Acoustic Roots Electrified,
Then Unplugged
The Model 1 blueprint, which sits
high on a wall above a workbench
in Turner’s factory, is torn on one
side and looks deceptively simple.
Asked if trial and error were part of
the process when going from blueprint
to the first Model 1 sent to
Buckingham, Turner says, “I knew
what I was going to make. I knew
what it was going to sound like. I
got the first one made and plugged
it in, and it was exactly what I had
thought it would be. And that was
the guitar that really showed me
that I could design from scratch and
know what the results were going
to be—sonically, as well as aesthetically.
It was a turning point for me
in gaining confidence as a designer.”
Although its forward-thinking
features revolutionized the electricguitar
universe, the Model 1 was
inspired by designs from
way back
in the history of 6-string luthiery.
“I had this Stauffer guitar from
1820s Vienna—[Johann Georg]
Stauffer was the guy who taught
C.F. Martin how to build guitars,”
Turner explains. “The Model 1 is
basically a Stauffer with a cutaway
and slight modifications.”
With those roots, as well as
the soundhole look of its unique,
rotating pickup assembly, it’s not
surprising that most people think
the Model 1 is hollow. “But it
isn’t,” Turner says. “It’s a solidbody.
I wanted a mahogany body that
would give it warmth like the original
Les Paul Custom, the ‘Black
Beauty’—which is all mahogany
and doesn’t have the maple cap. I
was looking for the warmth and
sustaining quality of the mahogany
and the clarity of the Strat.”
However, considering the Model
1’s rather petite outline, what is
somewhat surprising is that the guitar
is on the heavy side—but that
seems to lend it a resonance and
character beyond most traditional
electrics. “That’s the combination of
the mahogany and the maple and
purpleheart neck,” says Turner, who
also attributes those properties to the
relatively wideband humbucker and
its ability to remain remarkably clear.
“Then you throw in the EQ, which
lets you do some really trick things
with amp voicings—you know, tickle
the tubes with a nice midrange boost.”
These days, Turner manufactures
Model 1 electronics in his
shop and at D-TAR, the company
he founded with Seymour Duncan.
The first Model 1’s electronics—
which were basically a single channel
of parametric EQ without a
bandwidth control—were made by
Jim Furman. When Turner worked
at Alembic, their guitars had similar
features but never quite realized
their tonal potential, whereas his
Model 1 capitalized on an impeccable
blend of excellent woodworking,
playability, electronics, and,
most importantly, tone.
“I kind of like a challenge, so part
of the exercise with the Model 1 was
seeing how far I could take a singlepickup
instrument. It had a frequency
sweep control, and then boost and
cut, and then EQ in and EQ out, and
Volume and Tone. So it had Volume
and passive Tone and an EQ section.”
Naturally, the electronics have
evolved over the years. Considering
its creator, how could they
not?
Turner expanded the versatility of
the rotating humbucker by adding
a piezo pickup and updated
electronics that allow you to split
the magnetic pickup or bypass the
onboard EQ. Turner is also developing
a more affordable model
without the piezo and EQ circuit.
A Turner Model 1 waiting to be finished
Back to His Roots
After turning the electric-guitar
universe inside out, Turner’s next
logical move was back to his acoustic
beginnings. And his purposes there
stemmed from a similar dissatisfaction
with amplified acoustic tone.
Some audio engineers have a hard
time listening to music on the radio
because of the poor processing and
mixing common to commercial
music. Turner has similar issues with
recordings of acoustic guitars. “Very
often, amplified acoustics drive me
crazy! God bless him, but I think
Dave Matthews sounds like shit!
That ultra-quacky piezo sound is not
something I like.”
Turner’s issues with piezos in
acoustic instruments is what pushed
him to form an alliance with Duncan
and develop the D-TAR Wavelength,
which uses modeling technology, a
piezo pickup, a condenser mic, and
an 18-volt preamp. Duncan’s VP of
engineering, Kevin Beller, helped
Turner figure out what he didn’t like
about piezos on acoustics.
“I was hearing piezo quack as
being very fast clipping,” Turner
says. “Well, we finally got to measure
it, and Kevin started doing
some ball-bearing drops—just
dropping a ball bearing through
a tube, down a foot, and onto a
piezo pickup. And he was getting
spikes of 100 volts out of the pickup.
When you lay into the strings,
you get that very first spike. Under
a bridge—under a load—you’re
not going to get 100 volts, but
you’re going to get more than the
nine volts that are available from
the preamp. It clips. And a lot of
the quack is the recovery of the
preamp from that hit. By going
to an 18-volt system, you clean
things up tremendously.
“The other issue with undersaddle
pickups is that, compared to
an acoustic guitar, they are relatively
phase-coherent,” Turner continues.
“But the sound of an acoustic guitar
is phase incoherent. It’s all screwed
up, because it takes time for the
frequencies to propagate out into
a top and release into the acoustic
field—and it takes different amounts
of time for different frequencies. And
then you’ve got the low sound coming
out of the soundhole, which is
also phase incorrect. So what we have
come to love is the phase incoherency
of acoustic instruments. With a piezo,
you’re so close to the string that you’re
actually intercepting the vibration
before it gets to the guitar. One of
the reasons that the piezo sound is
so in-your-face is because the highs
are coming at you too fast. So one
reason we went to digital modeling
was to selectively slow down different
frequencies based on these complex
algorithms. You can get all theoretical
about it and say, ‘Oh, the theory
about it is wrong,’ but all I care about
is my ears. I like the theory to understand
what my ears are hearing, but I
don’t want to study the theory to tell
my ears what to hear.”