About the Builder:
Italy is not only famous for building high class sports cars; you find also some very fine luthiers. Andrea Ballarin of Manne Guitars is one of them.
Manne Guitars, a 100% Italian artisan company for manufacturing creative guitars, celebrated in 2012 it's 25 birthday.
For more information: http://www.manne.com
An example of their creativity: For the 25 birthday the company came up with the extraordinary idea of building two guitars and a bass using an aging cask of single-malt scotch whisky. Which one? …. LAGAVULIN from Islay. The pleasing story of construction is available at Manne website: http://www.manne.com/08-01-malt-whisky
Cheers!
About the Guitar:
Back in 2004 James Aston commissioned a Taos guitar by Italian Luthier Andrea Ballarin of Manne Guitars, Italy. James wanted to have something more original and the guitars was built to his specifications.
The guitar is a one off. Not another of this particular specification exists. Details are as follows:
· Alder Body with Flame Maple cap
· 25” Scale length
· Phenolic Fingerboard
· Jumbo frets
· Manne Humbuckers and Single Coil
· Push/Pull Kill Switch on Volume Pot
· Push/Pull Coil Tap on Tone Pot
· 24 Frets with Silver thread “Nebula” Inlay
· Last 5 frets scalloped
· Finished in Cherry Sunburst.
During the life of the guitar James made some changes to the hardware since it was made. He upgraded the stock “no-name” Floyd to an original Floyd Rose Pro – which stays in tune perfectly and he has matched the gold tremolo unit with Gold Gotoh tuners. James also upgraded the pickup surrounds from the plastic black ones to gold (metal). Finally he also changed the pickup cover for the centre pickup to white as he thought it looked quite nice!
James used this guitar exclusively during the days of his Devon based Rock Band 'Burn'. This band made quite an impression:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/devon/content/articles/2006/03/08/burn_devon_demos_feature.shtml.
As a result the guitar has seen a lot of action and it can be heard as the lead guitar on the Burn album ‘Through The Wall’ and was played live extensively around Devon between 2004 and 2006/7 until James moved away.
James with his guitar in action:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uovc0wha_X0
