Weird Guitar of the Day

@weirdguita.rs

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Strange stringed instruments, posted (hopefully!) every day. Check the alt text for more info on the pictures!

Here's a picture of Indian musician V. M. Bhatt sitting cross-legged on stage. He's playing his version of a mohan veena. While there was a version of the mohan veena floating around back in the 1950s, the modern version wasn't invented until Bhatt found a classical guitar at his parents' music school and modified it. The one Bhatt is playing in the picture was made by Concord, and it's got a flattop body with two F-holes. The headstock has 8 tuners and is split 4/4. Four of those strings are melody strings, and four are drone strings. There are also 13 sympathetic strings. The tuners for those run along the top of the neck, and there are pins on the neck that turn those strings towards the tailpiece.
The Teuffel Antonio is a tribute to luthiers Torres and Stradivari, both of whom had the first name Antonio. It looks like a stretched acoustic guitar, but it's an electric. How stretched is it? The top of the body joins the neck at the 10th fret. The bottom half is a deep cutaway, though, going all the way to the 18th fret. (At least, it's around there. My counting may be off.) There's a dark circle in the white body that's supposed to look like a soundhole, and that's where the pickup is mounted. It's got a volume knob and a tone knob. The tuners on the 3/3 slotted headstock point down instead of out to the sides.
The Overwater Expression is an acoustic bass guitar that looks like a larger version of the Hofner "violin" bass, but with a cutaway on the bottom side of the body. The circular soundhole has been split into three small oval shapes with a long rectangular hole between each one. It's got a piezo pickup and a 3-band EQ, and the EQ controls are on the top of the guitar. You can get one with 4, 5, or 6 strings. The one in the picture is a 5-string, and the headstock is split 3/2.
The Victoria Surf Rider is a solidbody electric that came out of the Zenon factory in Japan and sold under many other names. It's got an offset shape with a little bit of Rickenbacker thrown in and an extra sharkfin-style point where your arm would go. It's got three single-coil pickups, and they're controlled by a volume knob, a tone knob, a 4-way rotary pickup switch (confusingly labeled off / low / mix / high), and a sliding rhythm / solo switch. It also has a trem with a really long bar.
Watkins was a British guitar factory that mainly made 6-strings, but they did have a couple bass models. Here's one, a bass version of their Rapier. It's got a Strat-style body that's got some heavy Burns influences, like the pickguard that runs diagonally from the upper horn to the control cavity. (There's also a tiny pickguard that just covers the lower horn.) It's got two pickups and three knobs. I'm assuming they're volume/tone/pickup selector, but I could be wrong about that. The only models I've seen that have explanations for what the knobs do only have two of them (volume and 4-way tone switch).
It's been a while since I've posted a lap steel, so here's a Supro Irene from 1941. It's got a symmetrical, vaguely paddle-shaped body that's covered in white pearloid. Instead of having dots or block inlays, each fret is marked with its corresponding number in Roman numerals. It's got one of those horseshoe-style pickups where the strings go through the pickup cover, and it's controlled by a volume knob (above the strings) and a tone knob (below them). This guitar was built before they figured out that you could connect the pickup to an output jack and make the cable its own separate thing, so everything is hard-wired together.
The Maxwell Infinitum is a fanned-fret acoustic guitar with a large body that's been milled on a CNC machine. Instead of having a soundhole in the middle of the body or F-holes around the edge. there are 4 scoops (two on the front and two on the back) that have been cut into the waist of the guitar. Triangular soundholes are in each of the scoops. The way they've been cut into the guitar makes it look like the body has been twisted somehow.
The Baum Wingman is an offset guitar that looks like if Gibson made a Jaguar (or Fender made a Firebird). It's got two mini-humbuckers, and each one has its own volume knob. There's also a master tone knob and a 3-way switch. The 6-in-line headstock looks like it was inspired by the one on GIbson's Victory models. If I got one of these, it would be exactly like the one in the picture (black with gold hardware).
The Dreadnautilus is a headless acoustic guitar that was built by luthier Fred Carlson in the late 1990s. Its body is circular like a nautilus shell. The soundhole is in the extra space on the top side of the body, and the neck meets up with the bottom side of the body, providing a perfect cutaway. The tuners are mounted in a V shape behind the bridge.
Here's a picture of bassist Chuck Skog from around 1954. He's decked out in his finest country outfit and is holding a 5-string electric bass. Yes! A 5-string! In 1954! This bass was built by brothers Dale and Harry Granstrom with help from guitar legend Paul Bigsby. The brothers made four guitars (two electrics, a pedal steel, and this bass) out of myrtle wood that they found at their day job as woodworkers. The two electrics and this bass have a similar, Telecaster-inspired body shape with a violin-style notch cut out of the top of the guitar and a pointier lower cutaway horn. The bass has a single pickup that's controlled by a volume knob and a tone knob. It also has a large circular hand rest coming out of the bridge. The neck has block inlays and a 5-in-line headstock that is a little pointier than the version Leo Fender "borrowed". Since this bass looks like it's got a fairly short scale, I'm assuming it's tuned E A D G C like Fender's Bass V.
The Martin EB-18 is a solidbody electric bass, and the counterpart to the EM-18 guitar. It's got a double-cutaway body that's made out of maple, with rosewood stripes running from the neck down to the end of the body. It's also got a humbucker that's controlled by a volume knob, a tone knob, and a two-position tone switch. The 2/2 split headstock is shaped like a Smurf hat.
Here's another prototype guitar, this time from the "we're cool too, I swear!" phase Guild had in the 80s. The X97V looks like an Explorer that's been made really pointy and flipped upside down, so the part that you normally whack your elbow on hangs down and points away from you. It's got two humbuckers, and each one has its own volume knob. There's also a master tone control and a 3-way switch. The guitar also has a Strat-style trem and a V-shaped 3/3 split headstock.
Here are two pictures of the weirdest guitar Fender ever made. (Believe me, that's saying something.) It's a roughly Strat-shaped electric that's made out of Lucite, like the old Dan Armstrong guitars. The perimeter starts out thick, thins out after that, then goes thick again for the center section. There are even holes in the thin section, on either side of the bridge. The guitar has two Wide Range humbuckers. There are three knobs, but I don't see a pickup switch, so I'm assuming they're a volume knob for each pickup and a master tone control. The neck has block inlays and a Starcaster-style 6-in-line headstock, 5 years before the Starcaster was released. (I'm pretty sure that design has been floating around since the old Marauder prototypes.) On the left is a picture of the guitar, and on the right is a picture of the Beach Boys' Carl Wilson playing it live in 1972. I think the weirdest thing about his guitar is the fact that Roger Rossmeisl designed it. He's more well-known for his work with Rickenbacker and popularized the German carve that you see on Mosrite guitars.
Sandtron guitars were built in factories around the Nagoya area of Japan and sold by an electronics store of the same name in Burlington, Ontario back in the 1960s. It's a double-cutaway electric with what appears to be a reversed body that's got a curve cut out of where your arm would rest. The electronics are mounted to an absolutely massive metal pickguard. There are three gold-foil pickups, and the neck one is tilted with the top pointed towards the bridge. Each pickup has its own volume knob, tone knob, and on/off switch (located above each pickup). The guitar also has two outputs, and I'm assuming the switch in the lower horn switches between mono and stereo output. It also has a trem, rectangular inlays on top of the frets, and a 3/3 split headstock with a little triangular nub sticking out of the end.
The Spalt TG 1903 is a headless electric travel guitar. Its body is full of holes and is roughly teardrop-shaped, curving upwards at the neck end to give you an upper horn. It also has detachable arm and leg rests. The P-90 in the neck is controlled by a volume knob and a tone knob.
Have you ever wondered what it would look like if Leo Fender was really into cubism? Well, it would probably looks something like the Godfrey Telecasso. There are two of them in this picture: a black one with a white pickguard, and a blonde one with a black pickguard. Each one has a squared-off hourglass shape. There's a large curved metal plate that houses the single-coil pickup, the volume and tone controls, and the 3-saddle bridge. There's an even larger curved pickguard, and the end of the fretboard is curved to match it. The 6-in-line headstock is straight on the bottom (instead of scrolled on regular Fender models) and has a really pointy end.
Here's a black & white publicity photo of guitarist Norma-Jean Wofford (otherwise known as The Duchess), taken when she played rhythm guitar for Bo Diddley. She's posing and looking off to her left. What stands out them most in the picture (besides her clothes and her beehive hairdo) is the guitar that's strapped to her, a Gretsch Cadillac. The Cadillac is one of three guitars Gretsch built that were based on Bo's designs. (The Jupiter Thunderbird and Cigar Box were the other two.) It's a double-cutaway design with a narrow waist and two long, curved horns sticking out of the end of the body, making the guitar look like a car's tailfin. It's got two Filter'Tron pickups, and each one has its own volume knob. There's also a master volume knob, a 3-way pickup switch, and a 3-way switch that controls a tone circuit.
Normally, when you think of harp guitars, you think of guitar-shaped instruments with extra bass strings tacked onto the top of the body. Well, French Luthier Joseph Laurent Mast had a different idea. In 1827, he built an instrument that looked like a harp, but had 6 strings over a fretboard like a guitar. There's a small pedestal with a long wooden rod coming out of it at a right angle. The body of the instrument comes upwards out of the pedestal and is angled away from that rod. A pennant-shaped headstock comes out of the top of the rod, and the fretboard is attached to it. The fretboard goes downwards parallel to the rod and is connected to the body by a curved piece.
The Gerard Gilet Map Resonator is an Australian tribute to the old National guitars that were shaped like the map of the US, but made out of wood. It's got a big aluminum resonator cone, and the bridge has a Fishman piezo that's always on. In addition, there's a humbucker in the neck that you can add to the mix with the volume knob that's above it.
The Alvarez-Yairi 60th Anniversary 5051 is an acoustic guitar with a sunburst finish and two ornately carved, oval shaped areas (one on either side of the fretboard) instead of a traditional soundhole. These areas didn't actually go through the top of the body, which created a problem. If you were changing strings and clipped one too close to the bridge, the end of the string would fall into the body, and you'd have no way to get it out. This defect was corrected on later models by adding two small soundholes in the middle of the carved areas.
F Bass Inc. was started by Canadian luthier George Furlanetto in 1978. They started out making guitars and basses, but switched primarily to basses soon after. This model, their take on a Bass VI, has a vaguely Fender-ish body with a deeper lower cutaway and a little point at the end of the body. Each pickup (a wide-range humbucker in the bridge, a single-coil in the middle, and either a humbucker or single-coil in the neck) has its own sliding on/off switch, and there's also a volume and a tone knob. The guitar also has a Jazzmaster-style trem and a 3/3 split headstock.
The Silvertone Apocalypse is a signature model for Paul Stanley of KISS. It's a Flying V-style guitar. The long ends of the V are curved inwards and barbed, and the guitar also has violin-style waist cutouts and SG-style cutaway horns. The model was made in guitar and bass versions, and this is a bass. It's got a J-pickup in the bridge and a P-pickup in the neck. They're controlled by a volume knob, a tone knob, and a blend knob. This one is black with red highlights around the cutaways, but a mirror finish model was available.
The Framus Nashville is a solidbody electric that looks kinda like a Les Paul, but with a cutaway horn on top as well as the bottom. The SUper De Luxe version has gold hardware, binding around the body, and block inlays. It's got two mini-humbucker pickups, and they're controlled by a volume knob, a tone knob, and a 6-way rotary pickup switch in the upper horn. Three of the settings do what you expect (front/back/both), and the other three let you set the pickups out of phase.
Remember how I said that the Auerswald I posted a little while ago was the weirdest guitar? Well, this Atlansia Dualist is the weirdest bass. It's a headless, fretless 2-string bass. If it wasn't for the round part where the split pickup is and the balance arm coming out of that circular area, it would just be one long rectangle from nut to bridge. The only control is a volume knob on top of the body.
The Sinfonia 12-string is an East German guitar that was made in the 1970s, back when there was an East Germany. It's a hollowbody,double-cutaway electric with two large F-holes. It's got three single-coil pickups,and each one has its own sliding on/off switch, volume knob, and tone knob.
This 12-string electric guitar was made by Murph Guitars, a Californian company that was only around from 1965 to 1967. It's a hollowbody that's shaped like a reversed Flying V, but a lot curvier. It's also got a neat F-hole that follows the curve of the body. It's got two single-coils, and they're controlled by a volume knob, a tone knob, and a 3-way switch. I like the capital A-shaped 6/6 split headstock.
Here's a picture of three Goya Rangemaster electric guitars that was taken out of a catalog from the late 60s. Unlike the hollowbody Rangemasters I've posted before, these are offset solidbody guitars. They have the same two split-coil pickups as the other Rangemasters, and the controls are similar too. There are 6 pushbuttons running diagonally above the strings (confusingly labeled ALL / 1 +2 / 1+4 / 2+3 / 2+4 / OFF) and three more below the bridge pickup (labeled LO / MED / HI) that control a tone circuit, as well as a large volume knob. The guitar also has a Jazzmaster-style trem.
All right, everybody. This is it. This is the weirdest guitar. The Auerswald Model C was made for Prince, and he used it live and in the studio. It's an all-white headless electric guitar (kinda) with gold hardware and a very angular body that looks like somebody went wild with a band saw. There's even a triangular notch cut of the body and the end of the fretboard. The whole guitar is made out of one piece of wood, and there's a "sustain bow" running from the lower cutaway horn to the large triangular headstock, kinda like one of those Roland G-707 synth guitars. There's a humbucker and a single-coil jammed together next to the bridge, and they're controlled by a volume knob, a tone knob, and a 3-way switch. Just because I've found the weirdest guitar doesn't mean I'm gonna stop looking. There's gotta be something weirder than this out there.
The ESP LTD TL-7 is a black 7-string acoustic guitar with a lower cutaway and a single cat-eye soundhole like you'd see on a Rickenbacker. It's got a Fishman piezo system, and the controls (volume, bass, mid, and treble knobs, as well as a tuner) are on the top of the body facing the player. The headstock is split 4/3.
The Kimberly Deluxe is a roughly Strat-shaped electric guitar that came out of Japan in the late 1960s. It's got 4 single-coils jammed in the space bwtween the tremolo bridge and the neck. Each one has its own on/off switch, and they're wired in series. Each one also has its own tone knob to go with a master volume knob. I like the green sunburst finish and the gold flowers on the black pickguard.
This Fender Stratocaster/Esquire doubleneck was the first guitar built by luthier Michael Stevens for Fender's Custom Shop when it opened in 1986. It has a cream body and gold hardware, echoing the old Mary Kaye Strat. The pickups are laid out the same as the regular guitars (three single-coils for the Strat and one for the Esquire), but they're controlled by a volume knob, a blend knob that's used to switch between the necks, and a 5-way switch for the Strat's pickups. The tremolo is from a left-handed guitar.
The Duesenberg Rezobro is a semi-hollow electric guitar with a single cutaway. There's a large circular metal plate covering most of the body that's meant to look like the resonator cone of a dobro. The bridge of the guitar is made out of a rectangular metal plate with two triangular saddles. In addition to the P-90 in the neck position and the humbucker in the bridge, there's also a magnetic pickup underneath the bridge plate and a piezo system. The first three knobs on the large metal circle are volume controls for each of the three pickup systems (regular pickups, bridge plate pickup, piezo). The fourth knob is a master tone knob, and there's also a master volume on the cutaway horn. There's a 3-way switch for the regular pickups, and a sliding switch that lets you hear all of the pickups or just the regular pickups.
Luigi Mozzani was an Italian luthier that's known today for his harp guitars. (I've posted a few of them before; check them out!) While this guitar he built looks like it could be a harp guitar, It's just a regular 6-string acoustic. It's got a cutaway on the bottom half of the body, but all the magic is on the top half. There's a long box with a soundhole that comes out of where the upper cutaway would be. It goes all the way down to the slotted 3/3 headstock and ends in a circle that wraps around it. Fortunately, the tuners point down instead of out to the side, so you can still tune the guitar when you need to.
The Gibson EBSF-1250 is an extremely rare (from one account, less than a dozen were made) 4-string bass/6-string guitar doubleneck that looks like an SG that's undergoing cellular division. The bass side has a regular humbucker in the bridge and one of the fat ones in the neck, and the guitar side has two regular humbuckers. There are two volume and two tone controls, a 3-way pickup selector switch, and a 3-way neck selector switch. What makes this guitar really cool (besides the obvious) is that it's got a built-in fuzz circuit. There's an on/off knob, an attack knob, and a switch marked "in/out" (a phase switch, maybe?).
An Epiphone EB-0 bass sits on a black chair in a white room with black curtains. (No station nearby, though.) It's a short-scale bass that's shaped like a Gibson SG. It's got a big humbucker near the neck, a volume knob, and a tone knob. I got it for $200 because the finish is rough on the part of the body where your arm hangs over.
The Meazzi Hollywood Jupiter is a solidbody electric guitar with an offset body and a large 3-piece metal pickguard covering most of the body. (The center section is anodized gold, but the other two are just bare metal.) It's got two single-coil pickups, and you can switch between them with a 3-way switch that's in the lower horn. Fairly normal, no? Well, here's where things get weird. The neck pickup is passive, but the bridge pickup has a preamp hooked to it. (The 9-volt battery for it is hidden under the Meazzi badge above the pickup.) When you're playing on the neck pickup, the volume is controlled by a large, arced rotary lever above the fretboard. Push the lever up along the curve, and it gets louder. When you switch the bridge pickup on (either by putting the 3-way pickup switch in the middle or all the way down), the volume moves to a small knob by the switch. There are two tone knobs (one for each pickup) in the normal control location, as well as another of those rotary lever things. This one controls the exact mix between the pickups that gets output. (It took me a long time to figure out how to describe all that. Hopefully it made sense.)
The Loic Le Pape Scalar Gold Top is a one-of-a-kind (fortunately?) headless electric guitar that looks like somebody crossed a Strandberg with a pancake. It's got a stainless steel body that's been treated so it looks like an old Les Paul Goldtop. It's got a humbucker and a P-90, and they're controlled by a volume knob, a tone knob, and a 3-way switch. There's also a coil tap switch for the humbucker. The weirdest part of the guitar is the placement of the Gretsch-style fret markers. I mean, who puts a marker on the 8th fret and 10th fret instead of one on the 9th like every other guitar?
Here are four Synthaxe MIDI controllers (blue, green, red, and yellow) sitting on a black background. They're roughly shaped like guitars, with a set of six "strings" on a 24-fret neck that sticks out of the body at an angle (for ergonomics or something), and another set of "strings" on the body itself. You can use the body strings to trigger the notes that you're fretting on the neck strings, or you can use the 9 rectangular buttons on the top of the body (one for each string, one for the group of 3 bass strings, one for the group of 3 treble strings, and one for all 6). There are two string bend sensors (one below the buttons, and one below the strings), and there's even a whammy bar. Instead of a 1/4 inch output jack, there's a jack for a 14-pin cable. Despite being used by Allan Holdsworth and Lee Ritenour, these weren't very popular. They were really expensive, and only around 100 were made.
The Fernandes Triturador was designed for Carcass bassist Jeff Walker. It's roughly shaped like a Les Paul, but with an Explorer-style pointy lower horn. The lightning bolt on the body would be a great F-hole, but the bass is sadly a solidbody and that's just a decal. The bass has two humbuckers, and they're controlled by a volume knob, a tone knob, and a pickup blend knob. There's also an on/off switch and gain knob for the built in distortion circuit. The "tools of the trade" fretboard inlays (things like a pair of scissors, a hammer, and a machine gun) are pretty neat, and are based on the cover of the Carcass EP of the same name.
At first, this might look like a regular Gibson Les Paul. It's got the normal LP setup: two humbuckers, a volume and tone knob for each, and a 3-way switch. However, this guitar was one of the biggest mistakes Gibson ever made. You see, it's got the dreaded Robot tuning system. I'll post more info in the next picture. (This picture was taken by Wikipedia user Lionel R. Chetwynd.)
The Millimetric S4 is an offset-style multi-scale guitar with fanned frets. The body has been beveled all the way around for player comfort. It's available with multiple pickup options; the one in the picture has two humbuckers that are controlled by a volume knob, a tone knob, and a rotary pickup switch. The 6-in-line headstock looks like someone flipped a Parker Fly headstock around and put the tuners inside the curve instead of outside.
The Lottonen Copacabana guitar and bass were designed by Finnish designer Eero Aarnio. (He's the guy that designed those big ball-shaped chairs you see in 60s movies.) It looks like one of Bo Diddley's rectangular guitars melted and curved into an S shape. It's got one pickup that's controlled by a volume knob and a tone knob. The 4-in-line headstock is reversed. This specific bass was owned by ZZ Top's Dusty Hill. I dunno if Billy Gibbons had a matching guitar, but he probably did.
The Ancoats Granada Special is an electric guitar that looks like a Telecaster crossed with a Firebird, with a German carve around the outside of the body. It's got a gold foil pickup in the bridge and a staple-style P-90 in the neck. They're controlled by a volume knob, a tone knob, and a 3-way switch.
Here's a picture of guitarist Floyd Rose that was taken in the mid-1980s. He's got wavy blonde hair, a mustache, and is wearing a red T-shirt that has the logo for the tremolo system he designed on it. He's also holding his Kramer signature model guitar. The Floyd Rose Signature was made from 1983 to 1987, and it's a Strat-style guitar with a narrow waist and a big curve cut out of the end of the body. It's got two humbuckers, and they're controlled by a volume knob, two tone knobs (one for each pickup) and a 3-way blade switch. It's also got a Floyd Rose trem on it (of course). True Kramer nerds know that this picture was taken sometime around 1984 or 1985, because the guitar has the rounder "banana" headstock on it instead of the Strat-style one on earlier models or the pointy one on later models.
The Kent 742 is an electric guitar that's got a roughly Strat-shaped body, but with sharper horns. It's got four single-coil pickups, and the two closest to the neck are angled towards the bottom of the fretboard. Each pickup has its own volume and tone knob down in the normal control spot, and they also have their own on/off rocker switch above the strings. There's also a sliding on/off switch for a tone circuit down by the lower horn. The whole electronics cavity is covered by a neat tortoiseshell pickguard. The guitar also has a Bigsby-style trem. The neck has large block inlays and is topped by a 3/3 split headstock.
I've posted the 6-string and bass versions of the Charvel Surfcaster before, but I didn't know they made a 12-string version until today. The Surfcaster is a semi-hollow electric guitar with an offset body and a cat-eye F-hole. It's got two angled single-coils, and they're controlled by a volume knob, a tone knob, and a 3-way switch. On the 12-string version, the headstock is split 6/6 and does the Rickenbacker trick of having 6 tuners sticking out to the side and 6 pointing down.
The Maton Big Ben was the first bass guitar to be produced in Australia. It's got the same curves on the side of the body like you'd see on a violin-style bass, but it's wider, and the end of the body where the neck joins is cut off at an angle, leaving a cutaway horn on top and a deep cutaway without a horn on the bottom. It's got a single-coil pickup, and it's controlled by a volume knob and a tone knob. For some reason, the volume knob is all the way over by the lower cutaway, while the tone knob is in its usual place.
Here's a black and white picture of an employee at a Soviet instrument manufacturer that was taken in 1978. She's smiling and holding an electric guitar, the Aelita 1. It's got an offset body with swoopier cutaway horns than a Fender. It's got three gold-foil pickups, and they're controlled by (I'm guessing) one volume knob, two tone knobs, and a rotary pickup switch. It's even got a trem. I like the fretboard inlays, which are small triangles that run along the top of the neck.
The National Bluegrass 35 is an acoustic guitar with a white fiberglass body and a large aluminum resonator cone. The neck has large block inlays and is topped with a black 3/3 headstock. This is the first time I've seen a resonator guitar that wasn't made out of metal or wood, and I think it looks really cool.
Here's a doubleneck guitar/bass that's going to be made by Eastwood Guitars as part of their Guitstarter program. It's an offset SG-style guitar with a German carve around the edge of the body. It's based on one of their pre-existing models, which is in turn based on a guitar that was made by Telestar in the 1960s. However, there have been a few changes made to the base model, and you'll understand why when you find out who this was originally built for. For one thing, both the guitar neck and bass neck have been set up to play microtonally, which means there are a bunch of frets closely spaced on both necks. The guitar side has two single-coils, and the bass side has one. Each neck has its own volume knob and output jack, and there's a 3-way switch for the guitar pickups. This guitar originally started out as a signature model for Angine de Poitrine's guitarist/bassist Khn. They ultimately decided not to put their name on it, but they were OK with Eastwood releasing it as a standalone model. Unfortunately, if you buy one of these, you'll have to add your own polka dots.
The Brian Eastwood Bender Jellycastor is another model in the Bender series, joining the Distortocaster and Collision bass. It looks like somebody's tried to melt a Telecaster. It's all stretched and warped, with a curved control plate, a really narrow waist, and a long lower horn. The high frets on the neck look like they're drooping, and the headstock is curved upwards in the middle. The electronics are all standard Tele stuff, though (two single-coils, volume and tone knobs, 3-way blade switch). The neck pickup is pushed forward, and it even looks like it's curved a little.
Here's a still from a Youtube video. In it, Victor Wooten is standing in his studio, in front of a wall full of guitars & basses and an electric piano. He's holding quite possibly the coolest bass I've ever seen. This 8-string bass was built by Bill Conklin. It's got a normal Fender-ish shape, two pickups, and a bunch of knobs and switches. (I'm guessing the five knobs are volume/tone/3-band EQ, and the two switches are pickup selector/preamp power.) The headstock is split 4/4. None of that stuff is important, though. The art on the body is. On the body, there's a large red and black dragon with its wings spread wide open, fron the end of the bass all the way to the upper cutaway horn. The dragon also has large white fangs (made from real ivory!). Its tail curls down around the controls and goes all the way to the lower horn. Kneeling by the lower cutaway is a white figure holding a long sword.
It's been a while since I've posted a Wandre, so here's a Selene. The body is roughly symmetrical. It looks like somebody took a single-cutaway guitar and cut off a curve on the top so it tapers from the lower bout all the way down to the neck. It's got the normal Wandre electronics, with two trapezoid-shaped pickups, a volume and a tone control, a 3-way switch in the lower cutaway horn, and a sliding switch by the knobs that might control a tone circuit. (I haven't figured that out yet.) There are colorful inlays on the fretboard, and the aluminum neck is topped by a wide 3/3 headstock. I really like the "candle smoke" sunburst finish that goes from red to black to white.
Did you know Rickenbacker made a 5-string bass? Neither did I, until I saw this. The Rickenbacker 4004CII/5 Cheyenne is a 5-string version of the 4004, which in itself is an attempt to modernize the classic 4001. It's got the same body shape, but no pickguard or binding. It's also got two humbucking pickups instead of the massive horseshoe pickup. They're controlled by a volume knob, a tone knob, and a 3-way switch. The headstock is split 3/2.
The Shergold Marathon 6 is what it says on the tin: a 6-string version of a Shergold Marathon bass. It's the old-school definition of a 6-string bass, though, being tuned an octave below a normal guitar. (Think Fender Bass VI or Gibson EB-6.) The lower cutaway is deep so you can get to all 24 frets. It's got a humbucker that's controlled by a volume knob, a tone knob, and what may be a coil tap switch. This specific bass was one of Peter Hook's backups from when he played in Joy Division.
The Fernandes Ravelle is their version of a Les Paul. It's got an offset point at the end of the body, the curve where the knobs are comes to a sharper radius, and the cutaway horn is flared out. Fernanded made a bunch of different variations on it, and this particular one is a baritone. (If you don't know, that means it's tuned a fifth below a regular guitar, so B E A D F# B.) It's got two humbuckers, and they're controlled by a volume knob, a tone knob, and a 3-way switch. I really like the sideways V-shaped fretboard inlays. They remind me of the old Viacom logo.
Mensinger is a Polish guitar company that makes fairly normal electric guitars (Strats, Teles, Firebirds, stuff like that), but they also come up with weird stuff, like this Predator doubleneck. It was made for Polish musician Zbigniew Hołdys, and has a 4-string bass on top and a 6-string guitar on the bottom. The guitar side has been offset to the left so the fretboards line up. The bass has a humbucker and a P-pickup, and they're controlled by a volume knob, a tone knob, and a rotary pickup switch knob. The guitar side has two humbuckers, and they're controlled by a volume knob, a tone knob, and a 3-way switch. There's also a 3-way switch so you can choose what neck you hear. I like the Salvador Dali-inspired graphics on the front of the guitar.
Here's a picture of Prince playing in the rain during the Super Bowl XLI halftime show. He's wearing a blue suit and yellow button-up shirt, and he's got his hand up to his ear, as if to hear the crowd scream. He's also holding his Schecter Habibi guitar. The Habibi is purple and shaped like the symbol he changed his name to, consisting of a circle, a long curved line that forms the cutaway horns, and a long straight line for the neck, with an arrow-shaped 3/3 split headstock. The guitar has a humbucker and a single-coil pickup, and they're controlled by a volume knob, a tone knob, and a 3-way switch. The guitar also has a Floyd Rose trem.
The Sala CE-5W is a headless guitar with a hollow single-cutaway body that's reminiscent of a Telecaster and two F-holes. There's a humbucker in the neck position, and it's controlled by a volue knob and a tone knob. Speaking of the neck, there are six long grooves that go all the way down the length of it. This is where the frets attach. Each of what we think of as "frets" is actually made out of six segments, and these segments can be slid back and forth to put the guitar in different temperaments. That's why the fretboard looks a bit wavy in the picture.
If you've followed this account for a while, you may remember me posting a prototype of a Strat-style guitar that Gibson made as a Jimi Hendrix tribute. What I didn't know at the time I posted that was that some were actually made. Here's one of the production models. It's basically the same as the Hendrix tribute that Fender made a little while later. It's got the three single-coils, with the bridge pickup angled the other way. It's also got one volume and two tone controls, as well as a 5-way blade switch. There's an Experience Hendrix logo decal on the pickguard, and Jimi's signature stamped onto the flipped 6-in-line headstock. Unlike the Fender version, this one has the normal right-handed trem instead of a lefty one.