The stories behind a much loved Mutt in your collection.

[Blazer]

I guess since most of us love to tinker on this board, we all have one-of-kind mutt guitars that we love and others pull their noses at. I figure it would be fun to showcase that special mutt and tell the story behind it. In my case it's the "Fido"

Me using the Fido at a Slavantas rehearsal in 2006

Now that one has an interresting story. At the time we had the pine floor boards of the living room of my parent's house replaced by solid oak ones. I took some of the left over oak floor boards and the left overs from the pine floorboards and glued them together. And made it a sandwich body.

The side of the body, showing clearly the layer of pine and Oak.

The neck came from a Squier Affinity Tele, a Baltic blue one which I bought for the specific reason of modifying the tar out of. So when I needed a neck for my Pine and Oak sandwich body I knew which one I'd use. But instead of routing the body in the shape of a Tele I decided to do it a little different. I already made my Tele/Paul hybrid and I figured to go with another Gibson model and pulled the SG template from the storage.

The neck join, I used expoxy to permanently glue that neck into place, the two screws were used to keep the neck in place while the glue dried, I decided to leave them there. This picture also shows how fat the body is.


My SG/Tele in it's first incarnation in 2002. Back then I used it as my back up guitar with the band I was in at the time. After some time I took it apart and used the parts in other projects.

But people began asking me about the whereabouts of that Funky Oak guitar and I decided to restore the guitar again. I made a new pickguard of transparent plastic which I then spray painted gold from the back (The painted side is in on the body surface), routed out the cavity to a Swimming pool, so I could experiment with Pickup placings without having to modify the body itself too much and went with a more uniform look of two black Humbuckers, an Ibanez V8 in the bridge and a Dimarzio PAF at the neck.

Evident in this picture is the outline of a strat jack I drew with a sharpie. I wanted to install such a thing there but never actually did it but I left the outline, it adds to the character of the instrument. The mini switch is the coil tap for the Ibby Humbucker.

I have since used this guitar on both live performances and as my main studio guitar and it has proven itself to be a dependable workhorse. As for why it's called the "Fido" a close up of the headstock will clarify that.

[The Rossness]

Cool story. Let me share my Mutt too-

I wanted a Steve Vai like tone, but didn't want to spend the money on a JEM. So around the holidays a few years ago I bought DiMarzio Evo Pu's to put in my OLP MM1. Well, that guitar had an accident falling over so the PU's never got installed. I traded in the guitar and bought the cheapest trem equiped guitar I could find, a gold Ibanez RG.

I installed the Pu's but the sound had way too much trebble. The guitar just sat prety much unplayed until the day I got inspiration from a Buddy Blaze axe I saw. That guitar had a war-torn paintjob with actuall bullet holes in the guitar. So, I took out my pocket knife and carved a little round hole through the guitar. One thing led to another. The pocket knife somehow transformed into a larger pocket knife, a hammer and screwdriver. When I was done, I had carved Vai's Signature monkey grip into my guitar, Cracking the back of the axe in the process. Then I had to wrap duct tape around the handle to keep it from splintering in my hand.

From there I started putting stickers on it. That lasted a few months untill I decided the stickers looked like rubbish. Not being able to peel most of the stickers off, I lit the guitar on fire and burned them off. (I really dou have a guitar with a flamed maple neck lol).

Then I remembered a guitar that Zakk Wylde had. It was a burnt LP with bottle caps nailed into it. Can you guess what I did next? Well after I nailed all the bottle caps in, I also nailed in some glow in the dark stars that are susposed to be put a a kids ceilling. I added some dice knobs and that was the end of my modification.

Now my PU's aren't nearly as high on trebble. I think adding all of the metal nails to the guitar had something to do with it. Also, the guitar will sometimes sound like it has a phaser hooked up to it. Anyway, I got the sound I wanted in the end.