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Hot Rod Garage: Mods from Readers

An eye-popping gallery of radically reimagined guitars.

Scott Bennett
Greenwich, Connecticut’s 812 Guitars made this double-cutaway axe for Scott Bennett, lead guitarist for the band Awaken. It boasts a one-piece roasted quartersawn maple neck (with reverse headstock), a one-piece alder body (with the words “Olde School” carved in), direct-mounted DiMarzio Tone Zone and Air Norton pickups, Hipshot tuners, and brass hardware. “It sounds like a Les Paul but weighs in at under seven pounds,” reports Bennett. “It plays incredibly well and sounds ballistic!”

Throughout the year we collect stories and photos of guitar-mod projects created by you, our dear readers. Some are so inspiring that we include them here in our annual Hot Rod issue.

Duane Denison of the Jesus Lizard, EGC Chessie in hands, coaxing some nasty tones from his Hiwatt.

Photo by Mike White

After 26 years, the seminal noisy rockers return to the studio to create Rack, a master class of pummeling, machine-like grooves, raving vocals, and knotty, dissonant, and incisive guitar mayhem.

The last time the Jesus Lizard released an album, the world was different. The year was 1998: Most people counted themselves lucky to have a cell phone, Seinfeld finished its final season, Total Request Live was just hitting MTV, and among the year’s No. 1 albums were Dave Matthews Band’s Before These Crowded Streets, Beastie Boys’ Hello Nasty, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, Korn’s Follow the Leader, and the Armageddonsoundtrack. These were the early days of mp3 culture—Napster didn’t come along until 1999—so if you wanted to hear those albums, you’d have to go to the store and buy a copy.

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Photo by Ross Halfin

Metallica's M72 World Tour will be extended into a third year with 21 North American shows spanning April, May, and June 2025.

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The Jack White Pano Verb features unique stereo-imagine options. “[White] wanted to be able to do sort of startling things with each speaker’s content,” says Fender’s Stan Cotey.

Fender’s Jack White Collection dropped this week, and it includes what might be the most exciting tube amp design in decades. Fender’s Stan Cotey shares some firsthand insight into this unique amp’s design.

This week, Fender and Jack White dropped a new line that spun heads across the guitar-gear universe, proving that the Third Man’s brain knows no bounds. White has been blowing minds with Third Man Hardware’s line of collaboratively conceived gear. Working with makers of all sizes, each yellow-and-black piece is as unique as White himself.

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Beetronics FX Tuna Fuzz pedal offers vintage-style fuzz in a quirky tuna can enclosure.

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