COMING SOON! Ultra Green Machine

I’m working on a special project right now for Steve Borne, the guitarist for Princess Racer and sound guru for some great films and television shows.

Right now I’m keeping alot of it under wraps, but here are a few pieces of info: The body is styled after The Green machine featured on my blog and made out of mahogany (painted in a fantastic glitter green color) and will sport a full rosewood neck and tremolo bridge. Some of the bells and whistles are still undecided, but Steve and I will figure all of that out soon. I’ll update this page shortly with some progress and materials shots – it’s been difficult to “borrow” Lisa’s camera since she’s always taking great photos and it’s been hard for me to find time in front of the computer since she’s been so busy editing for TABLE magazine. Heck, I don’t mind at all though, I’d rather be building wild guitars than computing.

Big thanks again to Steve for giving me this fantastic project, I know he’ll be pleased!

Here’s an up date on the Ultra Green Machine (now dubbed the OZMA Racer).

Since there are different shades of green glitter applied, the color can vary due to angle of view, lighting or surrounding colors. In normal lighting it looks much less yellow than what the photos show. It’s pretty wild, and possibly not the final coat of glitter. Steve wanted bigger, chunkier glitter- but after this step I had to stop to get his opinion on going further since it’s already amazing! I’m trying my hardest to complete this in time to play at a special show this Halloween.

It’s also time to decide on the controls and their placement- we still haven’t decided if there will be a science kit of knobs and switches or just a simple volume control and a single pickup selector. The plastic oval pickups surrounds are being made now and I plan on having them available to order online soon.

 

UPDATE: Jan 18, 2012

Here’s a sneak peek before the control placement is decided. I’m having the wiring done by Dave Kuzy -check out his effects pedals!

OZMA Prototype Sale!!!

I’m clearing out my workshop and decided to put a few prototype guitars up for sale at ridiculously low prices. Prices range between $400 – $550 (pretty much unheard of in the handmade instrument world). Since these have been knocking around my workshop for a while the finishes are not perfect and they may have some minor dings, but that saves you a boatload of money!
Go check them out at Hollowood Music- 601 Chartiers Ave in McKees Rocks.

http://hollowood.com/used-vintage-gear/

I’m not sure if they’re willing to ship them to out of state folks- call for more info

CONTACT :

Tel: 412.771.3060

Mike Bonelli Ext. 120

Fax: 412.771.1234

jbg@hollowood.com

As far as I can tell, these are still sitting at Hollowood Music- the place is hidden away, so there’s not too much foot traffic there.

If you’re interested, have the owner of the store call me and I’ll lower the already low price a little.  If not, I’ll be bringing them home soon to dismantle and turn into something else (possibly a camp fire). Act now!!!

Wooden Rainbow

http://modernformations.com/

Check out the Wooden Rainbow at Modern Formations. It’s on display as part of their 10 year retrospective, which opens on June 3.

I’ve shown paintings, sculpture and film there and now a guitar- after all, it’s functional art!

I’m still not sure if this beauty sold at the Modern Formations show or not (Lisa and I missed the opening due to visiting family in Florida). If it hasn’t sold, that means it’s still available! Give this gal a new home!!!

UPDATE: Drop by Modern Formations on Friday, August 5 to see this in person- the show has been extended for another month!

The Green Machine

The Green Machine’s small size, light weight and highly-sculpted space age stylings make it perfect for intergalactic travel, or any other travel for that matter. This one uses an uncommon wood for the back – cypress. I chose this for its light weight and its ability to be easily sculpted. This was matched with a hard maple top and chambered out a bit to give it a warmer, more open tone. You may expect something like this to have lots of switches and knobs, but this guitar is stripped down to the essentials. The single DiMarzio X2N pickup really turns this one into a rock monster and a variety of sounds can be had by adjusting the volume and tone controls as well as the pickup phase switch.

More photos in a few weeks once it’s taken down- it’s hanging in a storefront window as I type this.

 

Barry

Barry began his life quite confused.

He was born as a ten-string electric guitar, the strings in courses, like a twelve-string.

He liked the fact that he was unusual, but found himself wandering around the studio, wondering why no one would play with him.

People gawked and pointed at him, some even laughed. Musicians were intimidated by him.”How can I play my favorite riffs?” they cried.

The point with Barry was to make something familiar, yet alien.  Some OZMA instruments are created as a songwriting tool rather than a conventional instrument. Play for an hour on an oddly- tuned, multi-stringed guitar and you’re bound to come up with some new ideas to freshen up your own playing.

But let’s get back to the story of Barry.

One day a baritone Warmoth guitar neck walked into the studio. Barry took notice to her lovely dark wenge exterior. Exotic, natural and smooth. “The perfect mate for me!” Barry exclaimed.
They courted for several months and were united. A perfect match!

Since things were going so well for the happy couple, Barry and his new partner decided to splurge a little and get some nice new things. A Hallmark bridge and vibrato unit styled after some Mosrite classics were added, as well as some vintage pickups. The bridge position pickup is a late ’70′s high output Bill Lawrence designed for bass guitar and the neck position pickup is  a ’70′s Mighty Mite clone of DiMarzio’s “Super Distortion.” It really let’s them shout out to the world about their deep and beefy love.

Birds of Paradise

Conversion instruments are fun for me and the sky is the limit when it comes to these. I had my wild, hippie musician friend Jim Lingo in mind when I created this one.
Jim, a member of the local band Centipede E’est,  likes nature and polyester fashion, so I stretched a ‘70’s polyester bird print shirt over the reshaped body and neck and encased it all in epoxy resin.
I created a new pick guard from a sheet of Plexiglas and fixed another piece of the polyester bird fabric to the underside of it to continue the bird theme.
Not everything went as planned — after all this was an experiment. Any space that had a seam or wrinkle in it was covered with bird photos from a used nature guidebook and covered in a another layer of resin. This guitar turned out much weirder and wilder than I expected.
Birds of Paradise is being offered up to Jim first, but if he lets this one fly away – catch it!

UPDATE:

Jim has taken this lovely beast home and plans to unleash the birds for the first time this coming Saturday night.

Hellablaster

The Hellablaster

You may recognize The Hellablaster. I borrowed the shape from the ever-popular Fender Telecaster©, but decided to elongate it and add curves where they’re needed. Telecasters are cool, but oh so boxy. There’s just something so unsexy about its squared-off plank of a body. The Hellablaster takes on a cartoonish form, losing all of those hard edges and extra weight.

The body is constructed from the sides of a gigantic vintage radio console. First, I cut the shape into halves, hollowed them out except for a space under the bridge, then rejoined them to create a warm, open sound. Don’t worry about the mostly-hollow body being flimsy – there’s a purpleheart support beam that runs from the neck pocket to underneath the bridge.

Another notable feature of this guitar is the pickups and wiring. Hidden under the aluminum pickguard is a full-sized humbucking pickup, an experiment which involved combining coils and magnets from old pickups. The bridge position features a dual coil Telecaster pickup. There’s no pickup selector switch, but a volume control for each pickup  (the bridge pickup also has a tone control). Lots of strange phasing and tonal shaping happens by adjusting the knobs a bit, similar to Fender Jazz Bass controls.

The 21-fret  maple neck with brass nut and vintage Gotoh tuning machines was purchased in a raw state from another luthier and shaped by me. Everything from the sting of a Telecaster single coil to the thick wooly roar of a vintage humbucker can be had here.

The Wooden Rainbow

I’ve been busy in the OZMA factory pumping out some new instruments for April’s GA/GI Festival, all handcrafted from a rainbow of reclaimed woods. This is quite a diverse group of instruments and each one-of-a-kind piece has been constructed with an assortment of materials.

I’m a collector, and one of the things I love to collect is wood. It might be the shape or color that inspires me to take it home and turn it into something else. Purchasing an antique dining table at a junk shop, I imagined a handful of unique, multi-layered guitar bodies like the Alembic and Moonstone guitars I drooled over as a teenager. A local church was torn down and its walnut planks ended up in a salvage yard. I bought as much as I could since it was well over 100 years old and rang like a bell when struck. Somewhere in the OZMA studio is a wooden wine box from Paris which will most likely end up in an instrument with a French theme, mimes and all.

I collect other things too. When I purchased a polyester jacket with a photographic print of birds I thought, “this would make the wildest guitar covering.” A 1950′s cafeteria tray made the perfect control panel for another instrument. I used a piece of horn from a deer that was shot in Salamanca, New York by my grandfather in the 1940′s, fashioning it into an adjustable bridge. Cast-off knobs and parts from antique machines are rescued by me from the junk pile and given new life as functional art.

Here’s a sneak peek of Wooden Rainbow. Each guitar is available for purchase until marked on the page. For more information, please contact  jeffschreckengost [at] gmail [dot] com.

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#13

I just finished this one up for an old friend who I haven’t seen in well over a decade. It’ll be great to see him and reconnect when I deliver this awesome creation. I think he’ll be pleased.

Here’s a few shots before the final polish- more photos to follow

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#12

A while ago a friend of mine contacted me and asked me to build a guitar for her husband for his birthday.

Bam! Here it is! #12 is a semi-hollow walnut bodied monster that sounds like a chorus of angels- it should since the body wood was salvaged from a local church. The tremolo is from the 1960′s, but left unused until now and also includes a string trough body option. Just send a few strings through the trem and the rest through the body and it acts as a fake B bender giving some nice pedal steel sounds.

I really need to get into the swing of taking progress photos! There are alot of unusual things about this instrument and wish i had captured them as they were happening. One of the really cool things was how the body was constructed- it was done in two halves and joined together after they were hollowed out.

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I had a blast making this one and the new owner is having a blast with it.

Happy Birthday Dave!