Famous 'home made' guitars - Brian May + EVH

HAL9000

EricTheWeary said:

bbill335 said:

all john mayall's guitars seem to be, uhhh, "heavily customised"

John ran a sideline of engraving ( ? probably the wrong word) routing out art work onto guitar
bodies, some people paid a lot of money for that kind of thing.

Engraving tool went a bit too deep did it?

usedtobe

I thought the guitar Wild Willy Barrett used in the early Otway and Barret days, was a self build, too..?

hotpickups

Peter Green’s ?

Ah sorry not home made but maybe home modded lol 

gubble

Perdix

Dave Evans, Welsh folk guitarist. Probably best known for his song stage fright built all his own guitars. 

longshins

Steve Morse?

Headphones

Uli Roth's "Sky" guitar, not sure what's his work Vs idea, but it's certainly different.

dogload

usedtobe said:

I thought the guitar Wild Willy Barrett used in the early Otway and Barret days, was a self build, too..?

Yeah, that was the one he built with his dad supposedly, from a floorboard or bit of fence plank or something. This was The original Les Dawson.

thermionic

drpbier said:

And the Johnny Marr Jag built from the mash up of a number of vintage Jags he already owned

The neck profile was copied from his favourite Jaguar neck and the pickups are an attempt to replicate the sound of the Jag he preferred but there’s nothing home-built about it!

JayGee

usedtobe said:

I thought the guitar Wild Willy Barrett used in the early Otway and Barret days, was a self build, too..?

I’m sure I also recall him with some sort of proto-Steinburgeresque cricket bat type thing, and also a console steel which appeared to have been assembled/improvised out of Dexion industrial racking...

phil_b

found this photo of some low cost gear

March

phil_b said:

found this photo of some low cost gear

And now I suddenly want to go and watch Star Fleet.

Pabcrane

How about Les Paul?

His Log guitar.

Voxman

I think home made means built from scratch. Modifying what's already there is not the same, and covers too wide a territory. Even modular built or swapping components e.g. necks, pups etc isn't home mode, as it's an assembly and/ or mod issue.  So imo most posts in response don't seem to be relevant. 

Cols

That’s Brian May out then, he went and got a set of Burns pickups out of a shop instead of winding them himself.  Bloody amateur.

stonevibe

Les Paul's The Log and before that one there was The Rail.


https://www.les-paul.com/timeline/red-hot-red/

RobertW

I don't think EVH's Frankenstrat qualifies as home made, he bought the body and the neck. I don't consider my Warmoth guitar to be home made just because I screwed the body and neck together.

Voxman

Cols said:

That’s Brian May out then, he went and got a set of Burns pickups out of a shop instead of winding them himself.  Bloody amateur.

Nope, he got them out of an old Burns and completely rewound them to many times the number of windings. So I think we'll give him that one!

https://www.theredspecial.com/2018/01/brian-may-interview-the-red-specials-original-pickups/

clarkefan

Voxman said:

Cols said:

That’s Brian May out then, he went and got a set of Burns pickups out of a shop instead of winding them himself.  Bloody amateur.

Nope, he got them out of an old Burns and completely rewound them to many times the number of windings. So I think we'll give him that one!

https://www.theredspecial.com/2018/01/brian-may-interview-the-red-specials-original-pickups/

Wow it never occurred to me he did that. So basically he doesn't use those pickups at all, except as a chassis.

Cols

Voxman said:

Cols said:

That’s Brian May out then, he went and got a set of Burns pickups out of a shop instead of winding them himself.  Bloody amateur.

Nope, he got them out of an old Burns and completely rewound them to many times the number of windings. So I think we'll give him that one!

https://www.theredspecial.com/2018/01/brian-may-interview-the-red-specials-original-pickups/

That’s the story of the original attempt at making his own pickups from first principles.  Apparently they sounded good, but didn’t work on bent sites as the magnets had opposing polarities.  He replaced them with store-bought Trisonics as they were the only ones commercially available.