The Cole Clark CCFL2ECRDBL Acoustic-Electric Guitar is designed for the guitarist who demands the highest standards in an instrument. The 2 Series FL Dreadnought guitar is the go-to choice for every player looking to have ultimate control of both the acoustic and plugged-in performance environments, with Cole Clark's signature 3-way pickup system and beautiful, sustainably-sourced, natural Redwood and Blackwood timbers.
"I love this thing, I can't put it down. It's kind of like having a piano in your lap, you got all the low end for bass lines, and you got chords that you can strum on top, even alternating simple bass lines. There's all kinds of fun you can have with this thing!" ~ Sean Harkness, NYC
Typically tuned to B, the Baritone provides a clear low end response perfect for soloists, singer-songwriters, percussive finger-style players, or guitarists who crave a walking bass line while comping chords.
With its offset soundhole, side-port, and solid Sitka spruce top with innovative low-mass bracing, the Walden B1E sounds sonically excellent while incorporating the more comfortable Grand Auditorium body shape. A graphite reinforced Mahogany neck contribute to stability and its 27″ scale length and 1-13/16″ nut width contribute to the B1E Baritone's transparent playability.
The PRS SE P20E is a parlor-sized acoustic with a big voice. Features include all-mahogany construction and PRS hybrid "X"/Classical bracing, which allows the top to freely vibrate, the SE P20E projects with even, bold tone. Its smaller size makes playing for hours fun and comfortable and allows for more convenient transport. Plug in the Fishman GT1 pickup system, and it delivers dynamic, organic tone. This electronics system features an undersaddle pickup and soundhole mounted preamp with easy-to-access volume and tone controls, which essentially transforms what some may consider a "couch guitar" into a workhorse stage instrument. Available in three satin finishes with herringbone rosettes and accents. Other high-quality features include a solid mahogany top, ebony fretboard and bridge, and bone nut and saddle. Gig bag included. Click here to learn more
Inspired by the guitars made in the 1930s, the Tanglewood Blackbird series evoke traditional values, yet offer the benefits a guitar manufactured in the modern era. These guitars feature hand-selected tone woods and a unique bracing pattern. The Blackbird Orchestra electro-acoustic guitar is carefully braced to environments, with Cole Clark's signature 3-way pickup system and beautiful, sustainably-sourced, natural Redwood and Blackwood timbers. Click here to learn more
Taylor's popular, compact GS Mini has brought countless hours of guitar-playing joy to musicians of all stripes, and the GS Mini-e Koa Plus takes the fun to a new level with elevated aesthetic details. Back and sides of layered Hawaiian koa pair with a solid koa top for a punchy, bold sound with surprising power and volume for a small-bodied guitar with a scale length of 23-½ inches, while the 1-11/16-inch nut width makes forming chords a breeze. A dusky edgeburst accentuates koa's natural grain and luster around the top, back and sides, while other notable features include nickel tuners, a three-ring rosette, and a genuine West African ebony fretboard. It includes onboard ES2 electronics and Taylor's new AeroCase®, a soft yet sturdy case with all the protection of a hardshell case at one-third the weight. Click here to learn more
Adding to the company's line of premium capos, Shubb has introduced the new Capo Royale Series, featuring durable gold finishes that deliver long-lasting beauty.
Available in two lustrous finishes – Gold and Rose Gold – the Capo Royale Series brings a distinctive visual flair to Shubb's famed capo design, revered since 1980 for its ability to provide flawlessly clean fretting while keeping the instrument in tune.
For many years Shubb has received requests for a gold plated Shubb Capo. While gold is undeniably beautiful, it is not at all durable; it will wear off far too easily and quickly. It is also famously expensive. Now, Shubb has developed a high-tech technique for creating a gold-toned titanium finish. It possesses all the beauty of real gold, but is as durable as any metal finish in the world.
Guild's most affordable jumbo yet! The F-240E is a tone cannon at a player's price. Built with a solid spruce top, mahogany sides, and an arched mahogany back, the full-bodied and powerful voice of this Guild Jumbo provides guitarists with historically-Guild acoustic tone and voicing. Guild's signature arched back design allows for enhanced volume and projection, long sustain, and a lush, full sound. The F-240E features Guild's Fishman-designed AP-1 electronics, a pau ferro fingerboard and bridge, bone nut and saddle, mother-of-pearl rosette, period-correct tortoiseshell pickguard, and a satin polyurethane finish.
The Blackstar ACOUSTIC:CORE 30 was designed to give singer/songwriters the ability to get a professional sound without any sound engineering expertise, then share it via live streaming or recording, or live performance. All in a compact easily portable combo with the option of battery power. This take-anywhere acoustic amp is designed for the way you play today: streaming, recording, practice or live.
Santa Cruz Guitar Company has made it even easier to order the custom acoustic you've always wanted. They invite you to email them directly at scgc@santacruzguitar.com to be walked through the design process, where they will take the time needed to answer all your questions about models, tonewoods, structural options and aesthetics to ensure you will receive the heirloom acoustic that is right for you.
The New MH8P Series Vegan Hemp Series guitar straps by Levy's come in four new beautiful motifs and measure 2"/51mm in width. These organic straps are cruelty-free using sustainable materials and extend from 37"/940mm to 62"/1572mm via silver-colored tri-glide sliding adjustment. Natural hemp webbing and durable 2-ply cork ends safely support your instrument, along with pinhole stitching on both ends to prevent stretching. To address the issue of pick dropping encountered by almost every gigging guitarist, the MH8P Series comes equipped with a convenient 2.5"/64mm inside pocket to provide quick access to extra picks. Hand-crafted in Novia Scotia.
The product of nearly 3 years of intensive research and collaboration with a team of PhDs, LR Baggs is thrilled to introduce Voiceprint DI, the next breakthrough chapter in acoustic amplification. Voiceprint DI measures the acoustic response of your guitar by leveraging the processing power of your iPhone® to accurately capture your guitar's one-of-a-kind voice. A Voiceprint is created, transforming your pickup into the most authentic sound we have engineered in our 40+ years.
Raise your hand if you only own one guitar… that's what we thought. But do you need a different amplifier for each one? The Bud from Henriksen is no ordinary amplifier; it sounds just as amazing with your acoustic guitars as it does with your electric guitars, regardless of style. The Bud is just 13 lbs and 9"x9"x9" but packs 120 watts of power and a pro-grade feature set that you can truly gig with, record, teach, or just practice.
Powerful and responsive like a dreadnought, tonally the acoustic electric Breedlove Jeff Bridges' Signature Model emphasizes the unique qualities of myrtlewood, with a deep rosewood-like bass, the fundamental clarity of mahogany and the enchanting shimmer of koa. The Breedlove Jeff Bridges signature "All in this Together" project benefits Amazon Conservation Team, which works in partnership with indigenous colleagues to protect rainforests.
NUX Stageman II Battery-Powered Acoustic Guitar Amplifier features a pure analog preamp with NUX's iconic Core-Image post-effects. It has specific EQ scenes for finger-style as well as strum-style in channel 1, and you can engage built-in Acoustic IRs with a dedicated mobile APP. Acoustic IR is the new trend to make your acoustic sound as natural as micing. Stageman II keeps Drum & Loop, you can control by the original NUX NMP-2 foot-controller. And the built-in rechargeable battery can let you busk on the street for 4 hours.
Highlights: - 80-watt rich warm sound acoustic amp with 6.5" premium speaker and 1" tweeter - Rechargeable battery for 4.5 hours outdoor performing - Built-in Acoustic Impulse Response - 2 independent channels with routing adjustable post-effects - Mobile APP for editing and control - Drum & Loop (60s phrase loop) - Bluetooth Audio Stream Click here to learn more Click here for audio clips Click here for video Click here to follow NUX on Instagram
Good affordable acoustics are wonderfully plentiful these days. But that doesn't mean there isn't room for a guitar like the $499 Breedlove Discovery S Concert CE to make an impression. It's surprisingly punchy and robust in the low-end, for a flattop of its size, and uses a solid Western red cedar top and layered African mahogany back and sides to achieve a balanced, colorful, and complex voice. It's also a pleasure to play—feeling fast under the fingers and as accommodating to haymaker blues leads as to a soft fingerstyle approach or rowdy strum-around.
Purebred Ply and Singing Cedar
One of the nicest things about Breedlove's affordable, China-built Discovery series is the option for a solid cedar top, which we selected for our review version. (Sitka spruce and African mahogany tops are also available.) Fondness for particular top-wood tonalities are as individual and subjective as favorite ice cream flavors. But I love Western red cedar's balance of warmth, reactivity, and focus on the bass side of the frequency spectrum—qualities that make it equally well-suited for a classical guitar top wood or a baritone acoustic. All three of these attributes can be heard and felt when you play the Discovery S Concert CE.
The back and sides are crafted from a 3-layer African mahogany laminate that Breedlove calls Eco Tonewood. Structurally, Breedlove's mahogany laminate differs from many other laminates in that the middle ply is African mahogany rather than a softer wood like poplar or a sheet of wood composite. It can be difficult to gauge the effects of such construction methods on overall tone and playing dynamics. But it's clear that the all-mahogany ply laminate is not a liability. It's easy to discern many classic qualities of a mahogany back—especially the pronounced midrange and focused overtones— working with the snappy and resonant top to create a very detailed composite tone and a dynamic playing experience.
The strength and complexity of the bass fundamentals and overtones are a nice surprise in a cedar-and-mahogany guitar of this modest size.
Bass With Backbone
Most of the bold midrange and pronounced-but soft-around-the-edges treble sounds you hear from the Discovery S Concert CE are representative of what a carefully designed and well-built cedar and mahogany concert-sized body can deliver. But the strength and complexity of the bass fundamentals and overtones are a nice surprise in a cedar-and-mahogany guitar of this modest size—not to mention its price category. In de-tuned settings in particular, the guitar exhibits low-end resonance that inhabits a near-ideal balance between the lowest and highest strings. It's a great guitar for fingerpicking, in this respect, but that balance also makes it shine as a strumming guitar. And unlike a lot of concert-sized instruments with similar tonewood make-ups, the Breedlove's output doesn't turn brash or into a messy, muddy overtone soup when you put a little muscle behind it.
The Verdict
Breedlove bills the Discovery S Concert CE as a beginner-friendly instrument. And while that's certainly true, the label might do a disservice to how complete and pro-friendly the guitar really is. It's very well put together. It's a smooth, easy player and feels fast, and if you're not dogmatic about traditional acoustic styling, you'll dig how much the cutaway extends its already impressive playability. If a jack-of-all trades flattop is what you're after, this Breedlove gets mighty close at a very appealing price.
Breedlove's new ECO Collection Rainforest S Series of affordably priced guitars honors the sounds of the magnificent, mysterious Congo River Basin—the caws of colorful birds and calls of the chimpanzee. Crafted with Breedlove's earth-conscious, sonically superior EcoTonewood technology, all African mahogany Rainforest guitars bring you a warm, immediate sound with a strong midrange emphasis and a ringing sustain, along with true environmental sustainability! Versatile Concert body Rainforest guitars come in dazzling finishes like Papillon, Midnight Blue, Black Gold and Orchid, and feature Side-mounted Fishman Presys I electronics (with built-in tuner, volume, contour and phase controls).
Brit post-punk guitarists Anton Pearson and Louis Borlase take minimalism to the max on their band's debut album.
"There's a certain magic, or trance-like quality, that you get from pushing repetition to the extremes," says Anton Pearson, one of two guitarists in Squid, a U.K.-based post-punk quintet that draws its power from a minimalist aesthetic. "It is definitely a big part of how we write things. We'll keep going with ideas and lose ourselves in them." So, hypnotic, repetitive guitar figures—often edging towards dissonance and played with a warm, fuzzy tone—are, naturally, a prominent feature on Bright Green Field, Squid's debut full-length release.
"When you hear repetitive music, it strikes this inner chord on a purely biological level," co-guitarist Louis Borlase adds. "For example, if you have a thought, and you hear it over and over again, you start to make sense of how you are thinking. That same thing happens with minimalism and repetition. If you can let an idea ride for long enough, you realize that it has enoughscope [to reflect] a kind of microscopic adjustment over time. That is central to the way we enjoy listening to music, but also the way we enjoy writing music."
Squid - Narrator (Official Video) ft. Martha Skye Murphy
Pearson adds, "There's the psychology of the repetitive firing of neurons, where we're constantly breathing and our heart is beating—it's a whole world to think about, which is quite fun. But, for us, I think there are loads of things we find interesting about repetition that we don't really talk about. A lot of how we write is unspoken. If something feels good, it feels good, and we don't always have a shared goal of where we want things to go. We just let them happen."
"When you hear repetitive music, it strikes this inner chord on a purely biological level."—Louis Borlase
Letting things happen—even while committed to a demanding, well-defined set of principles—has been the band's working M.O. from the outset. Squid started while the band members (who also include lead singer and drummer Ollie Judge, keyboardist Arthur Leadbetter, and bassist Laurie Nankivell) were still students in Brighton, a hip, artsy city on England's southern coast, and their first gig was a semi-regular residency at the Verdict, a local jazz club they chanced upon.
Squid are, from left to right, vocalist/drummer Ollie Judge, bassist Laurie Nankivell, keyboardist Arthur Leadbetter, and guitarists Anton Pearson and Louis Borlase.
"I was out looking for somewhere to have a drink with some friends," Pearson says. "We saw this jazz venue that we hadn't noticed before, and went in. The guy was super nice and let us watch for free. At the end, I asked if it would be possible for us to put on a show there, and he said yes. We didn't realize at the time that it was one of the most renowned jazz venues in Europe—it was in The Guardian's top five list of jazz venues in Europe—and here we were putting on a night there. We formed the band because we agreed to curate a night of music, but we didn't have any music to play, so we just wrote a set for that."
Despite getting their start in a jazz club, Squid isn't a jam band. They improvise, although they approach improvisation more like a stimulant. It's how they get the ball rolling, and a big part of how they interact as an ensemble. But extended solos aren't their thing.
TIDBIT: Squid's debut full-length was recorded in a small London studio during a heatwave, and the air conditioning was turned off for tracking. "It was so sweaty," says Louis Borlase. "If we'd done any extra takes, we would have all probably lost about two liters of water."
"Improvisation is a compositional tool," Borlase explains. "But it's also—maybe on a more implicit, subconscious level—something that is very key to how we capture music in the studio, and maybe on a live level as well. None of us has this precious attachment to our parts to say, for example, 'I want to make sure that this certain guitar line or keyboard riff is captured at exactly the two-minute mark.' Jamming is the way in which we find an inception of musical ideas. People bring in ideas—nobody ever brings a song to a Squid writing session—and we listen to what that person has brought, as opposed to thinking about what we could do over the top of it. We very much leave that up to chance, and I think that's very important."
"Anything longer than four seconds is a bit like, 'What's this guy doing?'" says Pearson. "We have an understanding that you should never be attached to ideas, because what's the point? If you bring something small in, let that be an impetus for a process rather than a means to an end. Part of how we get to finished tracks is that someone brings in something small, it changes completely, and we realize that the thing that was brought in originally doesn't work, so we take it out. What's left are the beginnings of something new."
Anton Pearson's Gear
Anton Pearson explains that Squid's compositions evolve from musical micro-ideas brought in by various bandmembers. "Anything longer than four seconds is a bit like, 'What's this guy doing?'" he says.
Photo by Piran Aston
Guitars
Fender Duo Sonic
Mexico-made Fender Telecaster
Amps
Fender Vibrolux
1967 Selmer Treble-N-Bass (on loan from a friend)
Strings and Picks
D'Addario XT (.010–.046)
D'Addario Duralin .85 mm
Effects
Boss DD-3 Digital Delay Electro-Harmonix Canyon TC Electronic Hall of Fame Reverb EarthQuaker Devices Avalanche Run Muzizy Fuzz DigiTech Whammy Dunlop Cry Baby Electro-Harmonix Superego Synth Engine Dwarfcraft Devices Wizard of Pitch JHS Tidewater Tremolo Boss TU-3 Chromatic Tuner
The band members were friends first—the band came later—and that energy is an important part of the group's dynamic and compositional process, too. "Our music is a total reflection of the way we interact on a purely hanging-out level," Borlase says. "When you hang out with your friends that you respect, and you're having a conversation or debate, you listen to each other and let that thought play out before you put your thought into the conversation. That transfer from conversation to music is key."
Not that informal, friendly, musical conversations were possible once the pandemic and subsequent lockdowns canceled a year's worth of gigs. That also impacted the types of songs Squid wrote. "We were ready to hit the road, but then, suddenly, we were left with these embryonic pieces of music that were just starting to take form," Borlase says. "Usually when we write music, we tune in to how the audience responds.
"I don't think any other instrument can keep me on my feet as much as a guitar, for better or for worse." —Louis Borlase
Seeing people dancing at certain sections, or looking focused at other sections—that naturally feeds back to us for how we choose to make certain musical moments within a track stand out. We didn't have that, so we sent ideas to each other via the internet. There are certain examples where you can feel there's an idea that snowballed and gets out of control. Take a song like 'Narrator.' [The intense, emotionally grinding, rhythm-shifting first single from Bright Green Field.] In a parallel universe, we'd run the risk of it being less of a mind fuck than it actually is. It starts with an idea and it ends up a million miles away. It is a microcosm of that idea of starting with a thought and allowing that thought to take over your mind, and you end up somewhere else in a completely different state of being. But that piece of music would have been so different if we hadn't been faced with this pandemic. We played it very rarely because there was rarely a gig where we could play it in front of people."
Louis Borlase's Gear
"Improvisation is a compositional tool," explains Louis Borlase. "But it's also—maybe on a more implicit, subconscious level—something that is very key to how we capture music in the studio, and maybe on a live level as well."
Photo by Piran Aston
Guitars
Burns Marquee
Fender Jazzmaster
Amp
Fender Twin Reverb
Strings and Picks
D'Addario XT (.011–.056)
D'Addario Duralin .85 mm
Effects
MXR Carbon Copy
Line 6 DL4 Delay Modeler
Boss Blues Driver
Alexander Pedals Syntax Error
TC Electronic Sub 'N' Up Mini
Bright Green Field was made with award-winning producer Dan Carey at his one-room studio in South London, where his console and outboard gear share the same space as the bands he records. His production style—immersive and focused on live takes—was key to capturing Squid's loose, improvisatory energy.
"It was the middle of the summer, and it was boiling hot," Borlase says about cutting "Narrator." "The track that you've heard is the second take. There was never any need for a third or fourth take, because so much of it is based around improvisation. We never play it the same way twice. I guess the reason that second take of 'Narrator' felt so good is that, early on, you capture that nervous energy. It was so sweaty. If we'd done any extra takes, we would have all probably lost about two liters of water."
Live, Squid play with the same intensity and precision as exhibited by minimalist punk progenitors Wire—another two-guitar band noted for their carefully knit interplay.
Photo by Piran Aston
As a guitar band, Squid's approach to the instrument doesn't have much to do with the glory days of tight pants and arenas—or even '90s-era flannel and grunge. "There is a whole history you're engaging with when you touch the guitar," Pearson says. "And we're still interested in that history. We're interested in finding ways of making new stories. They say the electric guitar is so successful because it is that perfect marriage of technology and a gestural nature you get from acoustic instruments. You can go as far as you want in terms of electronic technology with it—right up to plugging it into a computer—but at the same time, you still have the gestural nature, that kind of visceral nature that you get when you see someone play it live. I studied West African music at university, and for a lot of communities, like in Mali and Niger, it is still such an important symbol—not just for music, but also resistance. It is still an interesting tool and it still has relevance, but it is important to keep thinking of ways to innovate and change people's perceptions of it, and I think we're trying to do that a bit."
Innovation, at least according to Borlase, may also just be the nature of the beast. "The guitar is as much a cultural object as it is a musical object, and that still hasn't faded away," he says. "Guitar is something that you feel you're saying something with, regardless of what notes you're playing. The guitar is a confusing thing, unless you're super high-tech and everything makes sense in your head. It's this thing that allows you to have a voice and be able to always aspire to those people who came before you. For us, there are a lot of bands before us that have not only played guitar, they have also challenged their own ways of thinking. If you continually confuse yourself, not to mention if you knock into something mid-song and realize, 'Why does this sound so bizarre?' I do that all the time—plus juggling three or four tunings and then using a capo. I don't think any other instrument can keep me on my feet as much as a guitar, for better or for worse."
Squid - The Dial | Stolen Sessions
On the good foot, Squid deliver their 2018 single "The Dial" at the Windmill, a pub in London's Brixton district known for championing cutting-edge music. Note the band's absolute polyphonic devotion to the groove.
Even among a stable of instruments known for their versatility, PRS's Studio model is arguably one of the company's most sonically and stylistically malleable instruments. Reintroduced to the U.S.-made Core lineup for 2021 after first appearing in 2011, this new Studio is hyper-flexible, configured with a distinctive humbucker set and modified switching that takes that versatility up a notch.
Salsa Verde
Whether or not you're a habitual PRS player, it's almost impossible to cradle a guitar like the Studio and not find yourself in free flow—playing away without pausing to think "is this neck right for me?" or "maybe I'll tweak the action." The Studio feels good right off the bat.
It looks right, too. PRS is fond of fancy dress in general, and our review sample is gorgeous in person, without being over the top (a perspective dependent on your own tastes, of course). The "Eriza verde" finish lends a lively, three-dimensional sense of motion to the flame in this maple 10 Top, and beautifully contrasts the dark-brown rosewood fingerboard and stripy rosewood headstock overlay. The natural mahogany of the back and neck display a premium grain, while the abalone bird inlays and mixed gold-nickel hardware add further visual excitement.
The set neck is carved in what PRS calls their "pattern" shape, which many players consider ideal. It's a full-feeling '59 Les Paul-inspired profile with a very slight V, soft shoulders, and an easy playing feel. The nut width is 1 11/16" and the scale length is PRS's traditional 25". Put it all together, and the playing weight is around 8.2 pounds, which is quite reasonable for a chunk of solid mahogany and maple.
So, with many of these features being familiar components of other PRS Core models, what makes a Studio a Studio? It's the pickup selection, by and large. In addition to the 58/15 LT humbucker in the bridge position, the guitar comes with a pair of PRS Narrowfield pickups in the middle and neck positions. Narrowfields have returned to the lineup for 2021 in the Studio and just one other model. These narrow humbuckers possess a more single-coil-like magnetic field, delivering a tone that's somewhere between a full-sized humbucker, a P-90, and a narrower single coil—all with the benefit of hum cancelling performance. Add a push-pull coil split for the 58/15 LT on the tone control and a 5-way blade switch, and you've got seven distinct pickup settings.
These narrow humbuckers possess a more single-coil-like magnetic field, delivering a tone that's somewhere between a full-sized humbucker, a P-90, and a narrower single coil.
Hardware includes PRS's well regarded Gen III tremolo, and Phase III locking tuners. They pair with a lubricated nut to keep the guitar in tune, regardless of heavy vibrato use. Playability is faultless all across the board.
Bucking the Trend
Played through a 50-watt Friedman Small Box head and 2x12 cab, a custom tweed Deluxe-style 1x12 combo, and a Neural DSP Quad Cortex into studio monitors, the Studio delivered the versatility that the design promises, hopping confidently between varied sounds and styles. It pivots from grinding heavy rock to mellow balladry at the flick of a switch. The sounds are meaty, original twists on the HSS range of tones you once encountered on the average superstrat. The middle, neck, and in-between voicings are thicker, fatter, and gutsier than genuine single-coil pickups would be. That, of course, is entirely the idea.
By sacrificing some of the single-coil glassiness and the trebly spikiness of a traditional Strat single-coil, the Narrowfields add extra grunt to near-clean tones, edge-of-breakup settings, and overdrive sounds from a Tsakalis Six, JHS Angry Charlie, my amps, and the Neural. These pickups shine when you ask them to crunch and wail.
The 5-way switch, varied voice of the Narrowfields, and coil-split humbucker mean you can ably deliver convincing Strat-like sounds in the in-between positions, though they are generally darker than a true Stratocaster—a tone signature that's further colored and re-enforced by the mahogany/maple construction and glued-in neck. The format is a great alternative for HSS superstrat players of old who came to regard the high-output pickups typical in such guitars a touch too spiky and yearn for more grit and gristle to go with the snap and chime. And when you want to skip approximation of single-coil sounds entirely, you can revel in Les Paul-like girth and grind when the bridge humbucker is unleashed with all coils blazing.
The Verdict
The PRS Studio provides a super-solid foundation that's defined by great woods, great components, and high attention to detail that closely allies it with other PRS cornerstone models like the Custom and McCarty. What really differentiates the Studio, though, is the pickup set, and while this configuration might not be for everyone, it's a fatter, thick-sounding twist on the do-it-all HSS template that offers maximum flexibility to so many players. It's not cheap. But it isn't meant to be, and both longtime PRS fans and newcomers to the brand will likely appreciate the substance and versatility that investment delivers here.
An amateur builder-in-the-making headed online to source parts and, with the help of YouTube and guitar forums, taught himself how to build a Thinline-inspired beauty.
Name: Vinny Eadicicco Location: Staten Island, New York Guitar: Leslie 56
I'm a newbie amateur at building guitars. After trying out a friend's Thinline one day, I was hooked. I've always liked the looks and design of a Fender Thinline: the f-hole cutouts, the contours, semi-hollowbody, etc. So, I ventured online to search some DIY videos on how to build a guitar, and there were quite a lot on YouTube.
After taking in all the knowledge, I went searching for an unfinished guitar body and a neck. I came across a nice-looking Thinline-style body from a Canadian-based eBay seller called ToneBomb. The body was considerably affordable and attractive, especially the grain. After I made the initial purchase, I looked for ideas on paints and stains. One of the ideas I fancied was from a YouTuber who used a basic shoe dye instead of paint. I was truly amazed by how it came out, plus it looked rather easy to apply.
My next step was to pick a color. Blue was cool, but turquoise was terrific. A manufacturer called Angelus seemed to have a good reputation and good reviews, so I went with Angelus Leather Dye. When the guitar body arrived, I took some advice from a cousin on how to precondition it before applying dye. He said to wipe it down with a damp rag to raise the grain, and then after the grain is raised, use a tack cloth to remove any dust and particles from the body, which I did.
I then applied one coat of the dye and it took nicely. After it dried, I decided to be daring and gave it two more coats of shoe dye. When it all dried, I decided to utilize a finish called Tru-Oil. It's recommended to use at least eight coats minimum. I eventually applied 10 coats of Tru-Oil on the body over the span of three days or so. Tru-Oil dries quickly. However, I didn't want to rush the finish and wanted it to cure, so I took my time, applying it in stages.
After the body was good to go, I needed a Tele neck. With the way the body came out, I didn't want to skimp on a cheap neck. I bid on a Musikraft Tele-style neck, and eventually won it for around $200. I installed the neck, along with a set of Fender tuners. All the hardware was purchased from eBay. I used a Dragonfire Hot Rails pickup in the bridge and a Wilkinson neck pickup. I soldered everything up with much guidance from the internet. The Squier-Talk.com forum was a huge help: A big shout-out to you guys on that forum. After it was finished, I named her "Leslie 56," because my girlfriend shelled out the monies for this project as my 56th birthday present. Thanks Leslie!
The guitar is a beaut, with great action and nice tones. I had a lot of fun doing this project. Send your guitar story to submissions@premierguitar.com.
