Step into Carl Verheyen’s home in Topanga, California, and you’ll see his lifelong commitment to the guitar everywhere you look. “There’s about 30 or 40 guitars under there,” he says, opening a closet door under a staircase. The unused fifth bathroom? “Twenty-two in the shower.” Nearby, shelves hold his 18 solo albums, CDs from a career that’s included sessions with Dolly Parton, Miley Cyrus and the Bee Gees, and magazines with published articles about him. “My ego shelf,” he says with a smile.
Verheyen has a test for every electric guitar he considers buying: Hold it by the headstock at the end of the neck, pluck an open B string, then feel and listen to how the wood vibrates. The guitar speaks or it doesn’t. His collection includes three vintage Fender Stratocasters — one from 1958 and two from the early 1960s. Those vintage Strats have become one of the most recognizable guitar shapes in music: a slim, contoured body with a narrow waist and two sweeping horns reaching up around the neck.