent Knudsen (who would later join me in Cease & Desist in 1989) had recently had his Fender Stratocaster hot rodded. Out of that operation he had changed his Stratocaster neck for a new custom ‘Iverson neck’ cut to Brent’s personal specifications, and he also changed out his strat body, so essentially he had a completely new body and neck.

Paul had Brent’s old Strat body, so he simply swapped it over and attached it to my Ibanez neck. As we were doing that, Paul also swapped out the original neck pickup with a Gibson PAF pickup and added a ‘Gibson Soap bar’ pickup in the middle position. Along with the standard three way Strat switch, he installed a mini 3 way switch attached to the soap bar pickup. The switch had the ability to turn off the soap bar, turn it on to combine it to the other pickups and turn it on so it was the only pickup on. The beauty of all that was, if i had the JB bridge pickup on and engaged the soap bar, it had a great stratocaster ‘out of phase’ sound that Strats had become famous for since people like Jimi Hendrix discovered a ‘middle position’ on the old Start three way switches. I could also engage it with the neck pickup, resulting in another slightly ‘bassier’ ‘out of phase’ sound.

So there we have it. A White 70’s Strat body with an Ibanez Blazer Neck, a Gibson PAF Neck Pickup, Gibson Soap Bar Middle Pickup and a Zebra Striped Seymour Duncan JB Pickup in the Bridge position.

Wonderful guitar and I would still love to get it back. It holds a lot of wonderful memories for me.

On with the story:

When we got back to The Strathcona Hotel after our few days off for Christmas,

we found out that the lower floor area (where the guitars were kept) had been ‘broken into’ and my Larrivee Bass (a rare one in itself), my little Japanese Acoustic with a Piezo pickup installed and my first ‘Mickocaster’ were all gone along with Brent’s custom made ‘Iverson Double Neck’. Brent had insurance on his gear. I (at the time) did not.

Luckily Brent had brought his ‘Iverson Custom Strat’ home with him so when we got back to Victoria we both had that to use (temporarily for me), and I had this little 5 string Hohner bass to play. That’s what we used to get through this gig, but I had to get some gear asap as soon as we got back to Vancouver.

I called my friend Kevin Johnson at ‘Act One’ music in Langley, BC and told him I had this problem of having no guitar and very little money to replace it with. He told me to come over as he had an idea…

When I arrived, he handed me a Peavey ‘Strat styled’ guitar in white. Immediately I loved the neck. Unlike its predecessor, this neck had a rosewood fingerboard (the Ibanez neck was maple), had 22 frets and played like it was meant for my large hands. I loved it. The problem came when I plugged it in. I didn’t like the thin sound of the pickups that it came with. Kevin had a remedy. Since I was okay with the ‘clean’ sound of the neck and middle pickups, he suggested I swap out the ‘bridge’ pickup for a Seymour Duncan ‘Hot Rails’ pickup that had some considerable thickness in the sound. Kevin (being incredibly gracious and understanding my situation), gave me the guitar with the new pickup installed for a ridiculously low price. I now had a guitar to play on stage.

Shortly after that – and being unhappy with the headless ‘Steinberger’ design of the Hohner bass, I had heard of a ‘zero percent by it on payments sale’ on at Long & McQuade. I went through and tried every bass they had and ended up very happy with the sound of this one white Fender Jazz Bass, which I still own to this day.

As I started getting some extra money rolling in, bit by bit Paul Iverson and I started to get this new guitar closer to being like the stolen one. We once again found a used Gibson PAF for the neck position, a used ‘Soap bar’ for the middle position and since I came to enjoy the sound of the ‘Hot Rails’ we left that in.

Once again, Paul Iverson did his magic and rewired all the electronics and all the switching to make it like it was on the old stolen guitar. I was back in action!

About a year after that, I brought this ‘new guitar’ in to get a regular old ‘maintenance’ set up. I had become not particularly fond of the ‘close but not close enough’ shape of the Peavey ‘Strat’ body and asked Paul if once again he had an old Strat body lying around that he could sell to me for my new ‘FrankenStrat’. He thought for a minute and said something to the affect of, “Oh yeah. A guitar brought in this really expensive piece of Ash Wood and asked me to cut it into the exact shape of a 1957 Strat body. He ended up not using it and just left it with me!”

I asked how much for it, and Paul said,  ‘How about $75.00?’. Amazing deal! It was one very expensive solid piece of ash hand carved into the Start shape. It’s an extremely rare body as most guitar bodies are made with two ‘mirrored’ pieces of wood, not one solid piece. This was a stunning hunk of wood and because it looked so wonderful, I told Paul to leave it the natural woodgrain finish. He told me it would be done in a few days. I couldn’t wait to see it/play it!

When I got back to his shop, he had arbitrarily also sanded and carved the ‘Peavey white coloured’ headstock into a 1957 sized ‘Strat’ shaped headstock in the matching natural wood finish of the new body he sold me and (…because he felt it looked empty with nothing on it…), stenciled the word ‘Mickocaster’ across the headstock.

I LOVED IT! (and it was a hilarious ‘extra touch’ to me…)

A few years later, I was asked to switch from bass (which I had been doing with The Randy Bachman Band), to guitar AND 8 string bass for the newly formed ‘Bachman & Turner Band. Randy had pulled Fred Turner out of retirement for one more kick at the can. A new album (which I still love) was put out and a world-wide tour was in the works.

I talked to my friends at ‘Graph Tech’ whom I’ve had a relationship with for years. I told them my quest. My ‘Mickocaster’ got great diversified electric guitar sounds (including a deadly ‘out of phase ‘Strat’ sound) but I really wanted to be able to have an acoustic guitar sound as well somehow. The great BTO song ‘Let It Ride’ opens with a Strat and an acoustic guitar playing the same riff to thicken up the intro and I wanted to be able to emulate that live on stage along with other ideas I had for the forthcoming tours. Graph Tech told me of the ‘Ghost Pickup’ they had designed and it sounded perfect for the job so I got the pickup. I brought the Mickocaster back to Paul Iverson with a new challenge. How do I have an electric guitar and an acoustic guitar all in one, yet have each side of it act totally independent of each other and also how can I be able to play them together as well. Paul thought about it and the result was extraordinary.

If you remember above, the Mickocaster had a ‘three way mini-switch’ which engaged the ‘Soap bar’ pickup. Now a second ‘three way mini-switch’ was installed for the piezo pickup which was installed under the ‘Stratocaster’ bridge assembly. To make it independent, the guitar lead input was replaced with a stereo input. The volume and tone for the ‘Ghost’ pickup was placed into the area where the 2nd tone knob was on the ‘Strat’ body. It was a volume and a ‘push/pull’ tone knob all at once. Paul also built me a small ‘A/B’ box to go on the floor where my stereo lead would plug into one side. On the other side of the box, one line would go to a ‘Direct Box’ to the PA system for the Piezo pickup and one line would either go directly to a guitar amp or my pedal board for the ‘electric side’ of the Mickocaster. The sounds are almost limitless now.

With this latest edition of the ‘Mickocaster’, you can get ‘Tele’ Sounds, ‘Les Paul’ Sounds, ‘Strat’ Sounds and fantastic ‘Acoustic Guitar’ sounds… PLUS… you can mix and match any of them independently. It truly is an engineering marvel and Paul Iverson is an actual genius.

On a soundcheck with ‘Bachman & Turner’,

I asked Randy to stand in my position (with my monitors that had the ‘Ghost’ piezo end of the Mickocaster coming through there), with my guitar amp right behind me (with the electric side of the guitar playing the out-of-phase ‘Strat’ sound. As he stood there, I played the opening riff to ‘Let It Ride’ and he was floored. “Mick, it sounds just like the record!”

It was all worth it for that moment alone.

It’s a great, great one of a kind guitar that started with a robbery.