The Banning TeleBacker - If Rickenbacker built a Telecaster...

guitarz.blogspot.com:

...it would look like this, the TeleBacker, made in the USA by Banning Guitars custom shop.

The example in the photographs reproduced here is currently listed for sale on eBay with a Buy It Now price of US $1,899.99.

G L Wilson

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Becker Retro - a contemporary ergonomic guitar handmade in the USA

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This Becker Retro guitar reminded me of some of Bertram's original drawings for his guitar designs as seen on his Guitarren blog.

Here's what the eBay seller tells us about the guitar:

Becker Guitars began in 1995 as a repair shop in the basement of founder Dan Becker. After its first years of operation, Becker Guitars moved to a new shop in Stoughton, Massachusetts. While the company grew into a full service guitar repair and restoration center, Becker began venturing into guitar making.

In the spring of 2006 Dan Becker, brought on Maine guitar luthier Ryan Martin and began to focus on designing and producing custom instruments. Becker soon moved from its smaller shop in Stoughton, Massachusetts to a larger space in Attleboro, Massachusetts in order to accommodate a growing production line.

In 2007 Becker unveiled their first prototype, an Imperial model, to the public at the first annual Premier Guitar Festival. 2008 saw the release of Becker Guitars' flagship production line, The Retro Series. First introduced in 2008, The Retro Series is our flagship guitar line.

This model features a mahogany body which is contoured to maximise comfort and ease playability. The neck is also mahogany, with a Flamed Maple fretboard, 16 inch radius, 22 stainless steel fret. Gotoh machine heads.

An interesting feature is an additional “zero” fret (see photo) to allow closer control of string tension and also allows for much lower action. The action on this model is very low, making it an incredibly fast neck indeed. The neck is topped off with a bone nut.

The Pickups are incredible - Lindy Fralin Hot Humbuckers, each of which is coil tapped (separate switch controlling each), to make a huge range of tones available. Pickups are selected via a three-way toggle switch (Neck, Neck/Bridge combined and Bridge). There is also a “kill-switch”, so cancel all output when required.

All-in-all, this is a top specification guitar, hand-crafted using the best materials available, extremely flexible with great playability.

The body colour is Kiwi Green and it has a Satin Nitrocellulose Lacquer Finish. The wooden pickguard is made from the same flamed maple as the fingerboard, so there is no “plastic” feel to this instrument whatsoever.

(Text probably originally from Becker Guitars themselves).

Currently listed on eBay UK with a Buy It Now price of £1,450.

G L Wilson

© 2014, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - the blog that goes all the way to 11!
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Barcley-branded Japanese copy of Fender Maverick/Custom

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The Fender Custom - also known as the Maverick (see here) - was a short-lived model "designed" by the CBS-owned incarnation of the Fender Corporation and was really an exercise in using up stock body and neck components for the Fender Electric XII (first produced in 1965) which had not proved to be a big seller. The resulting guitars do appear to our eyes now to be Frankenstein jobs, but perhaps we should applaud Fender who were essentially simply re-cycling (or is that up-cycling) parts. According to Fender, just "several hundred" were made and the model was never popular; it was only produced for one year and managed to hang on in the Fender catalogue until 1972.

...which makes it all the more bizarre that someone in Japan thought it would be a good guitar to make a copy of. Witness the photos above of this Japanese-made Barcley guitar currently listed on eBay UK. The hardware is pretty standard fodder for cheap Japanese guitars of the time, and the neck makes no attempt to copy the 12-string derived hockeystick headstock of the Fender "original". In fact, here the headstock is a design that some of us might recognise from other Japanese brands such as Greco and Sekova.

The body design, however, is pure Custom/Maverick. It seems strange to think that this body was cut out and shaped deliberately to look like the body of a guitar that took a Fender Electric XII body and cut chunks off of it!

This guitar is currently listed on eBay UK and has a Buy It Now price of £129. Thanks to occasional Guitarz contributor David from Barcelona for bringing this guitar to my attention via the Vintage Japanese Guitar Fanclub group page on Facebook. Incidentally, the discussion on the thread concerning this guitar mentions that the Barcley brandname (spelt with a "E") was for guitars intended for the Canadian market, whereas Barclay (with an "A") was for the USA.

You can read more about the original Fender Custom/Maverick and also the similar "up-cycled" Swinger/Musiclander/Arrow model here.

G L Wilson

© 2014, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - the blog that goes all the way to 11!
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Taras Guitars VP-1 - Could this be the next big guitar innovation?

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The first time I saw a photo of a VP-1 prototype from Taras Guitars I was quite perplexed. Surely the guitar was missing a bunch of strings seeing as it had such a wide fingerboard but just the six strings running down the centre. However, that first photo I saw was a close-up, and I didn't appreciate how the curvature of the fingerboard towards the nut.

A quick view of the Taras Guitars website explained the concept. The wide, surfboard-shaped fretboard means that "'New' notes and sounds can be found when the frets are extended and strings are bent AWAY". Indeed it's all to facilitate extreme string bending. For more information, check out the video.

G L Wilson

© 2014, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - the blog that goes all the way to 11!
Please read our photo and content policy.

Rob O Reilly Guitars - innovative electric and MIDI guitar from Ireland

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No-one could accuse Ireland's Rob O Reilly Guitars of pointlessly churning out the same old tried and tested guitar designs that we've all seen before. Instead they've gone for cutting edge innovation and originality with their guitar designs, the ROR BE and MIDI guitars.

Their latest model is a variant of their BE guitar and is is equipped with built-in Fishman TriplePlay wireless MIDI controller.

The standard guitar features a high grade maple fingerboard with ultra-tough white lacquer and non-chip binding and black edge fingerboard position dots; Maple bolt-on neck with smooth easy-slide matt black finish; 6 rear locking die-cast tuners for quick string change and stable tuning.  Most notably, the middle section of each guitar where the pickups and bridge are mounted is made from see-through perspex. A second perspex plate on rear of the guitar allows the owner to customise the guitar by inserting their own artwork. Upgrade options include an Apple iOS interface to allows the guitar to be played through an iPhone or iPad, and an "Infinity Mirror" which is essentially a cool lighting effect with LEDs inside the perspex sandwich of the body.

Other features include an integrated pick holder and a balance bar to ensure the guitar hangs nicely on a strap and doesn't neck dive.

It does look very cool even if it is reminiscent of half a pair of spectacles. I am also reminded of the Swinger Tennis Racket Guitars which also featured wooden bodies with a perspex centre section.

Furthermore these innovative guitars are affordable with the basic BE model priced at €399 and the Roland GK-3-equipped MIDI guitar at €599.

A bass model is also in the works!

G L Wilson

© 2014, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - the blog that goes all the way to 11!
Please read our photo and content policy.

Retro-V - it's gotta be such hard work thinking up new guitar designs...

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Design-wise this Retro-V RV-II (a handmade guitar so it's the only one in existence) is a real melting pot with Stratocaster, Flying V, Randy Rhoads Roswell and violin bass all being thrown into the mix for good measure. It actually looks to be very nicely constructed and features a five-piece mahogany and maple neck.

Currently listed on eBay with a Buy It Now price of US $600.

G L Wilson

© 2014, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - the blog that goes all the way to 11!
Please read our photo and content policy.

Beautiful minimalist steel and glass guitars from Hungary

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Never mind if you can't speak Hungarian, this video is still well worth checking out. I like that these steel and glass guitars push the boundaries of guitar design to its limits. The irony is, of course, that most of these sophisticated pieces of engineering are actually descendants of that most primitive type of guitar, namely those made from cigar boxes and other recycled parts and played with a slide.

Thanks to Guitarz reader Arpad for bringing these highly individual instruments to my attention.

G L Wilson

© 2014, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - the blog that goes all the way to 11!
Please read our photo and content policy.

1990s Alvarez Successor - a lesser-known guitar from the company who like taking unexpected chunks out of their bodies

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You may remember the Alvarez Scoop guitars which had an extended lower cutaway which actually passed beneath the strings as if threatening to bisect the guitar body in two. Here we see a lesser known model from the same company, the Alvarez Successor. Once again, it has a big chunk taken out of the body - this time the wood has been banished from behind the bridge/locking trem. Whether this is in any way beneficial to the performance of the guitar, I really couldn't say. But then it is a hangover from the pointy guitar excesses of the later 1980s when image seemed far more important than practicality.

Currently listed on eBay with a Buy It Now price of US $499.

G L Wilson

© 2014, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - the blog that goes all the way to 11!
Please read our photo and content policy.

Hallmark Stradette Custom - the lovechild of Stradivarius and Mosrite!

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Damn! This guitar is just so cool. We've featured Hallmark guitars before, and they are always worth a good look at because their designs are rather eye-catching. This one is a Hallmark Stradette Custom and it looks like the lovechild of a Stradivarius violin and a Mosrite electric guitar. It features a thinline double-cutaway body with an arched maple top and back; a solid center block of seasoned hardwood to minimize feedback and provides sustain; and two wide range high output pickups with individual volume and tone controls. Available from Hallmark Guitars for $1199.

G L Wilson

© 2013, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - the blog that goes all the way to 11!
Please read our photo and content policy.

Very cool Millimetric Bass inspired by Travis Bean

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Florian Schneider (not to be confused with the other Florian Schneider) is a luthier currently living in Montreal, who builds really beautifully designed and handmade guitars and basses under the Millimetric name (we previously looked at a couple of examples in this blog post). Here we see pictures of one of his very latest builds: it's a bass guitar which incorporates an unusual method of construction in that the neck is mounted and bolted into a neck pocket on the rear of the body and which extends beneath the pickups and the bridge.

You'll notice that the strings are mounted through the body and that they pass through the tongue of the neck which must increase the tension in the neck pocket and, I'd imagine, the sustain of the instrument. Schneider readily admits that he borrowed this construction method from the now legendary Travis Bean guitars and basses, although of course his necks are carved from wood rather than being cast in aluminium.

G L Wilson

© 2013, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - the blog that goes all the way to 11!
Please read our photo and content policy.

MotorAve Fastback - gorgeous contemporary American guitar design

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We've previously looked at another guitar from MotorAve, namely their BelAire model (as used by Queens Of The Stone Age's Josh Homme). The above pictured guitar, however, looking like nothing else on Earth is a MotorAve Fastback. The guitar was designed and built from solid mahogany by Mark Fuqua in Los Angeles and is one of the earliest that he made with a serial number of 0004.

Currently listed on eBay with a Buy It Now price of £2,000.

G L Wilson

© 2013, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - the blog that goes all the way to 11!
Please read our photo and content policy.

Born Custom Guitars OG-Drop solidbody electric guitar with Pistachio top

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Of course, here at Guitarz we don't just focus on weird and wonderful guitar finds on the auction sites. We're guitar aficionados and besides all the weird and wonderful guitars, vintage instruments, beautiful - or even occasionally horrendous - guitars, we are very keen to celebrate contemporary guitar design, and we have a particular fondness for the "little guy", i.e. the small guitar companies out there who are keeping the spirit of experimentation and guitar design alive. The guitar pictured here is a case in point, an experimentation in the use of an alternative and rather unusual tonewood. I'll allow Campbell Davis of Born Custom Guitars to explain:

We (Born Custom Guitars) are a new and small company located in Colorado. We're all big fans (all three of us!) of your blog, and we wanted to share a guitar that we recently completed that we feel is pretty unique. As a company, we love traditional tone woods, but we also really like experimenting with and promoting alternative tone woods. In either case, we use only salvaged, reclaimed, or sustainably sourced woods.

The guitar seen in the attached photos and video is our "OG-Drop" model. This particular guitar sports a Port Orford Cedar body and neck, Granadillo fretboard, and a Pistachio top…that's right, Pistachio! Pistachio trees are grown commercially for their nuts, but are only commercially productive for 50-80 years. After that point, they are usually chipped/scrapped, despite the fact that they can often live up to 200 years. The Pistachio top on this guitar was salvaged from a farm in California before it was scrapped. Pistachio is very heavy, hard, and dense and pairs very well with the lightweight and airy Port Orford Cedar (POC). The POC neck and body originate from a southern Oregon forest that was almost completely destroyed by a 500,000 acre fire a little more than a decade ago. The fire left many dead but harvestable trees. POC is really lightweight but incredibly straight grained and stable and we've found it to be an excellent alternative for Maple necks.

Thanks to the guys at Born Custom Guitars for showing us this beauty. I personally think it looks quite stunning, and as the video demonstrates it sounds sweet too!

G L Wilson

© 2013, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - the blog that goes all the way to 11!
Please read our photo and content policy.

Stump Preacher - weird headless travel guitar - Made in the USA

guitarz.blogspot.com:

This Stump Preacher guitar is a weird looking critter, the weird name is rather strangely appropriate for this lumpy-looking headless design with its tuners proudly radiating around the front of the guitar body. You'd probably want a back-up instrument if this was your main stage guitar, because I can't imagine string changes are very quick to achieve. To access the tuner posts you need to open up the body which splits in half.

I remember seeing these guitars online several years ago, but the Stump Preacher website has long since vanished so I guess that the company is no longer a going concern. It also means that it's difficult to find out details of these guitars, but the seller of this example tells us that:

The one-piece body of this guitar begins with an internal core with properties similar to those of wood. This core is then wrapped with carbon fiber composite. The density can of this internal core can also be adjusted to produce different tone and sustain characteristics. [...] The neck is made of the same epoxy/graphite composite material used in snowboards, and the body is a high-impact polyurethane found on car bumpers. The only lumber to be found on the guitar is on its fret board.

This particular example is is finished in purple, but other Stump Preachers featured graphic designs which were "...actually molded into the body of the guitar between the composite and outermost layer so it won't just scratch off."

Currently listed on eBay with a Buy It Now price of $1,500.

G L Wilson

© 2013, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - the blog that goes all the way to 11!
Please read our photo and content policy.

More vintage Japanese solidbody wackiness: Zenon ZES-170

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I have no idea how this 1960s Japanese-made Zenon ZES-170 guitar might sound, but aesthetically it's a triumph ... that is, so long as you appreciate such retro wackiness.

I'd like to see a small company like Eastwood or our friends at Pure Salem, someone who specialises in producing retro guitar designs with modern playability, get to grips with a guitar design like this. Note also the curious textured finish on this Zenon. I'm reminded of the finish Ovation used on some of their Breadwinners.

Currently listed on eBay UK with a starting price of £125.

G L Wilson

© 2013, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - the blog that goes all the way to 11!
Please read our photo and content policy.

Design your guitar with Moniker Guitars

guitarz.blogspot.com:

Kevin from Moniker Guitars here. Moniker Guitars is a small/brand new Austin, TX based guitar maker. We build custom electric guitars that you can design and order at MonikerGuitars.com. No one else is doing anything quite like this and guitar players have responded to the chance to design their guitar by choosing colors, parts, and even adding text or graphics.

We're currently running a Kickstarter campaign and have some awesome deals on our new semi-hollow guitars. Early bird specials starting at $800.

Kevin

Looks great to me - head on over to MonikerGuitars.com and/or their Kickstarter campaign for more information. - G L Wilson

© 2013, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - the blog that goes all the way to 11!
Please read our photo and content policy.

This handmade Explorer-esque bass is quite an oddity

guitarz.blogspot.com:

This hand-made Explorer-like bass is, if not luthier-built, at least assembled by someone with a high degree of woodworking skills. I'm thinking that the hardware and very possibly the neck (the neck plate looks very 1960s/70s Japanese) have come from a donor instrument. However, the truly interesting feature is in the woodwork of the body, which features a sandwich of several types of timber; however rather than running in the direction of the length of the instrument, the sandwiching - and indeed the grain of the wood - has been set at a diagonal. I don't think I've seen a guitar built with the grain of the wood running diagonally before... but maybe you know differently...

Currently being offered for sale on eBay with a Buy It Now price of $499.

G L Wilson

© 2013, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - the blog that goes all the way to 11!

Cupit nylon-string travel guitar: a small instrument with a big sound

guitarz.blogspot.com:

Travel guitars, particularly the acoustic variety, are all too often a compromise with sound being sacrificed for portability. The Cupit travel guitar has a length of 22.5" (which makes what? A scale length of 18 or 19 inches? That's positively ukulele territory!) but manages to produce a full rich sound. As the website explains:

This guitar's patented revolutionary unique design joins the end of the neck to the body creating an all around brace removing the need for a truss rod. The three sound holes in the top side create a better listening perspective for the player. The round hole and F hole help to distribute the tones equally along the front of the instrument.

I guess that volume-wise (I'm talking litres rather than decibels) the body is of similar size - although a very different shape - to that of a regular classical guitar. The video below gives a good indication of how good it sounds/.

The Cupit travel guitar has a list price of $499.99, but according to the website it appears to currently have a sale price of $349.99. Just one last comment: that name "Cupit"... judging by the logo it looks as if someone couldn't spell "Cupid".

G L Wilson

© 2013, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - the blog that goes all the way to 11!

Pagelli-designed Burns Jet Sonic

guitarz.blogspot.com:

The Burns Jet Sonic was one of the 500 guitars I chose to include in the book 500 Guitars which I was asked to author back in 2009 and was published early the following year. Unfortunately it was also one of the guitars that was not actually pictured in the book, so I think its high time (even though Burns London have now discontinued the model) I made amends by featuring it on this blog. As I wrote in the book:

The Jet Sonic is a post-Jim Burns design, courtesy of Italian designed Pagelli. At first glance it looks like someone has taken a saw to a Les Paul but a closer inspection reveals some tasty curves and contours, and the gently curving upside-down 6 in-a-line head complements its weird good looks. Otherwise the layout is pretty standard fare, with two Burns split-coil humbuckers (albeit in parallelogram-shaped casings), single volume and tone and 3-way selector switch.

The above-pictured example is currently being offered for sale on eBay UK with a Buy It Now price of £549.

G L Wilson

© 2013, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - the blog that goes all the way to 11!

Unicorn guitar from Screaming Leaming

guitarz.blogspot.com:

Screaming Leaming has created guitars for the likes of KISS, WASP, Rick Derringer, Black Sabbath, Megadeth, Van Halen and others; we previously looked at another of his 6-string creations here.

This Unicorn guitar, again carrying the Gearhead brandname, is the kind of thing that several years ago I'd scour eBay for in order to get a few cheap laughs on the blog. It has that unusual distinction of being quite dreadful and quite wonderful at the same time. The seller claims that it is an "exceptional guitar" which "plays super nice", but I do have to wonder what condition it was in before it had a "$250.00 action job done to it".

Currently listed on eBay with a starting price of $3550 (ouch!) and a Buy It Now price of $3790 (more ouch!).

For my other favourite horsey guitar, be sure to check out the Dobbincaster!

G L Wilson

© 2012, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - 10 years and counting!

Prometeus Mothra multi-scale/fan-fretted 5-string bass with moose antlers!

guitarz.blogspot.com:

I don't know if the horns on this handmade Prometeus multi-scale 5-string bass are deliberately supposed to resemble moose antlers, but that's my interpretation. I think it would suit a band from Scandinavia, or Canada or Alaska. Perhaps.

In actual fact, Prometeus is from Italy and this particular model is named "Mothra" which may mean Japanese Godzilla movies were the inspiration.

Confused? OK, never mind all the above speculation, let's look at the specs: 34"-32.5" scale over 5-strings, 24 frets, quarter-sawn Wengé neck with deep set-in construction without neck heel, quarter-sawn Bubinga fingerboard, French Chestnut body, 1 ceramic humbucker (shielded and wax-potted) with vol/tone controls, black hardware, dual action truss rod, Shellac-based finish, total weight of 3.7kg).

And if you'd like to know how it sounds:



Currently being offered for sale on eBay with a Buy It Now price of $1,399.

G L Wilson

© 2012, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - 10 years and counting!