So I moved from Rhode Island to Los Angeles in 1998. Many reasons why and in hindsight a great move personally & professionally. Did a lot of guitar playing music stuff, made friends/contacts, and had quite a few baptisms by fire… def a learning experience. Not gonna say it was a cakewalk as I had many opportunities to screw it up & salt the earth (either intentionally or accidentally), but all things considered at the end of the day it was a win.
One of the best things about being in So Cal is the proximity to… well, everything. Lots of players, other builders, raw materials everywhere, gear, guitar shops, hot-rodders, u-pick-a-part junkyards (I scored a 1972 Pontiac 455 for $200.00 in one of those places… had to pull it from a Catalina & transport it home in the hatchback of my Mitsubishi Eclipse and disassembled it inside the car as it was too heavy to remove in-tact), electronic surplus shops, custom paint guys, craft/hobby places, machine shops, hardwoods, PacRad, the Baked Potato, the strip, Hollywood industry, cars, guitars, mountains, beaches, Fry’s, industrial metal supply… holy crap the list goes on & on. Bottom line was that there was a seemingly endless bucket of assets concentrated in one (albeit large) area. I could find almost anything I needed within a 20-45 minute drive.
Now, back to guitars. Somewhere around 2002-ish I made a conscious decision to try and disconnect from my burnt black awesomesauce partscaster and started searching for something more unique to play. Not unique as in “one-off”, but not mainstream or popular. I tried a few things, but was never totally satisfied, and I started thinking again of just making my own. I thought an offset body with a modern setup (2 humbuckers, stripped down hardware) and oil/satin finish would work. I liked the look of offset bodies… they look fast standing still, so to speak. I am a sucker for old pawn shop guitar aesthetics (but they play like hot garbage). And even though I had been playing 25.5” scale instruments since I began playing, I LOVE the vibe of a 24.75” single cutaway classic rock guitar (trying NOT to name any specific G or F models… but you can figure it out, you’re smaht). I started making shapes in my computer and eventually I came up with a single & double-cutaway body outline, basically the same body with different sets of horns. Nothing groundbreakingly unique, but my own spin. I thought it would work, and then I sat on this for a few years, lacking the physical real estate & tooling to build it the way I wanted to... and there's the phrase: "the way I wanted to".
Alright… table set. Lengthy backstory established. All elements in place. Time to make some sawdust... maybe.
Next Episode: “Wait… what?!?” or “110 vs -10 degrees: A Tale of Two Extremes”