NYNGD: New Year's New Guitar Days! NYNGD #2017-15

Thanks for the kind words and comments on NYNGD #2017-14!

And then there were Three…

Today’s NYNGD is a sight to behold. Spalted maple! It’s strange that a piece of diseased wood would yield such a thing of beauty. This example is a one-off and is simply stunning: the aforementioned spalted maple top, black binding (instead of the usual cream), a glossy mahogany neck with a matte rosewood fretboard, a glossy mahogany headstock, and, of course, the infamous BFR 12th fret inlay!

This guitar was a one off that was built in November 2009 (for the 2010 NAMM show, maybe?) and sat in the factory for 7.5 years until Derek brought it to the Dallas Guitar Show. He sent me photos ahead of time and you know what happened…

I negotiated over the phone with the Guitar Center salesman (the Dallas booth was an EBMM setup in the GC booth and all the guitars were GC-owned). We had a good haggle and this baby took a trip to New York!

Tone-wise, this guitar is bright, punchy, and really cuts through. I guess it’s the mahogany neck? Just sounds awesome. And it’s setup very slinky — the usual Super Slinky Pinks, but the trem springs are set a little loose so the Floyd pulls off the body a bit with strong left-hand vibrato or bends, which I tend to like a lot these days as it’s closer to my floating LIII or Majesty bridges.

Finally, the black binding is interesting — even though the back of the body is also standard Axis gloss black, you can see a faint difference between the binding and the back/side color. I couldn’t capture it in photos unless I turned the brightness way up.

The last photo below is taken alongside my other Spalted Maple (non-BFR) Axis, which was interestingly made two days after this one (this one is 11/10/2009, and the other one is from 11/12/2009). Same batch of spalted maple, methinks, although I don’t see similar patterns in the grain and spalting, so I don’t think it’s the same log, or at least not adjacent cuts from the same log.

I’ll be back tomorrow with another NYNGD: New Year’s New Guitar Day!

Thanks for looking everyone!

Past Days:

(The back story in case you’re new to my NYNGD: For the past couple of years I’ve done a fun thing that most of you I think enjoyed, and I thought I would do it again this year. Every year, I am a slacker about keeping my Guitar Gallery up to date… So, as a fun holiday thing, let’s launch a guitar in the Guitar Gallery each day leading up to New Years Eve! In the past I’ve received PM’s about my collection and whether I play all of these guitars. 🙂 The same question came up during my NYNGD posts a few years ago and my answer was pretty detailed and well thought-out, so please check it out here!)

(Also, in case anybody gets any funny ideas — these guitars are not at my house. They are all in my very secure and alarmed studio facility. I usually only have two guitars floating around the house…)