Feast your eyes and ears on these 6-string mutants, monsters, and mooncalves—approved by Dr. Frankenstein, but ready to make great music.
The great American journalist Hunter S. Thompson famously said, “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." So, heeding an expert's advice, when we went looking for the world's weirdest guitar mods and builds, we turned to the pros—guitarists and builders with an otherness to their aesthetic sensibilities.
We found a sampling of some truly outstanding and uncommon instruments made or modded by a diverse group from the U.S. and abroad, and from urban and rural locales. Some are famous; others obscure. A few are deceased. But all of these axes reflect their highly personal vision of what a guitar can do, or even be. So let's dive into a mind-expanding trip into the world of beautiful fretboard weirdness.
Bo Diddley's Amoeba
Photos by Jonathan Roncolato/Carter Vintage Guitars
Bo Diddley was no stranger to guitar building, but it's hard to find conventionally played guitars stranger than Bo's. This axe's amoeboid shape reminds me of the tentacled menaces from the 1968 science fiction film The Green Slime. Even the color exudes a kind of alien putrescence. And while the neck feels and plays killer, this is, indeed, a spacey beast.
Photos by Jonathan Roncolato/Carter Vintage Guitars
The foundational rock 'n' roll giant built his first truly playable homemade axe in 1945, fashioned from a cigar box, and he continued to build guitars from slabs of wood and whatever crossed his workbench for the rest of his life. He also commissioned creations. One of the more famous is a drum machine with a Fender Stratocaster built into it. The guitar is now M.I.A., but you can find a photo here.
Photos by Jonathan Roncolato/Carter Vintage Guitars
After his clave-based Bo Diddley beat became a staple of rock guitar via a series of hits starting with 1955's "Bo Diddley" and '56's "Who Do You Love?," Bo convinced Gretsch to expand his love of cigar box guitars into a full-sized, rectangular signature model: the famed firebird red G5810. Altogether, there have been seven differently numbered box-like Gretsch Bo Diddley models over the years. The original is featured prominently on the cover of his 1960 LP, Have Guitar Will Travel.
Photos by Jonathan Roncolato/Carter Vintage Guitars
In '59, Diddley induced Gretsch to also make the G6199 Jupiter Thunderbird model—another oddity with a scooped tail and lower end that Diddley requested because he felt the wider body of his Gretsch 3161 got in his way. Its latest iteration is Gretsch's Billy-Bo, based on an example Diddley gifted to Billy Gibbons.
Photos by Jonathan Roncolato/Carter Vintage Guitars
The evidence of Diddley's passion for building and commissioning oddball 6-strings is in photos all over the internet. And it's also now on the wall at Nashville's Carter Vintage Guitars, where the 2001-built amoeba guitar hangs with a $30,000 price tag.
Photos by Jonathan Roncolato/Carter Vintage Guitars
Its lines are less-than-elegantly carved, and the body is plywood with a plywood top that's mounted in place by wood screws. The weight? Well, it seems heavier in my hands than my '68 Les Paul, which comes in at 12 pounds.
Photos by Jonathan Roncolato/Carter Vintage Guitars
Besides the CD player—which works—the other sound sources are a pair of humbuckers and a Roland GK-2A synth pickup. The Lotus neck is key to the guitar's playability, and its tuners hold their ground, making this green alien more functional than might be anticipated.
BO DIDDLEY 1965
Here's Bo Diddley rocking like a damn freight train on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1965, with one of his specially sculpted Gretsch Jupiter Thunderbirds.
Lewis Waters' Harmonic Hot Rods
Harmonic Isolator
Blend a guitar with a celestial choir, a Theremin, chimes and bells, and a synthesizer and you'd be merely approximating the near-mystical tones created by the instruments Lewis Waters builds in Perth, Australia, under the New Complexity name. For nearly a decade, Waters sought to expand the sonic palette of his conventional 6-strings with pedals and amps and extended technique, both solo and in bands. But, as he explains, the sounds he was hearing in his head were calling for something more organic—a fresh take on the instrument itself.
Inspired primarily by the improvising guitarists and instrument creators Hans Reichel and Yuri Landman, Waters was determined to build the guitars he imagined. (Check out Landman's step-by-step instructions for recreating the drone guitar he built for Thurston Moore, in our May 2016 issue.) First, Waters enrolled in a two-year course in woodworking, while continuing his research into pickups, sustainers, tuners, bridges, and other elements essential to his vision. Then, seven years ago, he began simultaneously building two of the guitars he imagined: the Harmonic Master and the Harmonic Isolator. The sounds both make are otherworldly and solidly of the guitar at the same time.
New Complexity - Harmonic Isolator Demo
Harmonic Master
The Harmonic Master has an extended bridge that adds an independently tuned harmonic overlay to the notes played on the instrument's neck. And thanks to a behind-the-bridge pickup, the resonating notes in that independent section can be separately amplified. With two string fields, there's a lot going on, but Waters covers all of it with volume controls for each side of the bridge, a 3-way switch for the standard neck and bridge pickups, three output jacks (for guitar only, harmonic tones only, and a mix of both), and pickups by Lace Sensor. The body and neck woods available for all his guitars are Queensland maple, Tasmanian blackwood, and alder. Plus, the Harmonic Master can be ordered with a tremolo arm.
The Harmonic Isolator is a sonic step up from the Master, thanks to the inclusion of a Sustainiac electronic string sustainer and frets calibrated specifically to encourage harmonic resonance, inspired by the designs of the late and wildly inventive Hans Reichel. Those atypically spaced frets correspond to the notes in the harmonic series.
New Complexity - Harmonic Master Guitar Demo
This guitar has the same three-output-jack array as the Harmonic Master with volume controls for each side of the bridge. There's also an on/off toggle for the Sustainiac and a push/pull control for the device's four modes. In addition to the Sustainiac pickup in the neck slot, there are two Lace Sensor pickups between the guitar's two bridges.
This Reso Harp Special increases the harp portion's string array from the Reso Harp's 10 to a dozen.
Waters' third creation is the Reso Harp, which has an onboard fully tunable string reverb for creating yet another variety of intoxicating soundscapes. Essentially, the string reverb is a mini-harp-like configuration of strings adjacent to the six strings aboard the guitar's neck. Thanks to a Sustainiac, the harp strings can either resonate with the string vibrations generated by playing the instrument conventionally or they can be plucked as their own sound source. Again, there are two volume controls for each side of the central bridge, a 3-way toggle for the standard neck and bridge pickups, the sustainer on/off switch, and the push-pull for its four modes. There are four Lace pickups in all, to cover the guitar and harp portions of the instrument. Also, the Reso Harp has the same three output jacks as its cousins. And it's worth mentioning that Waters makes a hybrid version, blending elements from all three guitars and including a pickup just over the nut, à la Fred Frith.
Demonstration | Harmonic Master Reso Harp Hybrid by New Complexity
Capable of putting out four signals at once, the Harmonic Master Reso Harp has the greatest sonic potential of New Complexity's current offerings.
Reso Verb Prototype
Whether your musical tastes run toward an early gospel-blues blind cave fish like Washington Phillips or an avant modernist like Henry Kaiser, it's obvious a resonating harp offers a lot of potentially interesting textures, tones, and pads onstage and in the studio. So the ceaselessly exploring Waters is about to unveil a standalone version of the string reverb section of the Reso Harp, called the Reso Verb.
It's a box with 10 strings and two pickups—one sustaining—and volume controls for the input and reverb levels. There are input and output jacks, and dials marked treble, bass, and phase. It also has an insertable bridge, so players can create their own harmonic ratios. Heck, you don't even need a guitar to make cool sounds with this box. Any instrument with an output could be plugged into the Reso Verb.
Not surprisingly, New Complexity guitars are labor intensive. It takes Waters 200 to 300 hours to make each one, although he's contemplating ways to create his own version from stock parts in the future. For the average guitarist, getting a handle on playing one of his creations might also require many hours of study and practice. In addition to mastering the two-sided bridge concept and the harp-like approaches required to bring the most from these guitars, tuning is subjective. What's most important, says Waters, is that the harmonic ratios for creating overtones are locked in.
Vaughn Skow's 5-Pickup Frankenstrat
We've all seen Frankenstrats before, but the wall-to-wall pickup configuration on this beast looks like something hatched in one of Kenneth Strickfaden's mad-scientist-movie laboratories. In fact, it was brought to life in Nashville by pickup maker and amp builder Vaughn Skow, who's also got a long resume of sessions, TV work, and production.
"I was worried at one point that a wall of pickups would seriously dampened sustain." —Vaughn Skow
Skow purchased this Japan-made '62 reissue Strat about 15 years ago and started tinkering immediately, although he wasn't its first modder. The guitar came with a roller nut and Sperzel tuners, and, more important, a Seymour Duncan mini-humbucker in the neck slot and a Duncan Hot Rails in the bridge, plus the usual Fender single-coil in the middle. "I started messing with the pickups as soon as I got home, because that's kind of what I do," Skow says. "I like buying guitars that are good, but are already a little messed up so you don't have to worry about doing anything you want to them.
"I liked those pickup flavors, though I missed the honest-to-goodness single-coil sounds of a Strat. But I liked the sound of the Hot Rails, too, because they're a really mid-forward pickup, in the 200 Hz to 400 Hz range. So I decided to put one of my single-coils in next to the Hot Rails. "The body already had an ashtray routing done, so I started thinking about adding a single-coil to the bridge as well," he continues. "The idea became to get as much tonal versatility as possible from a single guitar. I was worried at one point that a wall of pickups would seriously dampen sustain, but then I figured that 3-pickup Les Pauls have a solid wall of pickups from the bridge to the neck, so why not?"
Once all five pickups were in place, Skow swapped the tone control closest to the bridge pickups for a toggle switch. Now, when the guitar's 5-position switch is in the bridge or neck spots, that toggle can activate or deactivate the single-coils. The finishing touch was replacing the Fender bridge with a Wilkinson VS100, and the guitar has been Skow's No. 1 ever since.
Of course, the inveterate experimenter has gone on to many other mods. Recently, he's been in demand among Kay archtop collectors for the minimally invasive pickup install he's developed, and for installing T-style pickups on banjos.
Vaughn Skow 1959 Historic Stratocaster Pickup Set - Jazz
Here's a demo of Vaughn Skow's vintage single-coil Strat-style pickups, which he added to his '62 reissue's three existing pickups.
John Cipollina's Horned Stack and Batwing SG
Photo courtesy of johncipollina.com
The lead guitarist and cofounder of Quicksilver Messenger Service may be the granddaddy of electric-guitar-era mods. By 1965, when the band was emerging as a leading proponent of San Francisco's psychedelic sound—alongside Jefferson Airplane, Big Brother and the Holding Company, and the Grateful Dead—John Cipollina was already using a ferocious assembly of combos, heads, and horns to amplify his guitars. And his famed batwing SG—named for its custom pickguard—was wired to send separate signals to bass and guitar amps, so he could cover the sonic waterfront.
His amp setup and the batwing SG were, until recently, on view at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for many years. And they were designed to be inseparable. The stack—a blend of tube and solid-state power—consists of two Standel bass amps, a Fender Twin Reverb, and a Dual Showman head that drove six Wurlitzer horns. Cipollina used a footswitching system for reverb, tremolo, an Astro Echoplex (to the right of the Twin, in the photo), a Standel Modulux vibrato, and the horns. Truck running lights indicated which elements were in use.
"I like the rapid punch of solid-state for the bottom and the rodent-gnawing distortion of the tubes on top." —John Cipollina
Not only the batwing SG, but all of Cipollina's guitars had the split bass/guitar wiring setup. I'm not clear exactly how the wiring worked. Was it bass and guitar pickups in the different slots? Did he simply have specific routing for each pickup? The details at johncipollina.com aren't illuminating and efforts to contact a spokesperson for the late guitarist's legacy were fruitless. Nonetheless, what is clear is that one pickup's signal hit the two Standel bass amps supporting the stack. The other went to the Twin and the Dual Showman, and one of the pickups was reversed.
Cipollina's oft-quoted summation of his setup's strategy is simple: "I like the rapid punch of solid-state for the bottom and the rodent-gnawing distortion of the tubes on top."
Who Do You Love? (1973 B&W) - Quicksilver Messenger Service
With his batwing SG, John Cipollina and Quicksilver Messenger Service go full-tilt psychedelic in this live 1973 performance of Bo Diddley's classic "Who Do You Love?" at San Francisco's Winterland Ballroom.
Debashish Bhattacharya's 22-String Slider
At first listen, the Chaturangui sounds like a cross between a slide guitar and a sitar, but its inventor, Debashish Bhattacharya, explains that it is, indeed, a guitar. It certainly looks and plays like one, with a tone bar—albeit a guitar that's grown a multiplicity of strings and some of the sweetest decorative work ever set to an instrument. And the Chaturangui has become a cornerstone in Bhattacharya's pioneering development of the genre of Hindustani slide guitar. It is indisputably a thing of great beauty, sonically and visually.
This 22-string instrument's invention, Bhattacharya says, began gestating when he was 3, after his mother gave him a solid-neck Hawaiian-style lap-slide guitar. "Since then, the lap guitar and me have been inseparable," he says. But the Hawaiian guitar didn't allow the long sustain, swelling overtones, percussive attack, and wide variety of sounds he was hearing from the long-established instruments in the South Asian musical tradition, like the sitar, sarod, violin, and veena. In search of those sounds, he began drawing out plans for the Chaturangui and built his first model at age 15, in 1978. This was not an easy task. "I had to get information on building this instrument in a world where Wikipedia and Google did not exist," he relates.
"The Chaturangui allows me to do at least a dozen things that can't be dreamt of with a 6-string Hawaiian guitar." —Debashish Bhattacharya
Initially, he was rebuked for his invention by both the Indian guitar establishment and the raga community. But as his career progressed, Bhattacharya won an international following for his wildly inventive playing, with John McLaughlin and Jerry Douglas among his fans and collaborators.
The hollowbody Chaturangui has a solid Poma toon neck. The sides and backs are made of mahogany and Poma toon, and the top is Canadian spruce. It sports brass frets and a resonating bridge made of deer horn. The carving on the neck and fretboard are done in yellowwood. Eight strings extend to the headstock. Six are melody strings played with a tone bar and the two on the bottom are used for low, percussive tones.
Two additional strings on the top—set apart from the neck—are plucked for high percussive tones. These are called chikari strings. A dozen sympathetic strings are set apart from the neck on the opposite side from the chikari. These can simply resonate with the melody or be raked. And the neck is scalloped, which allows the microtonal inflections and bends that give the Chaturangui its sitar- and sarod-like qualities.
"The Chaturangui allows me to do at least a dozen things I do, including tone modulation fingerpicking and resonating sounds that can't be dreamt of with a 6-string Hawaiian guitar," says Bhattacharya.
He's remained ceaselessly inventive as both a player and a builder. Nine years after making his first Chaturangui, Bhattacharya modified a Hofner guitar that was a gift from his guru, Ajoy Chakrabarty, into a Chaturangui-like instrument he simply calls a Hindustani slide guitar. And he's planning to debut a new instrument design at the 2019 Calcutta International Classical Guitar Festival on November 30.
Indian Slide Guitar | Pandit Debashish Bhattacharya | Raag Shuddh Sarang | Music of India
Debashish Bhattacharya takes on a traditional Indian raga with his Chaturangui at London's Queen Elizabeth Hall with Yogesh Samsi on tabla and Unnati Dasgupta on tanpura.
Elliott Sharp's Two-Headed Transplants
Elliott Sharp, who was profiled in the April 2019 issue of Premier Guitar, has been a leader in the international cutting-edge music scene for 40 years. The New York City-based virtuoso has also been an inventor of unconventional instruments, largely motivated by necessity, since 1969. He refers to his creations, like the 3-string violinoid and the triple-course bass pantar, as "proof-of-concept prototypes."
"The metal body is the top from a 50-gallon sweeping compound can that I had found while walking through Chinatown." —Elliott Sharp
Two of the most practical and intriguing instruments I've seen Sharp play over the decades are his bass/guitar doublenecks. Sharp explains: "Doubleneck 1 was built to my specs in 1984 by Ken Heer [ of now-gone St. Mark's Music Exchange]. I had been using both bass and guitar in my band I/S/M from 1981 to '83, and then with Carbon from 1983 on, and wanted to combine them."
Sharp determined the hybrid would be compact and headless, with a Schecter Strat neck and a medium-scale Fender Coronado bass neck—both with the headstocks removed. The pickups: a Fender Tele bridge and Strat neck, and a DiMarzio P Bass and J Bass set. There are no volume or tone controls—only 3-way switching for each of the necks with the outputs routed to effects through individual volume pedals. There is also an IVL hexaphonic pickup on the guitar that fed an IVL Pitchrider 7000 guitar-to-MIDI converter through a 13-pin cable, to trigger samples or interface with the interactive composition software, M. The body is laminated rosewood, maple, and mahogany. In 1992, it was painted black by New York City-based producer and guitarist Doug Henderson, who also added the aluminum pickguard and roll bar.
Sharp's Doubleneck 2 was built in 1992 by Henderson. "While I very much liked the bass on Doubleneck 1, the guitar was less centered in its tone, which would be remedied with Doubleneck 2," says Sharp. "The body is African limba with a bird's-eye maple top. Again, a Schecter Strat neck was used, but a Fender Musicmaster bass neck went on the low-end side. Pickups were DiMarzio all around—three Strats plus P and J bass units—and the bass bridge is a massive Wilkinson. The guitar bridge is of unknown origin, but made of brass and very solid. Doug used deck plate for the pickguard. Again, there were no onboard controls except for switching: 5-way on the guitar and 3-way on the bass. The necks were each routed to effects through individual volume pedals. There was no MIDI pickup."
But wait! There's more. Versatile and powerful as they are, these doublenecks are not light. Just look at their slab bodies. "By 1996, the doublenecks—not to mention their associated effects racks—were taking their toll on my back, so I decided to create a compact 8-string extended range instrument," Sharp recounts. That's the Henderson-Greco guitarbass, built to E#'s specs by Henderson and luthier Carlo Greco, who had once been Guild's chief designer. This guitar covers the waterfront with much less real estate. Greco carved a chunky maple neck with an ebony fretboard. Henderson ascribed to Sharp's request for a streamlined V-shaped body made of limba and a bird's-eye maple top. The three pickups are all Bartolini J Bass, for a sound Sharp describes as "very hi-fi." There's a 5-way switch and a volume control, but no tone controls, since Sharp usually does that with his fingers or pedals. The brass bridge was hand-machined by Henderson and stainless-steel Strat saddles were added.
"Although the scale length is 25.5", the bass strings put out some massive low end and the guitar strings have a sweet snap," says Sharp. "For the first few years of its use, I had a trackpad Velcro'd to the body to interface with a computer for triggering samples in the STEIM software LiSa and later for MAX/MSP use."
Among the other unusual instruments in Sharp's arsenal is his doubleneck Arches H-Line, which, like New Complexity's instruments, opens up the harmonic possibilities of guitar and was inspired by the work of Hans Reichel. But perhaps the most novel is the triple-course bass pantar, which Sharp built in 1990 with the help of woodworker Andrew Zev Weinstein.
Once again, Sharp explains: "The metal body is the top from a 50-gallon sweeping compound can that I found while walking through Chinatown. It was fitted to a wooden structure that would also serve as the base for the three fingerboards, salvaged from musical roadkill. All 12 strings were bass strings and they could be tuned to various open scales or chords. The rim of the metal top served as a natural bridge. I had planned to mount magnetic pickups under the strings, but opted instead for a piezo. It may be played standing with a strap or horizontally using mallets to create a wide range of sounds reminiscent of steel drums, marimba, gamelan instruments, and string bass."
Night Music #203 Elliott Sharp
Elliott Sharp plays his Doubleneck 1—also using it to trigger samples—during an appearance on the television series Night Music, hosted by David Sanborn. Check out Sharp's insane tapping, and the wild sounds it creates, at the 2:00 mark.
Super Chikan's 6-String Tone Fryers
Fans of hard-core modern Mississippi blues know Clarksdale's James "Super Chikan" Johnson for his ferocious tone and entertaining, full-throttle live performances. But over the past decade, he's also earned a reputation among collectors and players for the funky guitars he builds. They're essentially playable folk-art, and what's truly strange is that no matter their origins and mismatched parts, they all bark like junkyard dogs when they're plugged in.
Johnson has made 1-string diddley bows and guitars from gas cans, cigar boxes, and even an old shotgun, but my favorite is the 6-string in the photo here. The body is a bedazzled motor housing from an antique ceiling fan. Johnson calls it his Chikantar, and it has a tone that is rude, loud, quick to break up, and—when he gets past the 12th fret—head-slicing, but without losing its corpulent tonality. Maybe that's because, as Johnson once confided, it weighs in at about 20 pounds. It also takes to fuzz pedals like a bird on a caterpillar.
Photo by Bill Steber
Typically Johnson's instruments, including the gas cans he fashions into guitars that are sometimes painted and decorated to look like chickens—a breed of fowl he claims to talk to and control—are much lighter. And in recent years he's also begun to build or reclaim and redecorate solidbody guitars.
A look at the mismatched pickups on the solidbody above reveals his parts-sourcing strategy: anything goes. Johnson scours pawnshops and junk stores and trash heaps for everything from pickups to, well, ceiling fan motor shells, and whatever is available in his workshop when he's building a guitar goes right into the pot, like a fat hen.
Super Chikan | Mississippi Roads | MPB
Super Chikan and his instruments, including the ceiling-fan-motor-bodied Chikantar, are profiled in this segment of Mississippi Public Television's Mississippi Roads series.
[Updated 9/14/21]
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The Archon Classic is not a re-issue of the original Archon, but a newly voiced circuit with the Lead channel excelling in 70s and 80s rock tones and a hotter Clean channel able to go into breakup. This is the answer for those wanting an Archon with a hotrod vintage Lead channel gain structure without changing preamp tube types and a juiced up Clean channel without having to use a boost pedal all wrapped up in a retro inspired cabinet design." - Doug Sewell, PRS Amp Designer
Matteo Mancuso's first headline national tour of North America includes stops in major cities such as Boston, Brooklyn, Chicago, and Denver, showcasing his unique talent and original sound. Don't miss the opportunity to witness this rising guitar virtuoso live in concert.
Matteo Mancuso has announced his first headline national tour of North America. The itinerary brings Mancuso coast to coast in the US, and into Canada for several annual marquee events. The tour begins on May 20 at Boston’s City Winery and wraps on June 30 at Le Festival International de Jazz de Montreal. With the on-sale being staggered, please check local box offices for on-sale details market to market.
Mancuso hails from Sicily, nestled in the Mediterranean Sea to the South of Italy. The island has always had a rich cultural heritage, from poets, writers, philosophers, and architects to painters and musicians. Born in 1996 and raised just outside the capital Palermo, the pedigree runs deep in the veins of those from the region. Had his family relocated to the US, he might be the best-kept secret in the lineage of great Italian-American players like Zappa, Vai, Satriani, Di Meola, Petrucci, and Gambale.
During the 1970s, his father, Vincenzo Mancuso, made a name for himself as a gifted session player on the domestic scene, and the young Matteo looked up to him as a primary source of inspiration. While still in high school (music), he picked up classical guitar and transverse flute. It didn't take long for everyone to understand that a child prodigy was blooming.
At the age of 12, Matteo took his first steps onto the stage at a local jazz festival. Since then, his acquaintance with live performances has seen him blossom and develop through various line-ups and collaborations with the finest local musicians, including a duo with his father, where they explore the complexities of Django Reinhart's repertoire and contemporary jazz classics.
As a multi-faceted player, either classical or electric, what is astounding is his one-of-a-kind technique and use of his fingers instead of regular picking. With an impressive tone, original sound, and humble demeanor, you have the guitarist no one has ever seen and whose talent puts him in a different league. Many of the world's most iconic, ground-breaking, and legendary players are declaring Matteo as a force to be reckoned with, from Joe Bonamassa and Steve Vaito Al Di Meola.
In 2019, Yamaha Guitars became the official endorser of his appearance at the NAMM show in Los Angeles. He was invited as a judge on the panel for the "Young Guitar Festival" in Bangkok and a masterclass tour in Russia – calling through Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Perm. In 2020, Matteo put together a new trio and began developing his solo work, pushing his compositional boundaries and original material. When the pandemic brought the world to a standstill like many, Matteo experienced difficulties as it took a significant toll on the music industry, like many others. In 2021, as soon as live gigs became possible, he hit the road as part of the new trio, culminating in two exhilarating sold-out nights at the Blue Note in Milano. The name Matteo Mancuso was beginning to reach the ears of the most prominent people in the industry and those in the know. Offers came up from the north to the deep south.
In 2022 he played at the Bremen International Festival at the Auditorium Parco Della Musica in Rome. After a short break in June last year to graduate in jazz guitar from the PalermoConservatory of Music with honors and honorable mention, he resumed touring. He shared the stage with Al Di Meola on classical guitar on the closing night of the Eddie Lang Jazz Festival and played at the Lugano Jazz Festival in Switzerland, as a guest with prog-rockers PFM and an incredible performance at the New Ross Guitar Festival in Ireland. He appeared in a major prime-time slot on Italy's national Rai TV, at the Uppsala Jazz Festival in Sweden. Finally, he rounded off the year at the Spoleto Jazz Festival back in Italy.
His debut titled The Journey features nine original songs which were recorded at Fico d'IndiaStudios Casteldaccia, Sicily, by his father, Vincenzo Mancuso – a gifted player who also played on the record and co-wrote two songs, "Polifemo" and "Blues For John." The album also features Stefano India (Bass) and Guiseppe Bruno (Drums), with additional musicians Riccardo Oliva(Bass), Gianluca Pellerito (drums,) and Guiseppe Vasapolli (Piano/Organ).
Mancuso began writing songs for the album around 2020. "I didn't really have a specific concept behind the album, but I wanted to do something that wasn't associated with only one genre, so there are some rock-oriented songs like Drop D and some modern Jazz tunes like Polifemo," he says."Drop D" was one of the first songs written for the album, which pays tribute to his teens' hard rock and prog influences such as Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Yes, Emerson, Lake and Palmer, and Dream Theater. "It is a mix of typical rock and prog elements and one of the most fun songs to play live," he says.
In front of the album’s release, he shared, "I just want people to hear it," he enthuses. "Music has always been my favorite form of communication, and the thing I love about instrumental music is that there isn't a language barrier. I'm sure that people who don't usually listen to instrumental music can find something interesting from this album."
Mancuso has become one of the hottest guitarists on the planet following the release of his debut album in 2023, The Journey, which featured the singles "Samba Party," which channels the excitement and jubilation of Rio de Janeiro during carnival – but the song itself is anything but samba. Also, "Silk Road, which was dedicated to his hometown Palermo and his Arab-Norman roots and was the follow-up to the album's lead single "Drop D,"
The YouTube sensation has already adorned the front cover of magazines such as GuitarTechniques, which called him "The Hottest Guitarist on the Planet ", and Total Guitar, which hailed him as the "World's Hottest Virtuoso." He has picked up plaudits from some of the world's most iconic, ground-breaking players who are declaring Matteo as a force to be reckoned with, from Joe Bonamassa and Steve Vai to Al Di Meola. They share:
"The evolution of guitar is firmly secure in the hands of these kind of players... it's just a new level, the tone, the touch, the notes!" - Steve Vai
"An absolute talent; his improvisational ability is light years ahead. It would take two or three lifetimes. It was like when Jacko (Pastorius) came on the scene...how did he get so good and so fast?" - Al Di Meola
"All the kids are talking about it, and I blanked when answering who my new favorite guitarist is... here he is, Matteo Mancuso. I have not seen anyone reinvent like this since Stanley Jordan" - Joe Bonamassa
For more information, please visit matteomancuso.net.
Confirmed Appearances Include:
- 5/20 Boston, MA City Winery Boston
- 5/21 Brooklyn, NY Brooklyn Bowl
- 5/22 Ardmore, PA The Ardmore Music Hall
- 5/23 Red Bank, NJ The Vogel
- 5/24 Washington, DC The Hamilton Live
- 5/25 Cumberland, MD Allegany County Fairgrounds
- 5/27 Pittsburgh, PA City Winery Pittsburgh
- 5/28 Lansing, MI Grewal Hall at 224
- 5/29 Ferndale, MI The Magic Bag
- 5/31 Cincinnati, OH The Ludlow Garage
- 6/01 Kent, OH The Kent Stage
- 6/02 Indianapolis, IN The Vogue
- 6/04 Minneapolis, MN The Dakota
- 6/05 Milwaukee, WI Vivarium
- 6/06 Chicago, IL Garcia’s
- 6/07 Chicago, IL Garcia’s
- 6/10 Denver, CO Cervantes’ Other Side
- 6/13 Sante Fe, NM The Bridge at Sante Fe Brewing
- 6/14 Phoenix, AZ MIM
- 6/15 Tucson, AZ The Rialto Theatre
- 6/16 Solana Beach, CA Belly Up Tavern
- 6/17 Highland Park, CA Lodge Room
- 6/18 San Juan Capistrano, CA The Coach House
- 6/20 Berkeley, CA The UC Theatre
- 6/22 Portland, OR Aladdin Theater
- 6/23 Seattle, WA Neptune Theatre
- 6/24 Vancouver, BC Rickshaw
- 6/25 Victoria, BC Wicket Hall
- 6/28 Syracuse, NY Syracuse Jazz Fest
- 6/29 Buffalo, NY Electric City
- 6/30 Montreal, QC Le Festival International de Jazz de Montreal
A fine-tuned, well-worn feel, noiseless pickups, and a broad tone vocabulary made possible by clever switching mark real refinement in Player II Modified versions of Fullerton’s foundational designs.
- Noiseless single-coil pickups – Classic Fender tone without hum
- Higher-output humbucker – More power with articulate midrange bite
- Push-pull switching – Expands tonal versatility by splitting humbuckers
- Treble bleed circuit – Maintains clarity when rolling back volume
- Modern “C” neck with rolled edges – Smooth, broken-in feel for effortless playability
- Redesigned active preamp (basses) – Improved tone control with enhanced midrange
- Upgraded bridges, locking tuners, and TUSQ nut – Better tuning stability, sustain, and intonation
Fabulous neck with just-right fatness. Distinctive tone profile. Smooth, stable vibrato. Ice blue metallic and aluminum look delish together.
Higher output pickups could turn off Fender-geared traditionalists.
$939
Eastman FullerTone DC’62
An affordable version of Eastman’s U.S.-made solidbody rolls with unique, well-executed features—at a price and quality level that rivals very tough competition.
Eastman’s instruments regularly impress in terms ofquality and performance. A few left my PG colleagues downright smitten. But if Eastman isn’t a household name among guitarists, it might be a case of consumer psychology: Relative to most instruments built in China, Eastmans are expensive. So, if you spend your life longing for a Gibson 335 and a comparable (if superficially fancier) Eastman costs just 20 percent less than the least expensive version of the real deal, why not save up for a bit longer and get the guitar of your dreams?
For some players, though, such brand-devotional hang ups are obstacles to getting the best instrument for the best price. Some just like having an alternative to legacy brands and models that live as dreams in a zillion other heads. As Eastman evolved as a company, they’ve paid close attention to both of those market segments—creating refined original designs like the El Rey and Romeo while keeping quality, execution, and playability at an exceptional standard. With the introduction of the FullerTone instruments, a series of Beijing-built guitars modeled after Eastman’s California-built, Otto D’Ambrosio-designed solidbodies, Eastman’s price/performance goals reach a kind of apex. Because the FullerTone guitars aren’t archtops or thinlines and use bolt-on necks, they range from just $799 (for the simpler SC’52) to $899 (for the more full-featured DC’62 reviewed here). That’s a competitive market bracket, to say the least, but Fullertone delivers the goods in ways that count to players.
Somewhere in an Alternate O.C….
You don’t need to be a certified Mensa member to suss the FullerTone’s design benchmarks. The name’s likeness to that of an Orange County locale where historically important electric guitar design took place is a less-than-covert tip of the hat. More tangible evidence of the DC’62’s Stratocaster inspirations exist in the shape of a bolt-on, 25.5"-scale neck, six-on-a-side headstock, a curvaceous double-cut body, and vibrato. (The more Telecaster-like DC’52 uses a T-style bridge and comes sans vibrato).
Many of these design nods, however, are distinguished by Eastman’s refinements. The patented neck joint, for instance, mimics that of the upmarket, U.S.-built Eastman D’Ambrosio. It employs just two screws, bolted into steel anchors in the neck itself. It’s a robust, clever design. The joint, which works in part like a long tenon, provides extra neck-to-body contact, making the effortless access to all 24 medium-jumbo frets all the more remarkable. (The fretwork, by the way, is impeccable).
“The neck’s profile will pique the interest of anyone bored with the sameness of generic, modern C-profiles.”
The neck itself—roasted maple, satin-finished, and capped with a 12"-radius Indian rosewood fretboard—uses an angled headstock design that differs from Fender convention, but the break angle is much shallower than a Gibson, which aids tuning stability. The neck’s profile, though, will pique the interest of anyone bored with the sameness of generic, modern C-profiles. Eastman calls it a medium-round profile, but that doesn’t do justice to its substance, which calls to mind Fender’s chunkier 1960s necks. It’s not a shape for everyone, and shredders and players with really petite hands might be less enthused, but it’s exceptionally comfortable, fills the palm naturally, and, at least for me, induces less fatigue than slimmer necks.
The Strat-style vibrato is a smart, functional evolution of a classic form. The arm sits securely in a rubber sleeve that keeps it precisely where you want, and the bridge itself is fixed to a substantial brass block and features individually intonatable saddles. The vibrato is so smooth and tuning stable that you will want to use it often. Really aggressive, twitchy vibrato technique can produce knocking against the body as you pitch up—at least as it’s set up at the factory. Otherwise, it’s fun and forgiving to use.
I would be remiss, by the way, if I didn’t mention how good the black limba body looks in satin ice blue metallic with a brushed aluminum pickguard. Though the DC’62 is available in black and desert sand (the latter with gold anodized pickguard), this particular combination is beautiful, elegant, and tasteful in a way that accentuates D’Ambrosio’s timeless lines.
Substantially Yours
The DC’62’s pickups are produced by Tonerider, and they include two stacked noiseless alnico 5 single-coils in the center and neck positions (measuring 7.9 ohms) as well as an alnico 2 unit, also measuring 7.9 ohms, that Eastman calls a “soapbar humbucker with gold-foil cover.” That’s a curious mash up of nomenclature. Traditionally, “soapbar” pickups are P-90s, which are single-coils, and though the gold-foil-style cover looks cool, it doesn’t lend any gold-foil-ness in terms of construction. Tone-wise it inhabits a unique place. Some aspects of its response evoke a Stratocaster bridge pickup rendered large. There are also hints of a Telecaster bridge unit’s meatiness. But of all the pickups I compared it to (at one point there was an SG, Telecaster, Wide Range-equipped Telecaster Deluxe, Stratocaster, and J Mascis Jazzmaster strewn about the room), it sounds most like a Rickenbacker Hi-Gain in an ’80s 330. That’s cool. I think Hi-Gains are underrated and sound fabulous. But the Tonerider unit is definitely not an S-type pickup in any traditional sense. The stacked single-coils, too, deviate significantly from the Stratocaster’s sonic mold. They are noiseless, as advertised, but have heat and push that make a vintage S-style pickup sound glassy and comparatively thin.
The Verdict
With a fantastic neck, smooth playability, and tuning stability that keep you glued to the instrument, the top-quality DC’62 is flat-out fun to play, which is good, given that at $899 it’s in a price class with Fender’s excellent Mexico-made Player II guitars and PRS’s superlative SE series, to name a few. But the DC’62 offers a unique palette of tones that don’t fit neatly into any box, and with a shape that breaks from tradition, it’s a competitively priced way to take sonic and stylistic paths much less trodden