Before landing his gig with Elder, Michael Risberg spent a lot of time at Spindrift Guitars in Connecticut. (Luckily, he was paid to do so.) The shop has a luthier team of Mark Stoleson and Michael Whitney who build guitars under the Stol Guitars moniker. The classic T has a one-piece swamp ash body, Brazilian rosewood fretboard, a one-piece torrefied maple neck, Bakelite pickguard, and Michael and “Whit” handwound the single-coils. He was given the guitar just before joining Elder and it’s been his only axe used on the gig. Michael admits that he’s been obsessed with Tele ticklers Bill Frisell and Julian Lage for years (hence the order of the blackguard T) and it’s probably not the typical guitar you’d use for the Elder’s heavy and psychedelic stylings, but he thinks it a Swiss-army instrument that sounds killer and meshes well with Nick’s dual-humbucker sweetie.