Stian Westerhus' music-making motto is "by any means necessary." Here, he screams into the pickups of his main guitar,
a 1970 Gibson ES-335.
If musicians can be likened to painters, Robben Ford, Wes Montgomery, and Joe Satriani would be considered classicists—their linear lines telling a story, à la Rembrandt or Rubens. Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck, and Bill Frisell would be impressionists, with smeary solos that distort reality, like van Gogh or Cézanne. If we use the analogy to describe Stian Westerhus, the Norwegian guitarist would fall in the abstract expressionist camp, like a Jackson Pollack or Kandinsky. Westerhus largely eschews melodic lines in favor of splashed stabs of pure sonic color layered on a wash of bowed guitar, creating works as intangible as a Kandinsky and as deeply affecting.
Like those artists, Westerhus is thoroughly grounded in the tradition. He studied jazz while taking a bachelors degree in London, but found that “the traditional language is not my cup of tea … I didn't grow up with it." For his masters degree in Norway he was allowed to create his own program, where he worked 14 hours a day developing his unique style of playing.
Throughout his recordings for Norway's Rune Grammofon label—whether solo albums like Pitch Black Star Spangled and The Matriarch and the Wrong Kind of Flowers or duo outings with avant singer Sidsel Endresen—Westerhus has amassed a unique body of work that displays a virtuosic mastery of effects. Although his style is as much noise as notes, like the best abstract art it demonstrates a strong internal logic and its own brand of lyricism.
His latest solo excursion, Amputation, contains echoes of his previous recording, Maelstrom, a band project on which Westerhus added his own vocals to the collage of sound created via his Gibson ES-335, pedals, and computer processing. The guitarist's haunting falsetto recalls the minimalist style of James Blake, as well as a certain classic-rock legend. “I listen to a lot of Neil Young," Westerhus says. “He's an inspiration—and the best guitar player there is." Fans of Young's noisier guitar excursions—especially Arc—will get the connection immediately.
For his first Premier Guitar interview, the guitarist discussed analog versus digital, working with an orchestra, and the relatively normal effects he uses to make his decidedly abnormal sounds.
You said you picked up guitar because of Jimi Hendrix. What was it about his playing or sound that inspired you?
My dad tried to teach me guitar when I was a kid and it didn't work. Later, I was home ill when Hendrix came on TV playing “The Star-Spangled Banner" at Woodstock. It was his energy and expressiveness that caught my attention. I picked up the guitar that minute. I was quite young, around 10.
What happened to your recent band project, Stian Westerhus & Pale Horses?
We were happy with the album and it got a lot of publicity in northern Europe. Our booking manager got really ill, so we hardly did any gigs, but the process with Pale Horses inspired me to go further with my solo work. There are things on my new album I never could have done if I hadn't done Maelstrom. I figured out how to mix song-structured writing with my style of guitar playing so I can sing and play at the same time. It was challenging because, with Pale Horses, I initially got pushed into a rock trio corner, where I would sing and play like a normal guitar player. It didn't feel as free as I wanted until toward the end. Eventually, the tunes could travel anywhere, because we all understood where they were going. The next step with Pale Horses is to keep that freedom.
How did Amputation evolve?
Some tunes, like the opening track, were originally written to play with the South Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra, and some were written as new Pale Horses material. But I found it inspiring to do these tunes on my own.
The tracks on Amputation flow into each other very naturally. Was itconceived as a single composition?
No, it wasn't, but when I started working in the studio, the tracks all blended into each other. I love the process of putting it all in context to see how the tracks work together. I had so much material it could have been three albums. I just started cutting and it was “kill your darlings" time. The last three tracks are an extreme stretch guitaristically. They are as dynamic and as hard-hitting as anything I've ever done in the studio, but I think they work with the rest of the album even though other parts are very soft.
Did you play and sing at the same time when you were recording?
Some of it is recorded pretty much live, some is overdubbed, and on some tracks the vocals were repaired. It was quite different from the Pale Horses album, which was recorded in three days. This was an ongoing process for about two months. I wanted to experiment and see what the studio would give me if I produced myself and went to extremes. I didn't have any rules.
I think we can agree you don't play a lot of chords and notes. Where do you get the pitch for singing?
[Laughs.] That's a really good question. I don't know if you have this phrase in English: “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?" If those vocal lines weren't already there, I wouldn't be playing what I am playing. I have the pitch in my head and don't need to spell it out on the guitar, and I sing from there.
Onstage, Westerhus becomes the ghost in his music—the human pilot of a raft of gear that transforms his singular vision into unpredictable sound. Photo by Thor Egil Leirtrø
Would you say because you are not playing pitches it doesn't have to correspond as directly as in typical pop music?
Right, and this was one of the things I was excited about. My guitar playing is this instant thing. I've done years and years of improvised music, and now I want to sing and try to link those things together. The main objective with this kind of project was to link singing to the same sort of immediate response as my guitar playing. When I play this material live it's really free and stretched out, but, on a good day, it holds together.
Was the interaction between your guitar and voice inspired at all by the gigs with Sidsel Endresen?
Absolutely, and I have also played with other singers in Norway for the last 10 to 15 years. A lot of Norwegian singers have been doing avant-garde stuff with pop material. It's part of the scene over here, so it didn't feel that strange to do it with my own vocals.
Are all the instrumental sounds on Amputation created with guitar?
Yeah, except for the bass drum sound—which is a bass drum. I tried making the sound with guitar, but I had a bass drum sample I really liked, so I used that.
When you are bowing, do you find that the arch of your 335's top helps keep the bow from hitting the body?
It can help. It is a properly set up 335, where the bridge is correctly arched, which is a big plus. Bowing guitar is actually pretty stupid. It is really hard and it doesn't really sound that good. As you say, the body gets in the way, the strings get dead, and you get resin in the pickups. I never clean them.
How did you record the guitars?
I used mostly my two Hiwatt Custom 50 combos and recorded them with Audio-Technica AT4081 ribbon mics.
Do those mics handle the sound pressure levels you put out?
To a certain extent. I've had them repaired twice. I'm not sure if it was my fault or if it was just transportation damage. I have the guitar running through a stereo DI, because most of my sounds are stereo.
On your previous solo record, The Matriarch and the Wrong Kind of Flowers, you used huge sounds recorded in a mausoleum with a natural 20-second reverb. On this record it seemed like a lot of the distorted sounds were a distortion pedal or a fuzz going direct into a board, rather than from an amp.
The bowed guitar was recorded in the same mausoleum. Apart from that, a lot of that distortion comes from pushing my studio mixers, because they compress when you start pushing the preamps. I have two mixers that I do tricks with, running them back and forth. Those distortion sounds are either transistors or tubes being pushed. I experiment a lot with that because it adds a different sort of compression. Tape compression can be too soft sometimes. It's like putting too much butter on your toast—sometimes you want hardcore cheddar [laughs]. I had to mix the two instrumental tracks inside Pro Tools and do some of the work digitally, because the analog gear was just too slow for the transients, and it wasn't as snappy as in the digital domain. I tried to blend those two worlds together and push the digital domain as much as the analog. It is much easier to make stuff “larger than life" with analog, but you lose the snappiness and low bass that you get with digital.It was interesting trying to merge that digital hardness into the analog domain and vice versa. I spend a lot of nights doing that.
YouTube It
Bowing, sampling, looping, tapping, and scraping at his 1970 ES-335's strings are among the extended techniques Stian Westerhus employs during this January 2015 TEDx performance in Oslo, Norway. Thanks to his wide array of pedal and laptop effects, it's impossible to guess what sound he'll create next.
Bowing is an important part of Westerhus' approach, often serving as bedrock under his forays into extended technique and raw noise-as-art explorations. Photo by Ulf Cronenberg
What guitars did you use on the record?
I used my Gibson 1970 ES-335, except for an Ibanez baritone on one track. I modified it with two mini humbuckers.
On “Kings Never Sleep," one sound seems like changing the pitch of an analog or tape delay while the signal is going through it.
I really like throwing things in a loop, messing with them, recording them, chopping them up in Pro Tools, and sending them back to the loop. It might well be something like that.
At the beginning of “Sinking Ships," the individual notes sound almost like a piano.
I think that's the guitar into an old Eventide Harmonizer H3000.
Westerhus' effects array includes a Moog MF-102 Ring Modulator, several overdrives, an octave pedal, delays, a harmonizer, a MIDI foot controller, a laptop running Ableton and Altiverb, and a Neve DI.
There is some bass that sounds like a Moog synth. Is it synth or processed guitar?
That's all guitar. I compressed the shit out of the baritone, and then filtered it on the desk, just rolling things off. If it were a plug-in, it would have been the FabFilter Pro-Q1.
You mentioned playing live with an orchestra. How does that work?
All the parts for the classical musicians are composed. You have to write down everything because having a rehearsal with a 50-piece orchestra is so expensive. For my 30-minute piece, commissioned by a festival in the Netherlands, some of the guitar stuff was written out, but a lot of my parts were improvised. There is nobody responding, so the improvisation is limited because there's nothing new happening with anyone else.
How would you notate the sounds you make so you can repeat them in a composition?
You just have to spell it out in the beginning—a sign for this and for that—and make the best of it. I worked with a fantastic conductor in the Netherlands, who lifted everything to the next level. He understood where I wanted to go and would tell me, “You can't notate this like this; it will work much better like this." And he was right.
Stian Westerhus' Gear
Guitars1970 Gibson ES-335
Ibanez MMM1 Mike Mushok Signature Baritone
Amps
2 Hiwatt Custom 50 combos
2 Ampeg SVT bass amps with 4x10 cabinets
Effects
Boss tuner
Moog MF-102 Ring Modulator
Fulltone FullDrive 2
Fulltone OCD
Boss OC-3 Super Octave
Line 6 Echo Park delay
Eventide H9 Harmonizer
Eventide TimeFactor
Laptop with Ableton Live, Altiverb
MOTU audio interface
Rupert Neve DIs
Roland FC-200 MIDI foot controller
iPad running Lemur controller app
Strings and Picks
D'Addario EXL110 (.010–.046)
D'Addario EXL157 (.014–.068)
Dunlop Stubby 3 mm
Did you learn orchestration when doing your masters in Norway or before that?
If you can write and read music, you can write for an orchestra. You just write some stuff and let
them play it. They're just a bunch of musicians, and they have to play whatever you write [laughs].
Don't you at least have to learn the clefs and the ranges of the individual instruments?
That's what Google is for [laughs].
Let's get into your current live rig. You've made some changes in size and gear.
When I did a lot of flying with a huge pedalboard, the pedals kept breaking. I was using Boss RC-20 loopers when I first started building those big boards, but I didn't like their headroom and preamps. The DigiTech looper sounded nice, but kept breaking. After The Matriarch and the Wrong Kind of Flowers, I needed a big reverb sound. I
had the Audio Ease Altiverb convolution reverb plug-in in the studio and wanted to bring it onstage on the laptop, so I started to use the laptop for looping as well.
On the pedalboard, I now have a Boss tuner into a Fulltone FullDrive 2 that's always on with a clean setting. That goes into a Fulltone OCD and then a Boss OC-3 octave pedal. From there it goes into the Line 6 Echo Park delay, the Moog Ring Modulator, and then into and Eventide H9. That goes into the laptop through a MOTU Ultralite audio interface.
Are you going through the computer before you hit the amps?
Yeah. I'm using the laptop like a bunch of pedals. All the effects in the laptop are run in parallel. That way if Ableton Live crashes I can still rock out, because the sound card will keep pushing my “clean signal" through. In Ableton, the effects sends are maxed out with different effects. I have three or four different settings in Altiverb with different impulse responses: everything from that mausoleum to some nice plates. I used to have an old crappy reverb pedal, which I loved for making explosive noises, so I put that into Altiverb as well. I am using the looper in Ableton, which is really good for what it is. I've also got some whacky chains of pitch things.
The MOTU interface goes into an Eventide TimeFactor. It has a setting that takes line level from the MOTU and sends it out as instrument level into a couple of DI boxes. I recently started using the Rupert Neve DIs and there's an amazing difference. The signal goes from the DIs to the amps and the front of house.
My live amp rig—since I can't get Hiwatts anywhere—is a pair of Fender Twin blackface '65 reissues with Jensen speakers, linked up to two Ampeg SVT Classics with 4x10s.
Westerhus explains his versatile signal chain with this drawing. It contains an iPad and laptop, his pedalboard, a MIDI footswitcher, and four amplifiers.
How are you controlling the laptop?
I use the old Roland FC-200 MIDI foot controller just for simple CC [control change] messages to turn on and off the different effects chains. I can control the length and volume of some reverbs, and some pitch things. I also programmed a simple controller in a Lemur app on the iPad—some small buttons and faders that control different effects. It is a really cut-down rig, but it's nice. I don't need to look at the computer screen at all or do anything with the laptop. It is safely stored in its case onstage and I hardly ever touch it.
Do you carry a backup laptop?
No, but I have all my systems backed up to Dropbox and all the plug-ins are on iLok, so if everything fails and I need to borrow or buy a new computer, I can easily download my systems from Dropbox and I'm good to go.
Did you use that system in the studio for your improvisation?
I have my Hiwatt combos in the studio, but other than that it's the same rig. Sometimes I use a bass amp, but in the studio it's often overkill. You end up with more bass than you can handle.
What's coming up for you?
I'm doing another piece for the Philharmonic orchestra in the Netherlands that's also being played at a festival by an orchestra in Norway. I'm doing some gigs with Sidsel and, of course, I'm in the process of booking a bunch of solo gigs.
Korg Pitchstrap Guitar and Bass Strap Tuner - Black
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Peterson StroboStomp Mini Pedal Tuner
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Cherub Pix Tune (WST-915Li)
The latest Cherub Pix Tune (WST-915Li) offers 16 vibrant display modes, allowing users to customize their tuning experience to match their own styles. There are 5 meter styles, 3 animal cartoon styles, 2 sports styles, and 6 user customizable styles. You can conveniently upload your boot-up animation and tuning display pictures through the accompanying APPs. With its engaging visuals, tuning has never been this enjoyable!
Taylor Beacon Digital Clip-on Tuner - Black
The Taylor Beacon combines a tuner, metronome, timer, and flashlight in one compact device, offering five tuning modes, 12 time signatures, and up to 100 minutes of practice timer.
This story’s author played this Belltone B-Classic 3 and found its neck instantly appealing, the tremolo capable of taking abuse and staying in tune, and the Filter’Tron pickups possessed of hi-fi clarity. Also, the sky burst metallic finish is pure eye candy.
That’s where guitar-by-menu comes in. Think of it as Build–A-Bear for guitar players, but louder and with cooler options, like a coral pink sparkle finish or a trapeze tailpiece. A coterie of manufacturers offers such services, some with online pull-down menus that cover everything from pickups to, well, all that goes into a guitar. And the advantage here is that no particular expertise other than knowing what you love to play and why you love to play it is required. You dig a Tele or a Jazzmaster or an SG or a Firebird from a certain era, but want a specific bridge or pickup combination, a ’50s or late-’60s neck, a finish not available in production models? No problem. Or maybe you crave something a tad more distinctive, with a non-traditional body shape, no headstock, and a finish that draws from the color palette of Van Gogh’s The Starry Night. All you gotta do is ask … or, rather, pick, click, order, or email, perhaps with a phone call to confirm the details.
We spoke to a clutch of large and smaller guitar companies—Belltone, Kiesel, Fender, and Gibson—to see how they do it.
The Belltone Way
“I was always the guy who had to tweak the guitar no matter what it was,” says Belltone founder Steve Harriman. “I changed out the pickups, I changed the pickguards, tuners, whatever.”
Like former Gibson CEO James Curleigh, Belltone Guitars founder Stephen King Harriman was an apparel executive with Perry Ellis before starting the Florida-based company in 2016. But the gig he’s had since junior high school is guitarist.
“I was always the guy who had to tweak the guitar no matter what it was,” Harriman says. “I changed out the pickups, I changed the pickguards, tuners, whatever. I always had to make what I was playing, whether it was a Les Paul or a Tele, unique, so it would be personally mine.”
Initially, Belltone offered modded versions of Les Paul- and Telecaster-style guitars, but in 2019 he reframed his business, designing an ergonomically contoured pear-shaped body and distinctive 6-on-a-side headstock as a foundation, and establishing a group of craftspeople to bring his solidbody B-Classic One, B-Classic Two, and B-Classic Three variations to life.
Today, Belltone guitars are made for players looking for a similar mix of the fresh and the familiar, at $2,680 to $3,129, depending on appointments. And the range of appointments is impressive. Let’s start with the templates. The Classic One has a flat top with edge binding, an alder body, a rounded tapered neck pocket, the company’s signature Devil’s Tail bridge and angled switch-control plate, reverse-dome tall-boy knobs, and a 12" compound-radius neck (held on by four bolts), with 22 medium-jumbo frets. In contrast, the Classic Two has all of the above, except there are arm and body contours with no binding, and the Classic Three offers the same plus Belltone’s patented Back-Lip Tremolo System and top hat controls.
“I’m inspired by a lot of ’50s and ’60 car designs for the elements of my guitars.”—Belltone’s Steve Harriman
Then, there’s a rabbit hole of options. There are 36 finish choices, with 10 ’bursts—including gorgeous black cherry burst, sky burst metallic, and lemon burst shades—requiring an upcharge of $40. There are varied pickguards to choose from within Belltone’s distinctive “Deco” version, which comes in black, white, and brown tortoise. There are four neck combinations (standard C and ’59 roundback profiles, with maple or rosewood fretboards), four tuner options (locking tuners from Belltone, Sperzel, and Kluson, plus ratio tuners), and a set of any-gauge Stringjoys. And the selection of pickups is truly impressive—36 in all, from TV Jones, Benson, Rio Grande, Mojo, Lindy Fralin, Porter, McNelly, Righteous Sound, Gabojo, and the newly added Brickhouse Tone Works. And within those selections are standard and hum-cancelling P-90s, stacked humbuckers, PAF humbuckers, regular and noiseless single-coils, multiple Filter’Tron variations, and more. Further, via Belltone’s Tone-Sure program, if a customer feels they’ve made the wrong call on pickups after playing their guitar a while, Belltone will swap them out at no charge save for covering shipping and the additional cost of pricier units.
“I’m inspired by a lot of ’50s and ’60 car designs for the elements of my guitars,” Harriman attests. “If you look at my bridge, for example, it’s got kind of a tailfin look to it. For me, guitars need to not only play well and sound great, but look cool. Also, everything is designed by me and is machine-tooled. My bridge is machine-tooled aluminum with rounded contours, as your palm can get roughed up on the old-style stamped ashtray bridges. I take all the things that make players happy into consideration.” Including sturdy and handsome faux-alligator-skin cases.
A deliberative buyer could spend weeks contemplating all of Belltone’s options before pushing the “submit” button, and then, instead of being invoiced, they are contacted directly by Harriman to review it all again before his luthiers get to work.
Gibson’s Made to Measure
One of Gibson’s Made to Measure fantasies: an SG with three humbuckers in a crimson sparkle finish.
The 131-year-old Gibson company’s Made to Measure (MTM) program is a bit more conservative … but only if you’d call a hot-crimson-sparkle SG with three humbuckers, a burgundy Les Paul Standard with a full-fretboard vine inlay, a champagne-pink-sparkle Les Paul, or a 3-pickup Firebird with a P-90 in the middle conservative.
There are two ways to initiate an order for an MTM guitar. You can fill out the online questionnaire on the Gibson Custom Shop’s Made to Measure page or stop by the Nashville or London locations of the Gibson Garage in person. I visited the Nashville Garage for this story, where I spoke with Dustin Wainscott, director of the Made to Measure program, and Matt Boyer, the sales associate you’d likely encounter if you walked into the Music City shop. They brought a clutch of recent MTM examples. And a wall of the MTM room was covered in slabs of wood, available for the choosing, and various bridges, tuners, pickups, and other parts for inspection and selection. Of course, some of the on-location fun is speaking with MTM program leaders like Boyer and Wainscott, who love guitars as much as you do and are happy to swap stories.
Whether by email, which will likely be followed up by a call from Boyer, or in person, the conversation that starts a MTM order begins with questions about body style, neck preference, electronics configuration, and the finish type and treatment.
“On the cosmetic side, we can go as far as you want to, with any color or finish you want.”—Gibson’s Dustin Wainscott
At the Gibson Garage Nashville, Dustin Wainscott, director of the Made to Measure program, and Matt Boyer, the sales associate in charge of MTM at that location, brandish a pair of custom-ordered instruments.
Photo by Ted Drozdowski
Essentially, any Gibson body currently in production and most historic appointments from that model’s history—and some from other compatible Gibson models—can be used for an MTM order. After selecting the white wood, as slabs are called in lutherie, “figuring out the pickup layout, the neck profile, and the tailpiece you want is the next step,” says Wainscott. “Then you get into the electronics and the look of the guitar: pickup selection, coil-splitting, what color or finish hardware, a glossy or flat finish, any Murphy Lab aging.
“Non-proprietary parts can sometimes be a roadblock. Typically, we’d use our pickups, for example, so if somebody makes a request for a pickup outside of Gibson’s, I try to steer them toward something we have that’s similar. You’ve got to play in the Gibson sandbox.” Stepping outside of historic model-design parameters, which would require re-engineering, is also a no-fly. That means don’t ask for a Les Paul with a Firebird neck, or an Explorer with a 3-on-a-side headstock. That said, there is a lot of wiggle room within the company’s catalog, and “on the cosmetic side, we can go as far as you want to, with any color or finish you want,” adds Wainscott. Personalized headstocks are also a popular option.
A Made to Measure order’s price starts with a $500 charge on top of a model’s current tag, and can increase depending on the complexity of wiring, finish, inlays, etc. Wainscott notes that about 30 percent of the Custom Shop’s business is Made to Measure.
“We also do a lot of recreating of models you’ve seen in the past that aren’t available now,” adds Boyer. “So, we can’t make a Jimmy Page Les Paul with his name on it, per se, but if you want a Les Paul Custom with three pickups, a Bigsby, a 6-position switch, and all that, we can do it for you.”
Kiesel’s Family Style
Kiesel can get as rad as you wanna be, including characterful flourishes like this naturally figured wood with pools of radiant blue finish and an organically striking neck.
Kiesel Guitars has essentially always been a custom-order builder, even if its name and line of business has evolved. The L.C. Kiesel Company was founded in 1946 by Lowell Kiesel as a manufacturer of pickups he sold from the back pages of magazines. As it grew, he renamed it after two of his sons, Carson and Gavin, as the well-known brand Carvin, which became famous as a maker of quality guitars, amps, and instrument parts. In 2015, the company split, Lowell’s son Mark and his son Jeff established the guitar-building operation under the Kiesel name. Today, thanks to their high-caliber construction and endorsees like Allan Holdsworth, Devin Townsend, Craig Chaquico, Jason Becker, and Johnny Hiland, the company makes more than 4,000 custom-order guitars a year.
“We have four types of construction: bolt-on, set-neck, set-through, and neck-through,” explains VP Jeff Kiesel. The company also offers the unusual choice of nine different headstocks, which most manufacturers limit to one style as part of branding, and sans-headstock models, which Kiesel began making in 2012 with the debut of its Allan Holdsworth model. All Kiesel headstocks have an 8 1/2-degree tilt, to create a steeper string angle over the nut, which can potentially improve tone and sustain.
At work on a body in the Kiesel factory, which produces about 4,000 custom-order guitars annually.
“We’re appealing to everybody because we do so many different things.”—Jeff Kiesel
“We never build the headstock separate from the neck and then scarf joint them in—it’s all one piece,” Kiesel adds. Necks are also quarter-sawn, with a two-way truss rod, dual carbon-fiber reinforcement rods, stainless steel frets, and Lunimlay side dots.
After that, ordering a Kiesel is all about options. There are 56 models, including signatures, to choose from. Once you select a model on the company’s website, you’re taken to a page that includes a builder menu. Kiesel’s lowest-priced models, including the Delos, start at $1,649, while the top-priced, flagship K-Series model starts at $4,399.
The Aries, one of Kiesel’s most popular guitars, starts at a base of $1,699 with a bolt-on neck and has a menu that includes, under general options, right- or left-hand orientation; the choice of 6, 7, 8, or 9 strings; multiscale necks; and 25 1/2", 26 1/2", or 27" scale lengths. Under body options, you can select beveled or unbeveled edges, and eight different body and 16 different top woods. There are more than 80 finishes to choose from, and 14 variations on the Kiesel logo. The neck options are equally rich, with five fretboard radius selections plus choices for neck wood, three neck profiles, inlays, truss rod covers, and more. The electronic options boast four pickup configurations, five different Kiesel neck and bridge pickup models, and additional alternatives. It’s easy to get lost in the woods, but when you emerge, an image of your guitar with all its appointments, generated as you make your choices, is waiting for you.
“Our lead time is seven to 12 weeks,” Kiesel says, “and we offer a 10-day trial period unless somebody gets too wild on their options.” Anyone ordering a guitar is welcome to phone the company to talk over their order, and Kiesel highly recommends that first-time buyers call.
While Kiesel Guitars once had a reputation as a shredder-axe factory, Jeff Kiesel explains that’s changed over the past decade. “Our demographic is not set anymore,” he shares. “We’re appealing to everybody because we do so many different things. We can build a very classy jazz-style neck pickup on a semi-hollow guitar that you can play some amazing Frank Gambale licks on. And then we can turn around and build a guitar that will do some really technical modern metal, like Marc Okubo. We can build really wild or really classy, and that’s created so much growth within our company.”
Fender’s Mod Shop
Ted created this “dream Strat” with a silverburst finish, noiseless single-coils, and a 2-Point Deluxe Synchronized Tremolo Bridge using Fender’s Mod Shop online tool.
Like Gibson, Fender’s Mod Shop is about personalizing classic templates—in this case, the Strat, Tele, Jaguar, Jazzmaster, P and J basses, and Acoustasonic Telecasters and Jazzmasters. And while the program was birthed in 2014 as the American Design Experience, it evolved into the Mod Shop and has continued to improve, most recently with an update this April that made the online menu easier to use and added more options.
“We know that 80 percent of customers will be loyal to brands where they can personalize and customize,” says Shannon Stokes, Fender’s VP of eCommerce. “So the whole online user experience has been finessed. It’s much easier to navigate on both desktop and mobile. You move through it choosing the orientation of the guitar, the finish … everything through the pickguard, the hardware.”
Justin Norvell, Fender’s VP of product, observes, “This is a playground, and you’re able to just mess around and see what appeals to you. We allow people to save their configurations to PDFs, and they can share them and send them out,” akin to trading cards. “There’s an exponential number of people that might sit on their favorite design for a year before they actually place an order.” Some hardcore fans buy multiple variations of a favorite-style guitar over time, “because you can engrave the neck plate, collect multiple finishes, and other cool stuff. This is an area where selection runs wild for lefties, too,” he adds.
Fender’s Justin Norvell with his own dream machine: an American Professional Jazzmaster in mystic seafoam.
“This is an area where selection runs wild for lefties, too.”—Fender’s Justin Norvell
“What’s amazing to me,” says Shannon Stokes, Fender’s VP of eCommerce, “is the number of people ordering black, white, and sunburst. I would think the rarer colors would be the thing.”
The cost of a Mod Shop guitar is an upcharge of several hundred dollars, with certain customizations increasing the tab. I decided to jump in and outfit a Strat, with a base price of $2,085, to my taste. After selecting the right-hand player’s orientation, I chose an alder body with a silverburst finish from a palette of nearly 50 colors and wood offerings that also included chambered ash, mahogany, and roasted pine. For the neck, I went with solid rosewood with Fender’s deep-C profile. Eight maple variations were also available. That neck option automatically led me to a rosewood fretboard, and then I hunted through 16 pickup configurations before stopping at the Generation 4 Noiseless Stratocaster set. I opted for a 4-ply black pearl pickguard, and aged white plastic controls and pickup frames. Next, from three bridge choices I tapped a 2-Point Deluxe Synchronized Tremolo Bridge. Chrome Fender strap lock buttons would do the job, since I’ve had un-strap-locked guitars fall to the stage at gigs in years past. For strings, a set for .010s, and the only case option is deluxe molded plastic with a fuzzy interior. Total cost: $2,175, which is not bad for those modest-but-swell appointments. I also downloaded a PDF, so you can see what I designed. Unhappy with the purchase? It can be returned within 30 days for a refund or exchange, plus shipping.
There’s about a half-dozen builders in the Mod Shop, but workers from the normal production line can be called in when there is an uptick in commissions, Norvell explains.
“What’s amazing to me,” says Stokes, “is the number of people ordering black, white, and sunburst. I love the satin orange because it’s vibrant, different. I would think the rarer colors would be the thing.” But players often look for instruments that are evocative of classic guitars they’ve seen. And 6-string dreams do come in all shades.
