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GALLERY: Show Us Your Gear - Unique Instruments II
"Says reader Barry, ""Here's my homemade amp fashioned from an old bass drum shell. Loaded with a Jensen C12K, it's literally a cannon."""
"Bush stripped this ""previously nasty"" 1970s Fender 6-watt Silverface Champ to its chassis and rebuilt the cabinet, circuitry, and components. The cabinet is marine birch with purple heartwood faceplate and vintage oxblood grille cloth. He replaced the tubes and rectifier with Tung-Sol ones, added vintage Fender cream control knobs and leather handle, a toggle switch, and blue power light. The cabinet is loaded with a Weber Vintage Series 8"" Alnico speaker."
"Du Toit's custom guitar built to his own specifications and features a deep cherry sunburst. He says it has an, ""amazing sound."""
"Reshes' custom guitar was built by JBG Guitars, a one-man shop out of L.A. He says it gets, ""really cool humbucking and split tones."""
"Says Tim of his quirky knock-off find, ""Back in 1998 I was in Jaipur India. I visited a music store. I played 'Paint It Black' on a sitar but decided to buy this Givson 215 Standard for Rs 1100 (about $28). Yes, the name is GIVSON. They even have a website that says ""beware of imitation,"" har har. It is rather fun to play. It is VERY light, has no truss rod in spite of what it says on the head. The pick guard is masonite and the tailpiece is stamped aluminum. It came with a hideous plaid gig bag and two psychedelic picks that broke immediately. It goes out of tune rather quickly. I love it."""
"Pappy was Atwell's late father's first guitar, which he bought in 1962 for $13 from the Naval PX at Pt. Mugu. He says, ""He told me how it hung up on the wall behind the counter and that he did yard work for a couple weeks to get the money to buy it. Originally, the guitar was very plain looking and had no labels or markings except for a '333' stamped somewhere on the soundboard. The design it bears now was created by my father either in the late 1960s or in the mid-'80s using markers, paint, and Elmers glue (for the 3D teardrops and other features). As a kid, I was enamored by this guitar. Its design is quintessential Bill Atwell and greatly influenced me. It has a very distinctive tone and I've employed it on a number of recent recordings since his passing in 2008."""
West built both of these guitars at home. Wilma (left) is a semi-hollow with a Fralin Special bridge pickup and Gibson P-90 neck pickup with four-way switching and Japanese Tele hardware. Betty (right) Is a semi-hollow Tomahawk body with a duo of TV Jones Classic pickups (Classic Plus at the bridge) and 4-way switching.
"Australian Bowering bought an early '90s Ibanez CT bass in 1995 and got to work. Being a lefty in Australia left him few options, and this stock Ibanez wasn't doing the trick. ""Pickups were horrid, sound was horrid,"" he explains. Bowering removed the frets and replaced them with hand-carved wood fillers, removed the pickups and filled in the holes with wood, and added an EMG 35dc pickup. ""Sounded great, played great, looks terrible due to the quick spray of black matte I instructed the luthier to throw over the old pup holes,"" he explains. The bass served him for 20 years, but is now being retired due to a bowed neck. "
"Sparks designed and built both guitars. He says he built the 12-string with the help of two professional luthiers, ""instead of purchasing a Ric 12, which I desperately wanted, but couldn't play due to the small neck and closely set strings."" The instrument has genuine ivory and mother-of-pearl inlays, stereo wiring, phase and single/dual coil tapped pickups, and is loaded with other custom features. The 8-string Sparks built on his own. He says, ""It is the second instrument I ever built. It is a one-off experimental piece, highly inlaid with mother-of-pearl, abalone, and ivory, and various wood veneers. The inlayed doves adorning the fingerboard and head are made of ivory culled from the tops of old piano keys from a piano that no longer needed them. The Eagle on the pickguard, which was added later to cover top scratches, is made up of mother-of-pearl (the head and tail), abalone (neck and upper tail feathers), and a mid section and wings of mahogany veneer. He is about to land on a branch made of walnut. The entire scene is inlayed into African ebony. The ebony bridge is framed in binding and topped with a bone nut cut for correct intonation. The tailpiece is also made of ebony with binding to match the bridge. The tuning keys are from the Saga company and are styled after my favorite Klusons. It has four double-courses of strings (tuned D,G,B,E) each pair tuned in unison. The fingerboard is a standard Martin scale, as it was ordered directly from the Martin Company. The instrument remains in excellent condition."""
West built this head and cabinet to house the Lil' Dawg D-Lux chassis with a 25-watt transformer running 6L6 tubes. The head box and speaker cab are cedar and it's loaded with an Eminence Red Fang.
"Bachety's 27"" scale electric sitar was handmade in Germany."
"Romanian Sandor sent in a photo of him playing his custom guitar, handbuilt by a luthier named Grosmann. He says, ""It's the only one of its kind in the world, with a configuration to suit all my sound fantasies: mahogany body, bubinga neck (neck-through) and wenge fretboard; 3 Seymour Duncan pickups (2 humbuckers + 1 single coil); Ibanez ZR2 tremolo; Dunlop frets and custom Yin Yang mirror pickguard. I had it built in 2008 and have been happily playing it ever since."""
"Tracy won first prize for ""most innovative"" in the online contest he built this guitar for. He says, ""The concept was to make a more accurate scale length of the drone strings. The body is 100 year old barnwood (from the barn in the back left). Soundboard is from an old cedar chest, the unique solid brass ""buzzing bridges"" are created from sections of discarded Ensoniq piano foot pedals. the black pickguard was originally a plexiglass front from an old refrigerator. Total cost for all parts used in build: less than $210.00."""
"Wallace, of WBW Stringed Instruments, submitted photos of a recent commission from a daughter to her father. The guitar is a hollow-body, 9-piece laminate neck of maple, cherry, and walnut. Brazilian cherry compound radius fretboard with deer antler fret markers, wild chery body with walnut details, oil and wax finish. The electronics include push-pull volume for in-phase/out-of-phase, 3-way switch, push-pull tone pot for coil split, an LR Baggs piezo A/E bridge with selection switch and control knob. The guitar is a tri-beam bridged, neck-through, string through design with a routed column for the strings to feed through to an aircraft aluminum ferrule bar. He says, ""Of the instruments I've built over the years, this has been one of my favorites."
"This one-off custom guitar was built in 1986 in St. Croix's neighbor Ken Smith's living room workshop. It features a flame maple body with a crotch walnut top, three-piece maple neck-through construction, ebony fretboard, and gold plated parts. The guitar is outfitted with Smith's active circuit board, which includes volume control, a pickup pan pot ( allows blending of PU for unlimited sounds ) as opposed to a switch, preamp switch (+ 20 db), phase switch, two coil tap switches, and hi and low pass band filter controls."
"Calsetta's Black Mesa is his first ever custom guitar, and he says, ""I'm in love!"" It features a one-piece chambered swamp ash body, bookmatched burl maple top with matched headstock and trussrod cover, 24-fret 5-piece curly maple and jatoba neck, birdseye maple fingerboard, and TremKing trem system and locking tuners. The guitar has custom Sheptone Tele pickups with Volume, 3-way blend, blend on/off, and tone controls. He adds that the guitar only weighs 6 pounds, 10 ounces."
"Stockwell's Doubleneck Cigfiddle is one of only two made by Luthier Matty Barratto. He says, ""A noted difference between the double and single neck models is the sympathetic resonance that the 'un-fingered neck' can produce while being played."""
"Briand pieced together the Bobcaster over the course of 20 years. It currently features a rock maple neck with ebony fingerboard, graphite nut, jumbo frets, Schecter stacked humbucker (neck) and ""an ancient lap steel pickup"" at the bridge. ""The tone circuit is top secret (a.k.a I don't even sort of remember how I did it) but this is one seriously high-powered and ""chunky"" Telecaster...Ugly? Sure, that's the point. After having a guitar stolen at one point in life, this one never even gets looked at. Sings like a siren and looks like a bar skank...perfect!"""
"Italian Pala turned to German company BassLab for his custom 7-string lefty guitar. The guitar is made of composite material and is completely hollow, including the neck. It's headless (Pala says he was inspired by Allan Holdsworth and Paul Masvidal) with tuning keys at the bridge. The guitar has Seymour Duncan Custom (bridge) and Jazz (neck) pickups and a kill switch in the volume pot. Pala said, ""The sound of this jewel is amazing, full and rich like an archtop, but also defined and powerful like a solidbody."""
"Says Heikkinen, ""Made of soapstone, it really is a proper rock guitar!"""
"Markovic's U2 guitar was from a very limited run in 1992 from luthier Davorin Sever in Slovenia. The body is maple, but has cherry and alder tops to add contrast between the letters and warmth to the sound. The humbucker is splittable, and Drazen describes the sound as, ""similar to a Telecaster."""
"This is one of two scratch builds submitted by Gregory that incorporate engraved metal trays he found at thrift stores for the bridge, pickguard, and control plate. The guitar has a pine body, hard V neck profile with hand rubbed oil finish, and nitrocellulose lacquer. He says, ""Everything started as blocks of wood in my small backyard shop."""
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