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Reader Guitar of the Month: Plectron Labs Prototype

Reader Guitar of the Month: Plectron Labs Prototype

Name: Bill Follett

Hometown: Calabasas, California

Guitar: Plectron Labs Prototype #1

After a California wildfire destroyed his home and all his instruments, a guitarist took matters into his own hands and started building for the future.

This adventure started with an event that none of us ever want to experience. I had 10 minutes to gather a suitcase, some pictures, and choose one (and only one) guitar to save. It was 2 a.m. at our home in the mountains on the outskirts of Los Angeles when we got the call to evacuate immediately because of an approaching wildfire. We had to fit whatever we could into our cars. I left some expensive guitars, including two that I’ve had for over 40 years, but brought my number one, my Reverend Spacehawk. We lost the house and everything in it. I replaced a number of guitars with insurance money, but still, my desire for guitars vastly outpaced my budget. Then Covid hit.


So, I came up with a new plan for my newfound free time: start building guitars. I started off with the basics—I found myself an inexpensive guitar that I could modify without fear of damaging it. My theory was that 90 percent of the tone is due to the electronics, so this would be my prototyping unit.

I spent $150 each on boutique pickups, settling on a Curtis Novak Gold Foil in the bridge position, (thanks to a demo by PG’s John Bohlinger: “You can’t get a bad tone with these pickups”) for those awesome-sounding distorted tones, and a TV Jones Classic in the neck for that sweet Gretsch-like clean sound. I used a Seymour Duncan Liberator volume pot, since it has solder-free connections which allow for easy pickup swaps. I used top-notch push-pull pots, capacitors, switches, and jacks. The gold-foil pickup sounds great but has lots of treble, so a good tone-knob circuit is essential. I’ve never been a fan of the tone knob on any of my guitars, so I figured I needed to do something different. I tried ’50s wiring, along with a lower capacitance “warmth knob” (both with guidance from PG’s Dirk Wacker). For the first time ever, I loved using the tone knob!

With a background in the aeronautical industry and Malibu beaches, I wanted a body shape with hints of surf, space, and aerodynamics. I took a napkin sketch and started plotting it using Excel. That quickly got out of hand. Next thing I knew, I had a full design spreadsheet, complete with pulldown menus for scale length, pickups, tremolo, body thickness, etc. I was even calculating guitar weight and center of gravity because the last thing I wanted to do was invest all my hopes and dreams into this guitar and find out that it constantly falls off my lap.

After iterating on the design for far too long, I got to work. I wanted the first prototype to be cheap; I knew there would be mistakes. I got the cheapest body blank I could find (poplar) for $60. I wanted a Jaguar-like 24"-scale neck, but those aren’t cheap, so I got a 25 1/2"-scale Mighty Mite neck for $100 and will do the 24" version next time. The first bolt-up revealed that the body and neck resonated shockingly well when I tried them acoustically, but the body required some reshaping for better upper fret access. I finished the body with Rust-Oleum spray paint: primer, metallic blue base coat, blue sparkle, and clear glaze on top. This cost $40 and I’m very happy with the result.

I went with a Staytrem bridge, a Jazzmaster-style tremolo (placed relatively close to the bridge to minimize string buzz), and Steinberger tuners. Finally, I added two additional push-pull pots with solder-free connections for future exploration and wiring adventures.

I love the sound of this prototype, and it fed into my other Covid project, which was to release my first ever EP under the name “Plectromatics.” I learned so much on this journey and can’t wait to see how the 24"-scale version comes out, and what songs it will inspire!

Send your guitar story to submissions@premierguitar.com.

Reader: Federico Novelli
Hometown: Genoa, Italy
Guitar: The Italian Hybrid

Reader Federico Novelli constructed this hybrid guitar from three layers of pine, courtesy of some old shelves he had laying around.

Through a momentary flash, an amateur Italian luthier envisioned a hybrid design that borrowed elements from his favorite models.

A few years ago, at the beginning of Covid, an idea for a new guitar flashed through my mind. It was a semi-acoustic model with both magnetic and piezo pickups that were mounted on a soundboard that could resonate. It was a nice idea, but I also had to think about how to make it in my tiny cellar without many power tools and using old solid-wood shelves I had available.

I have been playing guitar for 50 years, and I also dabble in luthiery for fun. I have owned a classical guitar, an acoustic guitar, and a Stratocaster, but a jazz guitar was missing from the list. I wanted something that would have more versatility, so the idea of a hybrid semi-acoustic guitar was born.

I started to sketch something on computer-aided design (CAD) software, thinking of a hollowbody design without a center block or sides that needed to be hot-worked with a bending machine. I thought of a construction made of three layers of solid pine wood, individually worked and then glued together in layers, with a single-cutaway body and a glued-in neck.

For the soundboard and back, I used a piece of ash and hand-cut it with a Japanese saw to the proper thickness, so I had two sheets to fit together. Next, I sanded the soundboard and bottom using two striker profiles as sleds and an aluminum box covered in sandpaper to achieve a uniform 3 mm thickness. A huge amount of work, but it didn't cost anything.

“It was a nice idea, but I also had to think about how to make it in my tiny cellar without many electric tools and out of old solid-wood shelves I had available.”

The soundboard has simplified X-bracing, a soundhole with a rosewood edge profile, and an acoustic-style rosewood bridge. For the neck, I used a piece of old furniture with straight grain, shaped it to a Les Paul profile, and added a single-action truss rod. The only new purchase: a cheap Chinese rosewood fretboard.

Then, there was lots of sanding. I worked up to 400-grit, added filler, primer, and transparent nitro varnish, worked the sandpaper up to 1,500-grit, and finally polished.

Our reader and his “Italian job.”

For electronics, I used a Tonerider alnico 2 humbucker pickup and a piezo undersaddle pickup, combined with a modified Shadow preamp that also includes a magnetic pickup input, so you can mix the two sources on a single output. I also installed a bypass switch for power on/off and a direct passive output.

I have to say that I am proud and moderately satisfied both aesthetically and with the sounds it produces, which range from jazz to acoustic and even gypsy jazz. However, I think I will replace the electronics and piezo with Fishman hardware in the future.

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