News And Updates

I will be posting build progress under the Gallery heading in the menu from now on. Currently, I have added albums for builds #7 (Brandon Montgomery), #8 (Tosin Abasi), and #9 (Alexander Stegmayr). Soon will follow #10 (John Mason) and #11 (Alejandro Cabral).

Sunday was an equally fun day, with lots of traffic in the booth. I still had far too little time to walk around and realize now that there were tons of things I should have looked for.

Here’s part of the motley crew – should have had a “before” picture as well:

Elias Kesh, who helped me out with booth duty (thanks!)

Trev Wilkinson, one of the big innovators in the guitar world!

And Thomas Nordegg again, he came by with Don and Rocket Richotte (check him out!)

Another great day passed. I met Thomas Nordegg, the super-hero guitar tech for Steve Vai and Zappa.

Caught a gig with one of my absolute favorite bands – Animals as Leaders

Tosin Abasi has to be one of the most interesting guitar players on the planet right now

Tosin had a chance to try out #6 on his own rig

and then later in the booth

Facebook friend Danny Thrasher came by

In the evening, I attended the All Star Guitar Night. The high points being Vicky Genfan, Andreas Öberg (accompanied by Stu Hamm) and Billy Sheehan.

NAMM is awesome so far! Lots of traffic in the booth at all times and tons of interest both in .strandberg* guitars and bridges. Elias Kesh is a great help to me in sharing the booth duty, but despite that, I have only been able to browse through Hall E, which is the smallest of them all… Hopefully, I will have some more time tomorrow.

Anaheim Convention Center

The booth setup – great to be practically in the aisle!

Maris the Great, his bass and its maker and one of my booth-share partners, Chris Cardone. Maris licked me, thanked me for the honor and promised to restrain himself and not eat me… He has graced us with his presence throughout most of the show.

Yours truly

A new fan

Chris and Travis from Scale the Summit came by

Brian Bloi, who became a great fan

Michael Spalt, one of my customers and guitar building heroes, came by to see me!

Vance Galloway, ready to purchase his third .strandberg* bridge!

Thom Turner

And Don Ramsay, inventor of the linear tremolo

With legs, feet, ears and throat hurting, I’m still looking forward to tomorrow.

Check out these new downloads:

• EGS Fixed Bridge Brochure
• EGS Pro Tremolo Brochure
• EGS Guitar Brochure Inside
• EGS Guitar Brochure Outside

Check out this new chrome finish for the EGS tuners! I will be able to offer this at the same cost as other custom colors (which are obtained through anodization). Two notable differences:

1. The surface is electrically conductive, which means that there is no need for springs and other special grounding arrangements.
2. Machining marks are still visible (i.e. from turning the round parts and milling the flat parts). The regular finish is glass blasted to remove the machining marks prior to anodization, to leave a satin-smooth finish. It is possible to polish the parts prior to anodization (at an additional cost), but I do not have the resources to polish them routinely. I have tried tumbling, which removes the marks, but leaves the parts looking “worn” for lack of a better word.

If demand is sufficient, I can offer this as a standard finish.

Murray Kuun, South African luthier and designer, has recently completed two custom builds for an American dealer. Murray comes from a furniture design background that has evolved via violin making into making guitars.

Congratulations on these beautiful instruments!

They feature EGS hardware, EMG pickups and plain, curly, and birds-eye maple. The wings are hollow to achieve a light-weight design. Scale length is 635 mm.

For more information, be sure to visit www.murraykuun.com and www.designsunlimited.co.za

EGS Pro 7. Trapezoidal Neck Profile (contact Rick Toone for more information about this neck profile).

EGS Pro 7 – built to specifications for Chris Letchford of Scale the Summit.

Mark Davis, from outside Melbourne, Australia, had a busy last winter building a very interesting and innovative carbon fiber guitar. He recently purchased a second EGS bridge, so I am looking forward to seeing what is in store. Mark is active at the Aussie Guitar Gear Heads forum and has a thread documenting this whole build there.

This guitar has a core of Australian pine-like wood King Billy and is fully carbon fiber. It has several fairly unique features, such as pickups mounted out of view from behind (to give an un-interrupted CF top) and glued on frets (again to not ruin the fibers of the CF weave).

Mark writes:

The total weight of this guitar is 1.3kg or 2.875lbs. Pickups are Adeson Icendiary in the bridge and a Fenton Weill in the mid position. Switching is single / single and split h/b in series , and bridge h/b. Frets are hardened SS and glued on. Nut is home made to suit purpose as are the knobs. I new exactly what I was aiming for from the beginning with the hidden P/U’s this was due to the fact that I wanted uninterrupted fibers running all the way to the bridge This creates the problem of getting the strings close to the body so as the P/U’s work. A simple mold was made that creates the top of the guitar, and a mold for the fret board. Its a piece of laminex bent and reinforced on the sides, with a bit of design work the center forms a 16 in radius. The rear of the blank was then laminated with a combination of uni and woven cloth. Peel ply was applied over to control wet out. The face will be laminated in the mold.

The Aussie Guitar Gear Heads forum thread documents the build steps and show off Mark’s impressive design skills and creative solutions.