Mike's Guitars

This was the guitar I learned to play on and use occasionally as a jamming guitar or for in the studio with Lithium and the occasional side project. As for this guitar, I have seen few classicals that sound as good as this one. When I play metal on this old nylon string, it sounds huge.

This was my first electric guitar and it has been all through hell and back with me since the beginning. This guitar has been dropped on pavement, stepped on, piddled on, rained on, beat on, and has lived through it all sacrificing two pickups and having the headstock reglued. This guitar has a few features of my favorite guitars including a Gibson/Kahler tremelo, a strangle switch (the third switch on a Fender Jaguar), and a treble cut for doing mid-seventies style solos and playing smooth rhythm parts.

This is the first Jaconsen guitar I ever made, using a Sears catalog model and a few random parts from other guitars, I stuck together a semi-punk-grunge guitar that shreds and can be as reserved as a jazz cat chillin'. The body is from a Harmony student, the neck is from a Harmony Les Paul, the pickguard is homemade to cover the extensive routing. It has a tune-o-matic in place of the stick-on-two-dowels-o-matic that was on the guitar earlier, the tailpiece is still the stock tailpiece with mystery string installation, and I am currently making do with some mismatched budget tuners until I get the time and money to change them.

This is the only thing keeping my Kramer from being my main axe for everything. I use this guitar for the majority of the Lithium stuff. My trusty Jag-Stang is the main part of my sound these days, with the tone being supplied by a pair of EMG active pickups. And that buggers got the tremelo; I don't care what anyone else says, Fender trems are second only to Kahler trems in my opinion.

This is my main strat. I wanted a Squier instead of a Fender because it's cheaper and more parts fit it for less money while I am out on the road. I figure that everybody these days that has an electric guitar owns or has easy access to a strat with a 45mm body and 3 pickups of some kind. But every pro I have heard has either an American Standard, a Vintage Model, or a Vintage reissue Stratocaster somewhere in their mansion and I figured I would be the first to put a cheapo Squier on the map, especially with a thin 40mm thick body and slightly different tone.

This is mainly a side project guitar but who knows, I could use this to do some effects on songs with Lithium later. I found this in a pawn shop for $50 bucks and spent another $250 having it fixed after a failed power supply experiment blew a transistor. This is also my fun guitar for screwing around away from gigs and rehersals.

This is another homebuilt of mine with a body interestingly made of pressure treated pine with a plywood top. The neck is off the Basica prototype above (I used that neck on that guitar up until I built this thing, when I found the soul-necks for these two guitars). The majority of the electronics are remains from a Tesico Del-Ray bass I am converting into the prototype for my signature model that is currently in the works. This guitar is obviously a Jazzmaster ripoff.