Flame Top Mandolin Burst
The Speed of Sound is a bolt-on construction instrument featuring the Patent-Pending "ResoLink" - a brass plate which links the body and neck to aid in resonance, sustain and articulation. The 'Reso-Link' is tuned specifically to sonically connect the neck and body to aid in the sympathetic resonance of each note. There's a defined note separation and sparkle added to the tones of the guitar that make it reminiscent of the touch-sensitive response of vintage guitars that have had decades to acclimate as a musical instrument and vibrate as one whole piece.
The tone woods of the guitars (fretboards to necks and tops to bodies) are joined together using hot hide glue. The use of hide glue is a process adapted from vintage guitar construction, violin makers, and stringed instruments from decades and centuries past. Hot hide glue adds sustain and brilliance and brings out the natural tonal properties of the wood. The pickups are designed in collaboration with Mark Stow of OX4, a well-respected pickup winder known for his incredibly accurate PAF replicas.
The pickups are a blend of some of Tommy and Mark’s favorite original PAF pickups from the late 1950s. The introductory sets also include a reverse magnet neck pickup to replicate the Peter Green & Gary Moore-owned Burst pickup that has become popular over the last few years. It delivers out-of-phase single coil sounds as well as blistering humbucking tones. The bridge pickup not only takes the best attributes from those early PAFs pickups, but combined with a slightly degaussed Alnico 5 magnet and 42 enamel wire, delivers a sound unmatched in current handmade pickups today.
The hardware and electronics of the guitar are also built of the highest quality materials. The Speed of Sound features a brass tremolo design made popular in the late '70s through early '80s. They are constructed from 360 brass, and the bridges are available in hard-tail and tremolo models. They provide a unique tone and sustain tuning stability due to the unique shape of the bridge saddle. Of course, models are available with Floyd Rose tremolos upon request. The Speed of Sound is wired with vintage-accurate cloth-covered 22-gauge wire with authentic paper-in-oil capacitors and vintage-taper potentiometers designed to get great tones delivered from zero to ten.
Roasted Birdseye Top Merlot Finish
Features
- Solidbody Electric Guitar
- Maple Top (Options for Roasted, Quilt & Flame Maple)
- More Top Wood Options include Ash & Mahogany
- Colletti Carve Neck with Heavily Rolled Shoulders
- 5 Degree Headstock Angle • Brass Side Dots
- 25.5" or 24-3/4" Scale Length Options
- 1.65” Width Brass Nut • Jumbo Nickel Frets
- Specially-Voiced OX4 Pickups with Reverse Magnet Neck Pickup
- Emerson Paper in Oil .022 capacitor
- Mojotone Vintage taper volume and tone potentiometers with Cloth Wiring
- Brass Ground and Jack Plates, , Legacy Control Cavity
- Patent-Pending Reso-Link
Introducing the Colletti Guitars 'Speed of Sound': Vintage-Inspired & American-Made!
Currently, the Colletti Guitars Speed of Sound is available exclusively at The Music Zoo. You can shop at The Music Zoo's website, or make an appointment to the showroom in Farmingdale, New York.
Tennessee has a rich tradition that has helped shape American music. Memphis was a big contributor to blues, soul, and early rock ’n’ roll thanks to Sun, Stax, and the influx of Delta musicians. Nashville has been the long-standing capital of country music, and more recently, has developed as a hotbed of Americana storytellers. The Smokies and the surrounding Appalachian areas have given us bluegrass and undeniable icon Dolly Parton. However, while metal has eluded the Volunteer State’s thumbprint, Whitechapel’s six roughriders from Knoxville are looking to change that by showing off something a little harder than peepaw’s moonshine.
Since 2006, the three-guitar stampede has dished out eight devastating albums that combine death metal, hardcore, and melodic black metal, proving the Smokies can slay. This spring, Whitechapel took to the road, playing their seventh album The Valley in its entirety, along with favorites from their earlier work. Originally, their final stop was slated to be Nashville’s Basement East, but after it quickly sold out, their promoters elevated them to Marathon Music Works (which, once again, sold out). And that’s where the Rig Rundown crew caught up with them to talk gear.
Whitechapel’s guitarists Zach Householder, Ben Savage, and Alex Wade and bassist Gabe Crisp invited PG’s Chris Kies sidestage to cover their signature guitars, the inner workings of their unusual Kemper profiles, and how flip-flopping DiMarzio humbuckers made all the difference.
Brought to you by D’Addario String Finder.
Evil and Angelic
The silhouette of Zach Householder’s Arisitides 070 gives his main 7-string the turbo appeal of a Porsche 911. The futuristic guitar is made from the company’s proprietary Arium material and cast from a one-piece mold that is initially liquid, then hardens to give the instrument its final shape. Householder comments during the Rundown that the Arium-built 7-string is “designed to mimic the porousness of wood without the imperfections, so its resonance is just angelic. It’s the most gorgeous-sounding guitar.” It features a multi-scale setup (25.7"–27"), Hipshot hardware, and Lundgren Black Heaven humbuckers.
Another positive of having a non-traditional electric guitar is the fact that it lacks tonewoods. Householder believes it’s the best instrument to test pickups because “you get the truest form of their sound without any coloration from the composite material.” This sleek machine takes a custom set of D’Addario EXL157 Medium Baritone strings (.011–.068) and it rocks drop-G tuning (G–D–G–C–F–A–D).
Baritone Buzzsaw
Zach’s signature ESP baritone 7-string has a 26.5" scale length on a set-neck construction that pairs a mahogany neck with a maple fretboard into a thick-bodied chunk of mahogany, capped by a quilted maple top. He originally had DiMarzio D-Activator 7 pickups in it, but found the set to be too dark and low-end rich to stand out among the band’s other two guitarists. He experimented with a batch of DiMarzio bridge humbuckers, but nothing was cutting it, so he tried putting a neck D-Activator 7 into the bridge slot. Presto change-o, the low-end fog was lifted: The neck model had decreased output, mids, and lows, but a higher top end compared to the bridge D-Activator 7. He then put the bridge humbucker into the neck slot, and it evened out the guitar.
The ZH sig handles drop-A tuning and is laced up with D’Addario EXL140-8 XL Nickel Wound strings (.010–.074).
Kemper with a Temper
Everyone in Whitechapel with a stringed instrument is running through a Kemper. Householder pulled back the veil and explained that both Ben and Alex are using a patch he created with a Mesa/Boogie Dual Rectifier Rev G, but the preamp section going into the power section of a Diezel Herbert. The Shure SM57 capturing this setup was placed in front of a Marshall-voiced Celestion Vintage 30 speaker. Zach’s core patch is based around an EVH 5150 III 50-Watt 6L6 that was modded with old Mullard EL37 tubes. He ran that through a 16-ohm Marshall 1960AV 4x12 that had a pair of 8-ohm Mesa/Boogie Vintage 30s and used the Fredman miking technique (two 57s with one head-on and another 45 degrees off-axis of the cone).
Savage 7
Before Mark Holcomb and his SVN signature took over the 7-string ranks for PRS, the Maryland outfit offered a standard SVN 7-string guitar. Ben Savage’s main squeeze for The Valley tour was this custom iteration. For the model, he requested an eye-catching white pearl finish, an official Floyd Rose bridge, and a set of DiMarzio D-Activator 7 humbuckers. While recording the band’s 2012 self-titled album, Savage A/B’d a bunch of humbuckers and found the D-Activator 7 pair to have the most brutal yet retained string-to-string, note-to-note definition. So, he’s stayed loyal to them for over a decade. He upgraded the bridge and locking-nut components with titanium pieces from FU-Tone. It does come with a coil tap for the bridge D-Activator that gets pulled out for the opening of “Black Bear.” Similar to Householder, he goes with D’Addario EXL157 Medium Baritone strings (.011–.068).
Svn Heaven
Here’s Savage’s second PRS SVN that has a matte black finish and a standard PRS string-through, plate-style bridge. It also has the DiMarzio D-Activator 7s.
Baritone Bomber
Alex Wade trusted this ESP E-II M-II 7B Baritone EverTune model for the bulk of their Valley set. It’s formed with alder wings around a 3-piece, neck-through maple neck that’s matched with an ebony fretboard. It has a 27" scale length, 24 stainless-steel frets, a bone nut, Gotoh locking tuners, an EverTune bridge, and DiMarzio D-Activator 7 ’buckers. It handles all the drop-G material.
Wade's Warhorse
For all the material not on The Valley, Wade enlists his ESP LTD AW-7 Alex Wade Signature. Key specs include a swamp ash body, a 5-piece maple-walnut-paduak neck with bolt-on configuration, Macassar ebony fretboard, 24 extra-jumbo, stainless-steel frets, DiMarzio D-Activator 7s that are direct mounted to the body, and a striking open-grain, black-satin finish set off with gold hardware and pole pieces. He loved playing the previous E-II M-II 7B so much, he sent his namesake 7 to EverTune so they could retrofit it with its patented bridge system.
Rugged Raptor
Andy Powers Teaches Tonewoods
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The SoCal native—and surfer—Powers provides his backstory in guitar design and building, starting with his hobbyist-musician parents and their friends. His first build … exploded, but he’s done considerably better since! By the time he was a teenager, he was building and selling guitars on his own, as well as doing repairs for local music shops. But even before that, he’d gotten in trouble with the IRS for making too much money as a luthier. Later, van life, as a touring player, didn’t satisfy him, but after he graduated college he already had a two-to-three-year waiting list of guitar orders. From there, it was a short twist of luck—and multiple encounters with company founder Bob Taylor—that brought him to Taylor Guitars.
Powers also addresses conservatism in guitar design, and how to break the cycle while participating in the tradition. And yes, he dives into the tonewood controversy …. and tells a “basic truth” about guitars: neck woods and shapes do matter. As do personal touches, including the occasional crack in a top … and the bumper sticker covering it! Andy also comments on the difference between acoustic and electric players, and notes that “some of the best acoustic guitar sounds I’ve ever heard start with a microphone.” Powers observes: “It’s pretty easy to go down those rabbit holes.” And these guys do! Especially when they talk how to get to best live acoustic guitar tone. And the grand finale: Andy, Rhett, and Zack dip a rig … and explain duplex scaling.