Friday, December 7, 2007

Sometimes I build guitars... (part 1.... Black Sunshine)



I didn't start out trying to make pickups. Originally I wanted to build the worlds greatest basses and guitars but somewhere along the way the obsession to make great pickup took over. Most of my time is spent making and designing pickups now but every once in a while I build a guitar or bass.

Here's one I just a few weeks ago. The body style is one I call the DragonFly. This one is almost totally hollow. It's made from Poplar and red oak. It's very light. This one I call Black Sunshine.

The Knucklehead pickups are the last of a run of epoxy cast neodymium magnet humbuckers I made a while back. They have a very bright top end compared to an Alnico pickup. They are running through a booster preamp made by my friend and master luthier Mark Swanson. Mark builds some of the most interesting acoustic and electric guitars you are likely to see. His work has been featured in several publication and his client list includes some rather big names. If that wasn't enough it also has a Bid D Varitone switch in it. I love the Veritone that Dennis makes and this combined with the preamp gives this guitar an unbelievable amount of sounds to work with.

"Gripping the wheel his knuckles went white with desire
The wheels of his mustang exploding on the highway like a slug from a .45
True death: 400 horsepower of maximum performance piercing the night
This is black sunshine.

Finally nothing moves.
High noon.
Black top rolling below the asphalt drive
A concrete fascination scraping the edge of nothing
This is black sunshine."


Read more about this guitar and see some more pictures over at Six String Bliss.

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