If you like your guitars a bit on the retro side, you’ll probably like what Italia Guitars have to offer. Pictured left is the Italia Mondial Classic which features a Korina body, hard Maple neck with a Rosewood fretboard, Graphite nut and a Tune’o’matic bridge. Aside from the 2 Wilkinson humbuckers the guitar also features a piezo pickup which has a seperate input jack.

A couple of artists who use Italia guitars include Chris Rea and Stevie Salas.

I just found this Vintage Silvertone from 1957-58. This instrument is actually for sale for $1449 and according to the 1957 Sears catalogue has “Curly maple top and back. Mahogany sides. Hand-polished finish. 2 built-in pickups. Volume, tone control. 3-way selector switch”. It also has a glued-on, fully bound rosewood fretboard, 19 frets. It has real mother of pearl block inlays for fret markers. Apparently it is in very good condition, a bit of wear and tear here and there but then it is 50 years old. Personally for that money though, I can think of other guitars that I would prefer.

Washburn have just announced the release of the Joe Trohman Idol series guitar, Fall Out Boy’s lead guitarist worked closely with Washburn to create a killer guitar that utilizes dual humbuckers and Voice Contour Control to allow for a massive array of sounds. In his own words:

”I’m a guitar player, and I’m obsessed with every inch, every nook, every aspect of guitars in general. I put my stamp whole heartily on this guitar, knowing that it fully kicks ass and surpasses my standards.”

The Voice Contour Control is a unique coil splitting system that allows players to incrementally blend humbucking and single-coil pickup sounds without the hum normally associated with single-coils, sounds interesting I’d like to have a play with that to see what tonal variations you can create. The Joe Trohman Washburn Idol retails for $419.90 and is available for pre-order online at www.empireoftherepublic.com.

It is interesting that rather than create one off signature guitars Washburn like to make an artist series like the previously mentioned Paul Stanley Preacher Series, this is a really nice idea as some people can’t afford to shell out the $2700 on an N6 for instance but can get a simplified version in the N1 for $350 which looks similar with obviously cheaper woods, electronics etc.

This is the current window display at the Ben Sherman shop in Melbourne. There are actually even more guitars but I cropped them out so hows about you buy a ticket to Australia and come and check it out yourself? No? You tight buggers alright then, I’ll give you some linkage instead. Ben Sherman are having a charity auction with all profits going to Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy Australia Ltd founded in 1984 to promote and develop the understanding, training and practice of creative music therapy and is part of a network of Nordoff-Robbins centres and training programs throughout the world including England, Scotland, USA, Germany, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. The link to the eBay auction is here so get your credit cards ready! There are some very cool guitars on display and this auction has been live since 12.11.07 but at the time of writing this there are only a couple of guitars on there, so maybe the rest have already been won?

Bored of hanging Moose heads on your wall? Well why not invest in a mechanical one that has a guitar body as a plaque…

”I’m afraid I don’t have video for this one so you will have to imagine the jaw moving up and down when the button on the the right is pressed.
Materials: Electric guitar, electric jackhammer, vacuum cleaner parts, engine parts, antlers, toy motor, LED lights, antlers.”

So it’s like one of those annoying Big Mouth Billy Bass with a tenuous link to guitars…

Let me introduce to you Kevin Nolan, a long time ago I went to Kidderminster College to do a performing arts course and my music A level. While I was there I had the great pleasure of playing, acting alongside and generally acting like a silly bugger with Kev. At the time he wielded a very nice Fender Precision Bass and was in high demand for bands and performances. The last time Kev and I managed to meet up was back in 2000 in London before I moved to Australia so I thought it was about time to find out what has been happening since then. A lot it seems, after college Kevin joined forces with his brother Robin in The Robin Nolan Trio, a gypsy jazz band, playing rhythm guitar. Since then they have been touring all over the world.

GN: How come you are based in Amsterdam?
The band moved from London to Amsterdam in 92 after finding that London was not very welcoming to street performers. Back then that’s prety much how the band made money. Amsterdam was much more hospitable.

GN: Does your brother let you do any solos?
No. But the point is that when i started to learn the guitar after putting down the bass i only learned how to play rhythm, so i’m not exactly up to standard with my solos.

GN: So what kind of touring schedule do you have these days, I remember you were telling me last time we met up in London that you had played in some pretty exotic locations!
I’ve travelled quite a lot since joining the band. Japan and Iceland being my favourites. But over the last 5 years we’ve had opportunities to play in the States quite a bit. It’s a big country with lots of money, so it’s possible to do some long extended tours over there.

GN: What guitars do you play in the trio?
I still play on the first guitar i ever got. It’s a 1999 Rob Aylward D-hole.

GN: How long has Robin been playing?
Robin first started to play guitar at age 6. He passed his classical grade 8 with distinction. He then went on to study jazz at Leeds college of music.

GN: What inspired him to play gypsy jazz?
He was taken to a festival “THE” festival for gypsy music in Samois-Sur-Seine near Paris. This was in 1990. Our father had always played the music of Django Reinhardt when we were children, but i think that when Rob witnessed it being played he fell in love with the passionate style.

GN: How many CD’s have the Robin Nolan Trio released to date? Go on do some plugging!
I think we have around 8 titles www.robinnolan.com check them out.

GN: So is this the trio a full time job?
It’s been backwards and forwards. Sometimes we have months booked up, and sometimes the opposite. I’ve just moved to the states and not only do i continue to play with the Robin Nolan Trio, but I’ve also joined the John Jorgenson Quintet. This means that I’m lucky enough to make a living from playing.

Thanks for taking the time talking to me Kevin, hopefully we will catch up when you tour Australia. Check out The Robin Nolan Trio site or the MySpace page.

I love the story behind this guitar:

”A 1973 Fender Telecaster was run over by a car. It broke the body into several pieces, and severed it from the neck. I bought it as a basket case. Replace the body with an ash body from the Warmath company. I don’t know if the neck is an original Fender… there was no decal… but it looks like one, so I carved the famous Fender Telecaster logo into it. I’ve never seen this type of massive Tele bridge before… but it says “Fender” on it… and it does give remarkable sustain for a Tele. I had the bridge gold plated and replaced all the other hardware (including the neck pickup cover & neck mounting plate) with gold… hence the name ‘Golden Girl’.”

This from the man who also carved the Wangcaster. Check out more of his amazing guitars here.

A Kramer Superman of course! The guitar was made by Chris Woods and uses an old school Kramer Focus neck, Original Floyd Rose Trem, a DiMarzio Fred humbucker and is signed by Lois Lane herself Margo Kidde.

Chris had this to say:
”I had been kicking the idea of a Superman guitar around for a few years.  I think I had a sketch of it on my website and Rudy http://www.rudetalk.com/ saw it and wanted me to build it for him.  So I got to work on it. The one with the Kramer headstock is the first one built. There was a second one with a Strat style headstock and then I still have the bass guitar version and one 6 string guitar that was made in all natural woods. Alder and bloodwood to represent the red and yellow colors. These were all built about 5 years ago. This is before I had added a CNC machine to my shop so all the carving was done with hand routers.”

Also check out Chris’ other guitars there’s some pretty interesting work there!

If you have an old bike that you don’t use anymore, actually bugger it, if you have a new bike and you feel like wrecking it in the name of music why not do what this guy has done and turn it into a guitar! The frame is a 1997 Trek Y-22 like this one, it has tone and volume controls and a single humbucker (apparently vintage Korean… not sure that is a good thing). The guitar also includes the original bottle holder in case you get a thirst on whilst playing, I’m sure you could fill it with Jack Daniels to be more Rock’n’Roll!

Now I’m off to find other vehicles that have been converted into guitars…

You would be forgiven for thinking looking at this guitar that is an Alembic, it has that kind of feel to it but it is in fact a Ballurio Artist.  This guitar is ”handcrafted of a soft Maple or Basswood tone core sandwiched between a Black Walnut back and highly-figured Black Walnut top with a through-body quarter-sawn Hard Maple and Black Walnut neck”. Ballurio use their own pickups, this particular instrument uses their S1.DCSA (Dual Coil Stacked Architecture), which is a medium/high output dual coil stacked architecture humbucking pickup with well-defined lower and mid ranges, upper range clarity, and an excellent volume-to-noise ratio.  Now this guitar is certainly not for everyone as it has a very unique shape as do all of their guitars I think the Quill is the closest to a standard shape but if you are looking for something a little bit different, check out their range!