I don’t have a high-dollar pickup range to protect. So I can produce a singe-coil pickup that will sound as good as any company can wind anywhere in the world, and I can do it at a much lower price point because I’m not worried about people thinking that the pickups in expensive guitars aren’t as good.

This Fret-King Country Squire Semitone Deluxe features a translucent red finish and optional “vintique gold” pickguard. The model is loaded with two Fret-King Alnico 5 vintage-voiced single-coils and a Fret-King humbucker, and sports a Wilkinson VSV vintage-style trem.

You’ve always been concerned with making the guitarist’s job easier. Can you tell us about some design problems you’ve aimed to fix?
For instance, the major problem with all vibrato-equipped guitars is keeping them in tune, hence the original invention of the Floyd Rose system. My systems have always been the alternative to a Floyd Rose. I’ve never asked a guitar player to clamp anything, and I’ve never asked a player to use a wrench to change strings. But I’ve always endeavored to keep him as perfectly in tune during his performance onstage as he possibly can without all the other paraphernalia around it, and I think that is key to the success of the guitar. This applies to a semi-pro or a professional player and even the beginner. We shouldn’t leave the novice out of the equation because why should beginners have to play something sub-standard? We try to give all players equal footing to be able to play onstage in front of any audience, no matter what level.

From your experience, what does it take for a guitar innovation to catch on in this industry?
I think our industry is steeped in nostalgia—it has never really moved forward. There have been some fantastic innovations in the guitar industry, but very, very few of them have actually been successful because they always seem to just go one step too far. I think guitar players are very conservative, even though they might be outlandish in the way they look and dress. Their choice of instruments can be incredibly conservative. There’s so much nostalgia out there that if the companies that tend to be associated with major players try to innovate or make things different or better, people say, “Well, that’s not a real such-and-such guitar now because you’ve changed the bridge, you’ve changed the tuners, and you’ve changed the pickups.”

The Fret-King Studio Ventura 60 sports a trio of custom-wound Fret King P-90-style single-coils (the middle pickup is reverse-wound/reverse-polarity to cancel hum in positions 2 and 4) with tortoise-shell colored caps to match its pickguard. Radio knobs and a gold-metal flake finish complete the retro vibe.

Will you ever consider offering custom options?
As far as custom options go, I’m a little bit wary, because I don’t believe we can always give our customer the sound he’s got in his head. He comes to a custom builder and says, “Well, I’d like a double-cut bolt-on with a swampash body, and a maple neck with an ebony fingerboard, and I want it to have this style of pickup in the bridge, and I want it to have this style of pickup in the middle, and I want this vibrato bridge or this fixed bridge.” When that guitar goes together, I don’t believe it can possibly deliver the sound that’s in the player’s head. Instead, I prefer that the player looks at our guitars, plays our guitars, and then chooses something that suits what he wants to do.

The futuristic Fret-King Ventura Super 60 HB3 has a two-piece alder body, a 25 1/2” bolt-on neck with Gotoh Magnum locking tuners, a trio of PAFstyle humbuckers wired to a “Vari-coil” rotary control, and a Wilkinson WVP “wave” trem.

I think custom building a guitar is guesswork. You can make a very pretty guitar, but you’ll notice on our website there aren’t too many guitars in there with fancy tops, or what I refer to as furniture guitars. I think guitars should be chosen for playability and sound. I don’t think they should be chosen because they have an outrageous flame-maple top. That is not a reason to buy a guitar for me. That’s a reason to buy something that you have on the wall to look at. I don’t believe guitars should be hung on the wall and looked at. I believe they should go out and earn their living.

The V-style Vintage VV60TA features an Eastern poplar body, set maple neck, a 24 3/4”-scale bound rosewood fretboard, and Wilkinson humbuckers.

You’ve created so many useful innovations in the industry. For someone who’s not at avid guitarist, how are you able to see the picture so clearly?
Well, it started with the Roller Nut. That started me on the path. I was looking for a purpose. I’ve played in bands, I know what it’s like to play onstage, and I know what its like to go onstage with a guitar you don’t trust. It’s a panic. So when I developed the Roller Nut, I could then actually take a guitar with a vibrato system and know that when I used that system—if I went to a lead break, or if I decided to do an arpeggio—all six strings would be in tune. That’s a huge relief when you’re onstage performing, no matter how big or small the club is.

Wilkinson shows his latest handiwork—the hardware component of his ADT Self-Tuning Bridge.

I’ve always worked with players. I’ve never looked at the commerciality of our industry, probably to my detriment. I’ll say to a player, “This is a design. Does it work for you?” And I’m talking about serious players—I’m not talking about a local guy down at the pub. I like to use their ears, and I like them to confirm my theories. When I invented the VS100 Vibrato System, I knew it worked, or I felt it worked, but it wasn’t until a lot of guitar players of some stature would actually turn around and say, “You know what, Trev, this is a great vibrato bridge. It works, it stays in tune, and I’ll use it.” Like Scott Henderson, he was really, really helpful to me at the time, and he’s a superb guitar player and an absolute tone monster. So that gives you confidence. You feel you’re doing something right when you get people— top players—actually say, “This works and I can use it onstage.”

And how did you come up with the ADT self-tuning bridge? i understand it was a joint effort?
Yes, I was part of a team. I like to say that I drove the bus. A lot of the mechanics were left to me, but I’m not a digital engineer. The technology that’s required to take the sound from the string and turn it into a signal to generate electric motors to turn gearboxes is not my doing. That was just me being able to say, “A guitar player will put up with that, but he won’t put up with this. So we have to make it happen faster or we have to be more accurate.” And so forth. So yes, I stress all the time that I was part of a team. But it was my job with that product to actually design it and tailor it so it didn’t get in the way of playing normally.

So what’s next? A holiday?
I don’t know. We can still take the self-tuning system further. I guess we’ll just keep trying to make a better mousetrap.