Almost a month ago I posted information about a special auction that was taking place by XOX Audio Tools, they auctioned off the 100th Handle Guitar with proceeds going to Guitars Not Guns, who provide free guitars and free lessons to foster children, at-risk youth and other deserving children. Well the guitar was sold so here is an excerpt from the press release:

”Going once, going twice, Sold!  The charity auction for the 100 Limited Edition Handle guitar is closed. Thank you to everyone who helped make this such a successful event. The winning bidder is the American Jeff Auen; a musician and collector of extraordinary musical instruments.  This initiative was conceived by XOX Audio Tools, the producers of the Handle guitar, and all proceeds will go to the children’s charity Guitars not Guns (http://www.guitarsnotguns.org).

”This revolutionary carbon fiber guitar the Handle has already won the ‘Good Design’ award from the Chicago Athenaeum Museum and ‘the Most Innovative Product’ award of the NAMM 2008 show.  XOX Audio Tools is thrilled with the results of their first charitable venture.  “We are very happy to have been able to help Guitars not Guns so effectively, and we promise that these positive actions won’t finish here.  Expect to see other charitable events organized by XOX in the future!” explains Peter Solomon director of XOX Audio Tools.

When Jeff Auen found out he was the winner of the auction he was overjoyed and commented:  “Guitars not Guns is an admirable endeavor and I’m happy to help.  I would even wish I had more time to open a chapter myself!” He can’t wait till he receives his custom built 100th guitar and continues: “My sons and I have been collecting unique guitars. The Handle sure fits the bill. It is not a just showpiece though, I will be playing this guitar live. I’m a sucker for really well designed products. The Handle caught my eye (much like a Ferrari does). I can’t wait to get my hands on it.” ”

Congratulations Jeff on your new axe and for helping a worthy cause.

Have you ever wanted a guitar that looked like a bowling ball? I’ve found just the company for you! This model features a “Marbled Acrylic” Body-Top (Patent Pending), which is custom formulated with state of the art technologies and materials combined to achieve a hardened and durable surface, also like a bowling ball. As you might have realised I’m not particularly a fan of this finish but don’t let that put you off Paradise Guitars because aside from ’The Prophet‘ they do actually make a couple of very nice Korina guitars which caught my eye. The SP 1010 features and a hand selected genuine White Korina body with a full bookmatched Spalted Maple top, Floyd Rose® Tremolo Pro bridge and a 14 degree tilt back headstock on its 25.5” scale, 24/6100 Jumbo fret neck, which apparently offers easy playing for leads and chording.

Or if you would prefer a more “Wolfgang” kind of shape rather than a strat there is a nice SP 2020 also in Korina and Spalted Maple. As with the SP 1010 the neck is made from Birdseye Maple with a Birdseye Maple fingerboard with 24 Jumbo frets. Both of these guitars offer an optional extra Paradise “Hand-Grip” which is like the Ibanez JEM monkey grip.

Finally if you fancy something with a little more bling to it, check out The Resurrection, this mirrored gold top guitar will certainly get you noticed!

Last month I featured a DIY guitar made from Ikea tables, a nifty idea I thought. Well Karl left a comment that day and pointed me in the direction of Prairie Custom Guitars and in particular to the OSBcaster pictured left. So what is OSB? Well I had heard of MDF (medium density fibreboard) as they seem to use it to make just about everything these days to save money, well OSB stands for Oriented Strand Board which is formed by layering strands of wood in specific orientations, hence the name! This rather ugly wood seems a very odd choice for a guitar due to the fact it isn’t even a solid piece so sustain must be pretty scarce but Marty from Prairie Custom Guitars decided to make a Telecaster from OSB for fun and so the OSBcaster was born!

As you will see from the photos it started out life as a Fir backed guitar but then transformed into a complete OSB body with a piece of laminated Ash through the center for added strength and to allow hardware to be screwed into it. However, confusingly, the guitar seems to revert to the Fir backed version which he took a blow torch to for a true burst finish! I don’t know what it sounds like but the end result is actually pretty cool. I think Marty probably ended up spending a lot more time on this guitar than he first thought.

Check out some of Marty’s other projects such as this cool Wlanut Tele - the Nutcaster at Prairie Custom Guitars.

UPDATE: Marty has just cleared up my confusion, there are actually 2 guitars now, the natural finish and the sunburst!

I’ve always been “drawn” (ha ha) to hand painted guitars ever since I saw Joe Satriani’s black guitar with the silver doodles on it, I think someone stole that guitar while he was touring “Flying in a Blue Dream”? Anyway I digress. I just came across these fantastic Les Paul guitars hand illustrated by Colby Nichols and Josh Kenyon, not only are these one off guitars great to look at but the two pictured above, ”Legends in the Wood” and ”A Household Nightmare” are part of the ’Music Saves Lives Gibson Guitar Project‘, yes it is quite a mouthful.

Music Saves Lives has focused its main efforts on blood donation and the bone marrow registry, reaching out by sharing facts and educating. The guitars were auctioned off on eBay but you can still buy prints and T Shirts. Check out the other guitars that were part of this worthy cause.

The guitars used are Les Paul Melody Maker’s with a Mahogany body, Rosewood fretboard, Chrome wraparound tailpiece and specially designed single coil pickups.

Founder Jason Fazio developed his woodwork and steel skills creating artistic furniture and sculpture. But due to his keen interest in music his craftsmanship turned to Lutherie and JLF GUITAR was formed in 1995. Jason was inspired by the late Tony Zemaitas and chose to follow his style of combining wood with steel to create his instruments. The classic, pictured left has a mainly Mahogany body but also has a steel chambered section which houses the volume and tone controls for the single coil DiMarzio pickups and the top third of the guitar has a much thinner profile embellished with a sculpted steel design which makes for a very unique looking guitar. The guitar is finished with a Schaller fixed bridge and Grover machine heads.

Check out more of these unique Aussie guitars on the JLF Guitars website.

Last month I featured a twin neck guitar which had a custom Union Jack flag finish painted by Jim Fogarty, well Jim just contacted me to send me pictures of Si Bailey’s completed project so I wanted to post the photos here on Guitar Noize in all it’s blinged up gold hardware glory!

Si Bailey has posted a video on YouTube to show the finished instrument in action!

Let me just clear one thing up, no, IKEA haven’t started selling guitars! However some clever guy realised that IKEA have plentiful supplies of cheap timber available packaged up as cheap tables! He bought one of their unfinished end tables for $15 which apparently can produce three guitar tops. The exact specs of the wood used for the body is multi-piece knotty Pine with a AAAA-private stock IKEA top. I have no idea what knotty Pine sounds like but Zachary Guitars seems to think it makes excellent tone wood, I’ve never heard of anyone else using it, but if I would like to hear from anyone who has had experience with using this wood.

The neck uses a more traditional combination of Mahogany with a Rosewood fingerboard. The pickups used are DiMarzio Virtual P90s.  A narrower string spacing at the bridge was used to accommodate these soapbar pickups.

”They are powerful and have a lot of guts. Its some kind of a midrange tone which screams Texas blues and Billy Gibbons.”

For more pictures of this quite exotic looking guitar check out Zacharyguitars.com

I’ve come across some pretty crazy guitar designs over the past 10 months or so and I thought I had seen it all… until I came across Michael Gaughan! The photos above are actual projects of his, starting with the guitar on the left, the Ant Farm guitar is made from Plexiglas, electric guitar parts, NASA seaweed and water based space ant farm gel, oh yeah and live ants.

”I researched ant farms and found out that NASA had invented this ant farm gel that was seaweed and water based. The ants could be sent into outerspace, they could eat this gel and make their colony trails out of it. Because it was a gel and not sand, it could be shaken up (like from a rocket blast and in zero gravity). Once I read about this stuff, I know that was the gel I needed to get for my guitar. I could shake it up and rock as hard as I wanted and it wouldn’t mess up their trails. I took the neck, and electrical parts from a used guitar and made the body from plexiglas, then I filled it up with the NASA space ant gel, ordered 30 ants, put them inside and was ready to rock!”

Around the same time Michael had the idea for the ant farm guitar he also had the idea for the helicopter guitar pictured above right!

”I was outside drawing different guitar ideas and I saw a helicopter fly over, and at that moment I knew I needed to have a flying guitar. One that could fly over the crowd and land on stage and I could play it, when I was done with the song it could fly out of my arms and have a lot of feedback and the sound of the blades spinning.

Friend and artist, Steve Davy was working at Franconia Sculpture Park that summer so I went out there a few times and he helped me cut the aluminum “body” and aluminum counterweight, so it would be an even 2.5 Lbs on each side. We built the helicaster flying guitar and I am currently looking for a pilot to collaborate with so we can play some outdoor festivals this summer and unleash the true meaning of Air Guitar!!!”

Check out the rest of Michael’s crazy guitar creations on his site!

The XOX Audio Tools Handle Guitar is one of the most unique guitars I’ve ever seen. Award winning designer Peter Solomon created this instrument using a mono-chassis, hollow sectioned construction which creates a resonance chamber similar to that of a semi-acoustic guitar. The ultra lightweight instrument is made from carbon fibre which apparently offers a much wider harmonic range than wood.

XOX Audio Tools is being put on auction his desired 100th Handle guitar, the last of its numbered and limited edition, to help the music program Guitars not Guns which is a non-profit organization that offers free guitars and free lessons to underprivileged children and teens with bases in Canada, Usa and UK. This project is an alternative to violence. I think this would also benefit Aussie kids too, maybe it will make its way over here sometime.

As of April 21 the guitar will be displayed on eBay and it will be auctioned on May1, 2008. One lucky bidder is going to be proud owner of a special unique collectors edition Handle guitar and they are going to feel really good knowing they helped many children in the process.

”We decided that our most important and valuable guitar, the last of our limited edition, would be raffled to the highest bidder and the proceeds from this would be given directly to GNG to use to their best potential to help the most children possible.” explains Peter Solomon, Director of XOX.

For more information on how to get involved with this auction check out XOX Audio Tools - Guitars Not Guns.

UPDATE: The auction can be found here so get bidding!

I’d never heard of Abel Axe until the other day but apparently they were popular aluminum body guitars in the mid to late nineties, well they are back but they are still sorting out their website so there isn’t much information available just yet, the models section is currently empty. However, Jeff Abel has teamed up with Mike Delaney of Delaney Guitars to custom build the Abel Axe of your choice. From the T-6 Billet Aluminum bodies to the custom neck and electronics, these guitars will be built to order in their shop in Western Montana.

The guitar pictured left is the Mary Cary Abel Axe, although I couldn’t see any photos of her playing this guitar on her site, although Terrence Hansen seems to like playing 2 at once! Apparently these instruments have a powerful sustain and tone. I will bring you more information once I get it.