Here’s the first of two exciting new projects that is in the planning stages here at the jazz guitar laboratory. 😉 I’ve been working several years with my good friend Gilad Hekselman. He’s a super creative inspiring musician and even cooler guy, check out some of his music if you havent you’ll be glad you did (better yet- buy it too!). We’ve collaborated on several instruments, this is his current guitar when it was hatched a few years ago (body shot too). Before we started working together he played a super old and cool Gibson Howard Roberts model guitar (see below, I had the guitar here at the shop for a while), he still has it and brings it out from time to time. He loves that guitar, has had it for years and years. But we thought it would be cool to do a new and improved version of the guitar, with some needed upgrades while keeping some key features as well as the vibe and aesthetic of the vintage one. The original Howard is a laminate and its actually rather dead sounding, so the first improvement will be the use of carved and graduated plates for the soundboard and back. I’m gonna go with Italian cello woods for this, great sounding material! Besides the carved woods upgrade, I am going to stick with a lot of the exact features of that guitar, like the scale length, body size, neck shape etc etc. For a fatter sound I am going to use full size humbuckers but in a floating mount (like Peter Bernstein’s guitar), which will be fun to design and install- I have some nifty ideas that I will try out. I am really looking forward to this project, I am hoping to get some wood shavings going this summer.
Here are some screen shots of the new guitar’s design blueprints in my CAD software. Full spec list and description to come. Looking good so far!! Please tell me what you think! I am considering making a couple of these at once- if you want to reserve one let me know!
Original:
And me giving the guitar a rather “invasive” interior inspection haha I’m gonna go elbow deep!! Lol
