Nix Bits

One of the many things Katrina wrecked was my guitar equipment. I lost two amps — a Johnson modelling amp and a partice amp — and two guitars. The acoustic was decent but I really loved my electric. It was a Franken-guitar with an old Gibson Melody-Maker neck and an SG-type body. The body was “finished”
simply with lemon oil rubbed into the natural grain. It had two pickups including one aggressive Gibson “dirty fingers” humbucker. Someone had smashed all that stuff together and made a really fun guitar. It wasn’t worth much monetarily but it was fun to play. It also confused the heck out of people who know guitars.

So I had been guitar-less since the big K. And while I didn’t play much it really was an enjoyable way to relax and I definitely missed it. So when two of my friends hinted they were going to get me a guitar I was ecstatic. My friend Mike Raeder had
a few of his gutars damaged by flooding. Our other friend, Mike Fowler, does guitar repair and setup work. So I figured they were probably just going to sand down a guitar, clean it up, and go with that.

Fowler went a lot further though. He hand-crafted an electric guitar bodyinto a Gibson-SG style shape. he routed it all out by hand and assembledthe entire thing himself using only one of the old necks from Mike Raeder’s collection. It is his very first, from-scratch guitar build. I was shockedbecause I knew the amount of effort and labor that went into it. And it’s wonderfully playable too. It sounds fantastic and looks great. As soon as I can get a link from Fowler, I’ll put it up because he does great work and deserves the business in the future.