GR4 N14123 White – Lou Esposito

Unadulterated Rock & Roll

Lou Esposito has been playing guitar since he taught himself out of sheer need in the Beatlemania years, growing up on Staten Island as the youngest of seven in a house full of rock and roll. He learned lead guitar by watching a teenaged Frankie Madeloni’s fingers from the edge of a stage in Tottenville — the same Frankie who became Earl Slick and joined David Bowie’s band in 1974. In 1977, following advice from his friend Kasim Sulton, Lou answered a Village Voice classified, walked into a Broadway audition room, and landed the guitar chair with a then-unknown band called Meat Loaf.

Since 1990 he has played with The Elegants, the Staten Island group behind “Little Star,” and spent 27 years with The Capris. Along the way, this guitar went on stage with him.

He bought this GR4 from a friend during his Elegants years — a great-sounding instrument that was easy to travel with. It has since played Carnegie Hall, Madison Square Garden, Radio City, and the Izod Center, and shared stages with Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, Felix Cavaliere, The Buckinghams, Johnny Farina, Mark Stein of Vanilla Fudge, Liberty DeVitto, The Teenagers, and The Shangri-Las.

In Lou’s words: this guitar has major mojo, and it never let him down. He’s weeding out his personal collection now, and felt his Steinberger deserved to be sold by the family it was born from — and to see many more stages.

Offered on consignment for Lou Esposito.

The instrument

A Newburgh-made Steinberger GR4 in white, serial number N14123, produced in 1992.

The R-series took the headless design in a more traditional direction: a solid maple body in a familiar double-cutaway shape, mated to Steinberger’s graphite neck and fingerboard. You get the stability and fast, flat feel of the graphite neck with the warmth and attack of a wood body — a different voice from the all-composite GL, and for many players an easier one to live with. Lou’s reason for buying it holds for anyone who gigs: it sounds like a real guitar and it travels like nothing else.

R-Trem. Ned’s take on the conventional knife-edge tremolo, and a simpler, tougher system than the transposing trems on the graphite models. It locks down solid or floats at the flick of a lever, and it comes back to pitch.

Original H/S/S pickups. A humbucker at the bridge with two single-coils, passive Seymour Duncans, exactly as it left Newburgh. No swaps, no rewiring. Pickup replacements are common on these; original electronics are worth having, both for tone and for the collector.

Condition: Good, and unrestored. This is the guitar as Lou played it — honest stage wear from three decades of working gigs.

Included:

• Original R-Trem tremolo arm
• New HeadlessUSA gig bag
• New HeadlessUSA strap

Sold and supported by HeadlessUSA — Steinberger parts, service, and restoration specialists. We inspect, set up, and photograph every instrument in-house.