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...
Learn MoreHere follow some instructions on how to get started with your very own EGS build. Feel free to e-mail further questions, and I will try to add to this guide and keep it up-to-date. Build your own EGS guitar Planning First of all, e-mail guitarworks@thestrandbergs.com and ask for permission. The materials on the site are licensed under Creative Commons. You may use them under two conditions: that you ask permission first and that you make your own enhancements public also under the same Creative Commons license. The body shape Start by downloading the body shape outline. Print it out in scale 1:1 and transfer to a paper large enough to hold your complete guitar, including the neck and any headstock you are considering. Mark a center line and, along this, mark the location of the saddles, the 12th fret and the nut. The body shape outline that you downloaded needs to be adjusted in the neck pocket region and possibly in the bridge region, so it is critical that you do this on some cheap media (i.e. paper or your computer) before starting to shape wood. In the bridge region, you need to leave sufficient material to mount the base plate while leaving room for your fingers to tune....
Learn MoreNo, the title does not refer to one of the best rock albums of all time (Rush), but to four new clips on YouTube, all of #6. For the HD versions of the clips, visit my channel on YouTube. In the first two, Jonas Isaksson has a one of his first encounters with a 7-string guitar. The low action and jumbo frets, which did cause some buzzing with a sitar-like quality, inspired him to some very oriental sounding licks. In the third, Peter Hansson demonstrates some of the features, including different seated playing positions and what the impact on the angle of the wrist is. He was not coached to sit in any special way – it was only when editing the clip that I realized that his wrist was almost straight throughout the clip in seating position 2. The fourth clip has Peter playing some harder stuff. If you are into metal and some drop tunings and want to stand out from the crowd – this is for you. The Alumitones and scale lengths work together in a way that I find works really well, albeit not the traditional...
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