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I've been a big fan of GMW guitars for years now (sorry Vic!), and my #1 guitar is still my GMW 'Adrian Smith' replica. As many of you know, Lee got a 'cease and desist' letter from FMIC, which meant that he could no longer produce stratheads, and so he developed his own designs. Now his two designs have plenty of detractors, but personally, I like his 'millenium' design, especially when it's reversed. So, when it came to ordering my 4th GMW (i.e. not buying a used one), the head option kind of chose itself.
I wanted to try to do something a bit 'different' with this guitar, partially to take advantage of Lee's reasonable pricing but partly just to do something 'brave' rather than standard J/C fare. I remembered seeing Joey Allen (Warrant) with serveral BC Richs with 'split' fingerboards (ebony and maple) and always thought that was a cool look. So, again, that option fell into place nicely.
Then I had to select a body style (i.e. strat, dinky or Savant, the later being a strat size with dinky sillouette). Because the millenium headstock is quite large, I decided that a dinky body would look disproportionally small, so that left strat or Savant. And the headstock is kind of angular, so to my mind, that complemented the 'pointier' cutaways of the Savant better than a strat, so Savant it was. I'm a bit of a coward when it comes to body wood, so I played safe and went with alder
Then I had to decide on a finish. To be honest, I'm kind of cheap and didn't want to spend as much on the finish as on the guitar itself. Also, I was concious that a graphic could look too busy when combined with the fingerboard 'split'. But I didn't want the guitar to be too plain with only the fingerboard to make it stand out. So, I decided I wanted it to be yellow. I like yellow But yellow itself wasn't enough, and I remembered seeing Micheal Monroe's guitar player with a Hamer which was white on the front but black on the sides and back which I always thought was cool. So yellow face over black it was. But I wasn't sure that was enough, so again, back to the pics I went, and I kept going back to Joey Allen's BC Rich with Felix the Cat on it. So, basically, I took the checker idea from that guitar, only I refined it somewhat, so I have the diagonal on the headstock continuing the line of the divde in the fingerboard, and then the strip up the body, just because I wanted it!
I also wanted the checkers to be black and white to tie in with the 2-part fingerboard, with the cream of the zebra pickup as a balance between the yellow and the white. If that makes sense....
I did a crap load of mock-ups of this guitar, trying to work out which way the diagonal divide should run on the neck, and whether the maple should be at the top or the bottom. To be honest, the diagonal could only run in one direction because of the reverse headstock, otherwise it looked awful. In the end, I kind of got pissed off with trying to decide which wood should go on top, so I just decided that the maple ran better from the body, confirmed it with Lee and then put the designs away to give my brain a break
Anyway, all of that was around christmas time, and over the past few months I've had regular conversations with Lee about certain details such as the exact position of the checkers on the headsock, logo position etc, which is great, and something that J/C could learn a great deal from. Anyway, the guitar's with me now, and it's come out exactly as I'd planned with not a single build issue and a cool GMW logo'd case. It's awesome!
And so, here are the pics of my taxi guitar (just thought I'd call it that before someone else did!). I'm sure some of you will hate it, but hey I ordered it for me, not for you
Oh, and I ordered the neck pickup route to have the 'tab' on it so I could change the pickup at a later date, if I felt so inclined....
I wanted to try to do something a bit 'different' with this guitar, partially to take advantage of Lee's reasonable pricing but partly just to do something 'brave' rather than standard J/C fare. I remembered seeing Joey Allen (Warrant) with serveral BC Richs with 'split' fingerboards (ebony and maple) and always thought that was a cool look. So, again, that option fell into place nicely.
Then I had to select a body style (i.e. strat, dinky or Savant, the later being a strat size with dinky sillouette). Because the millenium headstock is quite large, I decided that a dinky body would look disproportionally small, so that left strat or Savant. And the headstock is kind of angular, so to my mind, that complemented the 'pointier' cutaways of the Savant better than a strat, so Savant it was. I'm a bit of a coward when it comes to body wood, so I played safe and went with alder
Then I had to decide on a finish. To be honest, I'm kind of cheap and didn't want to spend as much on the finish as on the guitar itself. Also, I was concious that a graphic could look too busy when combined with the fingerboard 'split'. But I didn't want the guitar to be too plain with only the fingerboard to make it stand out. So, I decided I wanted it to be yellow. I like yellow
But yellow itself wasn't enough, and I remembered seeing Micheal Monroe's guitar player with a Hamer which was white on the front but black on the sides and back which I always thought was cool. So yellow face over black it was. But I wasn't sure that was enough, so again, back to the pics I went, and I kept going back to Joey Allen's BC Rich with Felix the Cat on it. So, basically, I took the checker idea from that guitar, only I refined it somewhat, so I have the diagonal on the headstock continuing the line of the divde in the fingerboard, and then the strip up the body, just because I wanted it! I also wanted the checkers to be black and white to tie in with the 2-part fingerboard, with the cream of the zebra pickup as a balance between the yellow and the white. If that makes sense....
I did a crap load of mock-ups of this guitar, trying to work out which way the diagonal divide should run on the neck, and whether the maple should be at the top or the bottom. To be honest, the diagonal could only run in one direction because of the reverse headstock, otherwise it looked awful. In the end, I kind of got pissed off with trying to decide which wood should go on top, so I just decided that the maple ran better from the body, confirmed it with Lee and then put the designs away to give my brain a break
Anyway, all of that was around christmas time, and over the past few months I've had regular conversations with Lee about certain details such as the exact position of the checkers on the headsock, logo position etc, which is great, and something that J/C could learn a great deal from. Anyway, the guitar's with me now, and it's come out exactly as I'd planned with not a single build issue and a cool GMW logo'd case. It's awesome!
And so, here are the pics of my taxi guitar (just thought I'd call it that before someone else did!). I'm sure some of you will hate it, but hey I ordered it for me, not for you
Oh, and I ordered the neck pickup route to have the 'tab' on it so I could change the pickup at a later date, if I felt so inclined....
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