RARE UNUSUAL TENNESSEE SEE THRU ACOUSTIC ELECTRIC GUITARFor $150, it seemed worth checking out. There are some interesting features, quite apart from the skeletal form. The long - to my eyes country looking - headstock, the add-on comfy chair armrest/horns bearing more than a passing resemblance to the OpenSource inspired ZoyBar and the decidedly painted on finish adding a craftsman-like retro feel to it.
I've Exhausted Myself Trying To Find Information Online About This Guitar, And Can't Seem To Find Any! It's A Very Imaginative Style & Plays & Sounds Like It Should. The Neck Has A Very Slight Bow To It, But Doesn't Affect The Playing. I Tuned It To An Open D Tuning & Played Some Bottleneck With It & Was Surprised At Well It Did. It Has A Built In Pickup That Sounds Very Good, & It Takes A 9 Volt Battery. It's A Little Tricky To Close The Battery Access Cover. You Can Be The Only Kid On The Block, Or IN TheCity, Or Maybe The State, To Have One Of These Very Cool Tennessee Guitars.
Buy It Now For $149
What is the guitar on page 15? According to the book it should be the 57 Chevy but I can't find this model anywhere on the internet.My answer (which a friend has posted on Amazon.com for me because having a UK Amazon account I am unable to post on the American site) is as follows:
Hi Thomas,G L Wilson
I wish the publishers had let me check through the proofs before going to print because they got a lot of the pictures wrong. I did offer to do this for them and was never taken up on the offer. Right at the start I was told I could choose ANY guitars I wanted to write about and that their art department would find the pictures, and that it wouldn't be a problem.
The guitar in the picture on page 15 is a guitar made by Auerswald Instruments, a German company specialising in innovative designs. On page 22 there is a write up of the Auerswald Model C guitar, but the picture on page 15 isn't a Model C. It's not a model currently on their website but you'll see from the other guitars in the range that stylistically it shares many traits including the "Sustain Bow" arm connecting the head to the body.
If you want to see a picture of a 57 Chevy, just Google "American Showster 57 Chevy" and check the images!
"It is not a Auerswald. It's a model inspired by Auerswald made by Ed Roman:Grrrrr... This is what happens when you let your publishers collect together the photos to go in your guitar book.
http://www.edroman.com/guitars/abstract/kingpin.htm
Throughout the 900 Sicily was one of the most relevant production centres of musical instrument together with The Marches and Lombardy. Set so far away from the high standards of the arch instruments made in Cremona and from the quality of the Neapolitan mandolins, Sicily was quickly renown as the land of luthiers. Curiously, all Sicilian luthiers were born in Catania, at the feet of Etna, the volcano.Currently listed on eBay UK with a starting price of £350 and Buy It Now price of $675.
The poor economy of the region highly contributed to the huge migrant wave in the 20s towards France that gave birth to an extraordinary school of French luthiery. The luthiers from Catania are to be mentioned: Pappalardo, Di Mauro, Amico, Anastasio, Busato, Bucolo, Castelluccia, Favino, Olivieri, Burgassi, Martella, Grizzo, Rossito, Petillo...among many others.
Luthiers in Sicily were always open to both the Baroque influence from Spain and to the innovations coming from Europe and The States. The first great star among Sicilian luthiers was surely Carmelo Catania who was the only one to understand that the image of the luthier had to become more of a businessman to survive on the internal and international market. Carmelo Catania’s golden age was from the end of the war to the 60s. The cultural and economic situation brought Carmelo Catania to produce an incredible wide range of crafted instruments on industrial scale. The few pages of his catalogue here reported show his skills in bringing together all the different external influences in a typically Sicilian sensitivity. Carmelo Catania was probably the first luthier to organize himself industrially, promoting himself, exporting guitars, settling commercial alleys and trades. He created a real production headquarter in Sicily making instruments or parts on behalf of third parties.
Hello,Thank you for allowing us to see these pictures, François. It looks to be a very interesting project and the ultimate design is indeed quite pleasing to the eye (obviously I cannot comment on the sound or playability).
Firstly, excuse my English, I'm a regular reader from Nantes, France.
My bass has been in constant amelioration for the last 2 years, but I'm really satisfied with its current state, so I thougt I might send some pictures for your blog, you might be interested!
The body is originally made from a cheap 30€ short-scale accoustic guitar, that has been cut in half to achieve a semi-accoustic bass thickness. It was consolidated with pieces of wood inside, and we just had to add a new back!
The neck, pickup and hardware come from a rather ugly Stagg bass I already had.
The upper horn was added one year later, after we decided that the shape and the balance of the instrument would be greatly improved by it. It's made mostly of MDF, and foam!
I took the inspiration for the colour scheme from a Harmony acoustic guitar I saw on the Internet, maybe on your very blog, with a blue pickguard matching the headstock.
After some trouble setting the action, and a few shims added to the neck, it now sounds quite good, with a nice resonant sound coming from the hollow body, reminding me of some Danelectro basses!
My brother and I are quite proud of this build, and me of him who did most of the building work!
Regards,
François.
I have a guitar that's a little weird, maybe even weird enough for your blog. It's a Telecaster/Jazzmaster hybrid, I built it myself (from parts). It has a swamp ash body with nitro paint job, a solid rosewood neck, Kluson lockhead machines, pickups by David Barfuss (the neck PU is a Fender Wide Range Humbucker-inspired design), a Fender bridge with compensated saddles by Wilkinson, and Fender Jazz Bass knobs. The guitar sounds phenomenal, and I'm very proud of it, obviously. What do you think?Ah yes, don't these "Telemaster" guitars have something of a cult following? I've seen a number of variations on this theme on builder's forums, and I believe the Fender Custom Shop have produced the occasional example. Anyway, I reckon it looks to be a mighty fine guitar, Thomas, thanks for allowing us to show it here.
Regards,
Thomas
I've been a reader of your blog for a little over two years, and I assured myself that if I finished a significant project- I'd send it in to Guitarz. That being said, writing this email is proving to be a rather frightening experience. I'm well aware that the mutilation of vintage musical instruments is a practice that's frowned upon by you and the vast majority of your readers. (A Peavey Predator that someone went after with a jigsaw a few weeks back comes to mind.)Could this conversion of an old Airline acoustic into an electric guitar be considered sacrilege? Well, I think we'll leave that question for the devoted Airline fans to decide on. For myself, I think it looks fantastic. There's a major difference between your customized Airline and the crudely chopped-up Peavey that you mentioned. The Peavey was a completely inexpert bodge-job that just ended up looking like an abomination. As a contrast, your customization of the Airline guitar seems to have been carried out with some reverence to the brand; it's sympathetic to the style and vintage nature of Airline Guitars and the era from which they come from.
Your write up of this project may very well read like a scathing greatest hits of your favorite amateurish DIY criticisms, with the situation worsened by the fact that I'm attempting to sell it. I'm not saying this in the hope that you'll pull punches- I'm just acknowledging that I understand what I'm getting myself into.
Johnny
This is the best photo I could get and didn't get to ask the bass player - is it just a Thunderbird?Ah, here is the bass version of a guitar I am often asked to identify. It's a Gibson RD Artist Bass, which was introduced in late 1977 and was Gibson's first bass to feature active electronics. Working in conjunction with Moog electronics and The Who's John Entwistle, the design team at Gibson consisted of Chuck Burge (woodwork), Tim Shaw (electronics) and was overseen by Bruce Bolen.
The band are The Idle Hands Band, a great blues rock band that I saw at Newark Blues Festival on Sunday.
cheers
Gary
Nobody has ever found out which guitar model I'm playing so I just thought it could be interesting for your blog. Guitarz is the only guitar blog I follow and I don't think this is useful for anybody else. I enjoy reading every single post, even when I dislike the picture, and I wonder what'd you say about this one.Thanks for that, Miguel. Despite being a guitar enthuiast I am unashamedly a fan of electronic music, so Monstuobot certainly appeal to me musically.
I think it's quite easy to find out which was the original model (which was bought new and used in the band for many years before its modification).
Several guitars have been played in Monstruobot: from Fender with single coils to Gibson Firebird with mini humbuckers, but the sound of the guitar in this band is 100% effect pedals and the best result came out after accidentally a luthier in Tenerife helped me finding those pick ups, modifying the body and painting it white.
So don't miss the pedalboard which is cheaper and easier to carry than those heavy rockcases... I just put it into my skateboard bag and that's it :)
We will take these "things" to USA and Mexico after summer as Monstruobot has this 3-week tour from New York to Tijuana!
Best regards from the Canary Islands and congratulations for such a great blog!
Miguel.-
www.decaucho.com
Quilt Top One Off Custom Les Paul type guitar with great specificationNow, I'm not normally into quilted or highly figured tops, there is something a bit precious about them, but overall I like this guitar. It is definitely my kind of Les Paul. I think the feature that absolutely clinches it for me is the location of the pickup selector switch, i.e. down by the other conrols. I really dislike the positioning of the selector switch on regular layout Les Pauls both from a practical viewpoint (I always end up hitting it by accident) and from an aesthetical point of view (sitting up there on its own it looks like a pimple on someone's arse).
I bought this guitar new around 18months ago through eBay and I've been delighted with it.
It was bought as a prototype model for a company called Bluesbelle and as such the fit and finish is excellent (presumably this guitar was used to secure sponsor funding and retailer orders).
The guitar has a mahogany body that is slightly slimmer than a traditional Les Paul. It has 5 ply binding to the body and highly figured quilted front and rear caps (even the cavity cover is quilted!!). The neck is bound and features 22 well dressed jumbo frets on an ebony fingerboard with side-markers. The guitar features gold hardware throughout.
The guitar has been upgraded to include a set of Tonerider Alnico 2 Classic Humbuckers (pretty much Gibson Burstbucker 2 & 3 copies) with 500k CTS pots, mullard capacitors and 50's spec wiring, a set of sperzel style locking disc tuners have been added to aid tuning stability & mismatched knobs have been added to aid adjustments when singing and a bone nut has recently been fitted and cut by my local luthier. The headstock features an inlaid Lucky Clover logo and no manufacturer name.
I bought it for around £300 and I felt it represented something of a bargain given the specification. Since then I've spent in excess of another £100 on upgrades.
The original seller stated they were expecting the retail model to have an RRP of £599 and I see no reason why that wouldn't be the case as it plays as well as other similar mainstream overseas guitars in that price bracket eg. ESP, Epiphone, PRS SE etc. I've only seen one other that was identical to the original spec of this guitar but it was a tobacco burst finish with the manufacturers name on the headstock and it was been offered for sale at £495 second hand...
This Lane Poor Minima headless bass has a highly unusual style of fingerboard with "carbon glass" frets is again being offered for sale. If you missed our previous post about this very instrument last year, you can see it here.
Currently listed on eBay with a Buy It Now price of $2,900.
Am I wrong, or is it real that you never had a post on your great website about the wonderful Peavey Razer guitar from the early eighties? The shape is supposed to replicate a razor, all I know is that it's really intriguing, innovative and well done.Thanks Grégory. We always enjoy seeing pictures and hearing about readers' guitars. Please keep them coming in!
I own one of these, built in 1983, according to the serial number. It's like a brand new unit, with some really nice ideas in it: vertical holes on the surface of the mechanics [machine heads? - GLW], so you can "plug" the string in it before you start rolling (simple idea, great improvement!), neck has no board but it is built in 2 parts of wood so it stay straight (truss rod inside anyway), Single Coil / Humbucker switch when turning down the tone knobs (you reach 7, humbucker kicks in), the bridge is in plain metal so very solid. I'm sure the guitar could survive a nuclear disaster.