Closeup of Ace's actual Veleno #5 from when it was listed for sale by Vintage and Rare.
The Veleno Original is the strangest guitar Ace has ever played, and it earns that distinction by a wide margin. The Veleno is really the only guitar that featured an all-aluminum construction; there have been plenty of "metal neck" guitars but the Veleno really went all in. Although originally made using cast technique the process was soon changed to carving which means that the two sections of the body, front and back, are machine carved from two solid blocks of aluminum resulting in what is essentially a hollow-body guitar. The electronics are fitted from the back of the front piece which means that in order to access it you need to open up the back and remove the entire back piece. (Anyone fortunate enough to own a copy of the November 1988 issue of Guitar World can see how a Veleno looks disassembled.)
Despite being a high-profile guitar that was played and owned by a lot of famous guitarists (and some that were just famous for other reasons) the production was small-scale. Veleno built all of his guitars himself and he did so by hand, even going so far as to assemble them at home in his living room while watching TV which he credited with holding production costs down! The distinctive headstock, which is supposed to resemble a "V" for obvious reasons, was an idea given to him by one of his children. Considering the price tag of around $600 it's a little surprising that Ace actually managed to get his hands on one in 1975 but as can be read below he bought it used so the price may have been considerably lower. Even so, the grand total Veleno guitars made was only 145-185 so used ones had to have been precious few in 1975 and the band wasn't making any real money yet. (The total number of Veleno instruments vary with the source, Veleno himself has only publicly stated that it was "less than 200".)
First to clarify one thing, the guitar Ace played was a Veleno Original. It has been stated on some sites that it was a Veleno Traveler but the Traveler, as the name implies, was a short-scale travel guitar originally conceived for B.B. King that was actually tuned up a minor third. Design-wise it looked, for lack of a better description, somewhat like an arrow. Ace first shows off the Veleno at the rather odd photo shoot on July 26, 1975. According to the book Guitar Stories: The Histories of Cool Guitars (2000) Ace's Veleno, seen in a few photos on p. 242, was #5. (Velenos were sequentially numbered meaning that it would have been the 5th one built. In the 2020s the guitar has been up for auction a few times but the serial number has never been mentioned.) The book is a collection of articles from the magazine Vintage Guitar and the Veleno story originally ran in the January '95 issue.
The text in Guitar Stories: The Histories of Cool Guitars claims that according to Veleno's own records #5 was originally sold to Lou Reed (p. 246). However, an article in The Evening Independent (of St. Petersburg, Florida) from February 24, 1973 clearly states that Reed sold his Veleno to a member of Blood Sweat and Tears so we don't know from whom or where Ace got the guitar. Anyway, this particular Veleno had Gibson humbuckers which was the most common choice even if some were built using Guild pickups and, later on, DiMarzios. Quite unlike most Velenos, Ace's guitar has five control knobs, two mini switches on the upper horn and one on the lower whereas the more "standard" setup was four knobs and one mini switch on the upper horn and one on the lower horn. Veleno's used a number of different bridge types but the one on this instrument looks like one that Veleno made himself. The lack of a pickguard is curious as those were added as standard when the body parts went from being cast to being machined but it's fairly easy to remove a pickguard.
Curiously, even though Ace posed with the Veleno in the summer of 1975 there is no evidence that it was actually used on stage until March 1976. Much like the aluminum-neck Travis Bean the Veleno Original was very short-lived. In fact, all the known photos of Ace actually playing it seem to come from the same date: March 24, 1976 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. This isn't really surprising. Ace had been getting a lot of guitars over the course of late 1975 and early 1976 and beside his clear no. 1 Les Paul Deluxe, both the Ibanez Destroyer and the black Gibson Les Paul Custom were used extensively. Ace probably just tried the Veleno because it looked cool, realised it suffered from the same issues as the Travis Bean, and decided it wasn't for him.
But as noted in the section on the Travis Bean TB1000S, even if the Veleno Original wasn't to Ace's liking he liked it well enough to keep it in his collection. (Again, Ace really liked cool stuff and when it comes to guitars he is a borderline hoarder.) It was later either sold or bestowed upon someone as a gift and, as seen below, in the mid-90s it was part of Bill Baker's collection. Baker later sold it and I am unaware of who is currently in possession of the Veleno Original.
