Incoming Custom Guitar

[Gabriel]

First a bit of background:

So I haven't been around here too much since I left college a few years back. I'm sure a few of you may remember that I left to work as a theatre guitarist on cruise ships. Well I spent a couple of years doing that and was lucky enough to meet my wife. I was back and forth between the US and UK for a bit in between ship contracts whilst we waited for my papers to move to America. In the summer of 2019 I moved to NYC permanently and after a 6 month wait for a work permit I started working as a freelance musician again.

Before I left the UK for the cruise ship industry I had been working predominantly as a jazz guitarist, playing on the live circuit in Glasgow. Some of you may remember that I had an archtop built for me also. Anyway after moving in more of a hired-gun direction, my playing style diversified greatly, as did the kind of gigs I've been booking. That kicked off a lot of buying and selling that saw a 335, a vintage tele deluxe, a silver sky and a custom 24 come and go whilst I was figuring out what I liked to play.

Ok now some background on the new guitar. In the winter of 2018 I was visiting NYC for a few months, at the time a few of my friends from the UK were doing a clinic at Rudy's Music for Fibenare guitars. They're a small custom shop based in Hungary building totally hand built guitars. Being that my friends were running the clinic I was able to hang out and meet the builders.

That brings us up to the current point, I was lucky enough to commission a build in December. This morning I got an email with the update that the guitar is ready for lacquer and will be fully assembled in the coming week or two!

Here's a rundown of the spec:

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- Roadmaster FB body type
- 25.5� scale length, bolt on neck.
- Solid Pau Ferro maple neck and fingerboard
- Off-centre mother of pearl small dot inlays with simple two dots at 12th fret
- Somewhere in between the vintage C & D neck shapes
- Pure white finish (slightly translucent if possible)
- Body wood Alder
- Two point floating vibrato system
- Locking tuners
- H-S-H Pickup Configuration
- Body mounted pickups (no pickup rings)
- Brushed nickel pickup covers on humbuckers
- Medium/moderately high output pickups with a focus on clarity and clean tone performance but also with strong bass.
- Wiring:
Position 1: Bridge Full Humbucker
Position 2: Bridge split + middle (hum cancelling)
Position 3: Bridge full humbucker + Neck full humbucker
Position 4: Neck split + middle (hum cancelling)
Position 5: Neck Full humbucker
Push/push: Split humbuckers

Here's a video of a friend's Fibenares:

[youtube][/youtube]

[Gabriel]

I got some quick photos through today. Super excited!

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[Bacchus]

That inlay around the fretboard is a gorgeous touch.

What's the trem unit? Looks Wilkinsoney.

[Gabriel]

I'm super excited about it, the binding was their idea and it looks great.

They build their own trem units in house, but it's similar to the design of a Wilkinson trem from my understanding.

[Nick]

Are those piezo saddles? Looks similar to the saddles on an LR Baggs X Bridge I used to have.

Congrats on the build, love that headstock shape with the carve, and the correct style of tuning pegs. Not sure how the metal nut is to deal with from a setup perspective but it does look classy.

[Gabriel]

I think piezo can be an option, or you can have different metal types inlaid in the saddle for brighter or darker tone.

They don’t use CNC though so I just always assume it’s some level of wizardry that I don’t really understand haha.

[sunshiner]

Awesome guitar despite the fact that my skill will never allow me to really appreciate an instrument of this level. The fact that your guitar is made by Hungarian luthier reminded me about a Belorussian master Valery Vaschenko who builds high grade copies of classic strats and les pauls. I don't know how much he charges but it seems that he's selling guitars like hot cakes. Last I checked he was very popular with the My Les Paul and The Gear Page crowd