I was fortunate enough to be in the neighborhood of Watson Guitars, who I have mentioned before the week that passed and Alex and Tere made some room for me and my family in the middle of the final crunch of NAMM preparations.
We had a wonderful lunch, and a nice drive up and down the mountain although we didn’t have much luck with the weather. Idyllwild is situated in the most amazing surroundings, but due to fog, we didn’t see much farther than our noses reached. I did get to see the customer build that Alex is finishing:
Above it, you can see the second EGS tremolo build for Alex – a fitting operation for a customer.
In the above picture, you can almost see how stunning the inlay and finishing work is. In addition, there are so many nice touches on Watson Guitars’ instruments that you have to see to believe. For example, custom pickup covers cut from the top to match the grain, ditto control covers on the back, inlays, and so on. Watson Guitars are, like I said, exhibiting at NAMM so make sure to pay them a visit. The guitar pictured featuring the EGS Tremolo will be there, so it’s a great opportunity to try one out. Alex and Tere also told me about some of their plans for 2010 which are very exciting, but I will let you follow that story on their home page or in person at NAMM, obviously.
One more thing that you need to see in real life is pictured above – a semi-hollow 7-string bass. It will feature both a magnetic and piezo pickups and looks absolutely stunning already! Alex’s fingertips proved the amount of work that has been put into it and it had to be ready for applying finish the night I left… (I hope you got it done in time, Alex!)
Lastly, above is a picture of one of Watson’s CNC machines – very nice!