This is a guitar I owned in the 80s. The image was taken using a Swiss-Arca 4X5 rail camera, hence the long field of focus. The shot was no doubt taken at f45 with a lens shift on, only way to get it all in and in focus.

This is a 4X5 transparency. The lower bouts of the guitar are cut off because my scanner has no provision for scanning 4X5 film. You get the idea just the same. It was a beautiful instrument. There is a funny bluish cast to the shot; I've taken most of it out here but it's still noticeable in the warmer portions of the shot.

I probably did not compensate sufficiently when filtering. This was an area you had to have down doing film photography, especially for transparencies, and most especially for transparencies going to a client or customer.

I bought this guitar at 12th Fret when 12th Fret was a small shop on lower Kingston Rd. The guitar was handmade by one of the luthiers employed there.

It was my idea to have the store's logo applied to the headstock (barely visible at the top in this shot). Curiously, no one in the shop had ever thought to do so.The guitar had one flaw. It was not made to be played by anyone with big, wide hands. There was very little room for getting around above the twelfth fret if you did not have narrow fingers.

It had many of the properties of an older SG or Les Paul. Mainly, it was a mellow sounding jazz guitar at respectable volume but when you overdrove it using whatever means you preferred, it howled and screamed and substained like no axe I owned before or since.
It never did break up like the late 50s SGs it most resembles. This was probably because of the more expensive pickups employed and/or the quality of the wood and other materials used in construction. The carved body would also have an effect on the guitar's sound.

The little flat body 50s SGs that everyone collects now as vintage classics (worth a small fortune) were orignally made as an 'econo' line, probably in an attempt to wrest some of the fledgling pop/rock market from Fender. This was one aspect that gave the early SGs their distinctive sound, the cheaper materials used.

On this guitar the tone pots were especially responsive. They reminded me more of any older Tele that I had played than a Gibson. The sound was altered considerably, providing additional colouring and nuance, depending on where you set the tone, especially on the bridge pickup.
When the coil tap was employed in tandem with the tone pots it was quite possible to get a Fender-ish sound out of the guitar, something else a late 50s SG would never have been able to do.

All in all my Gibson SG-style custom built 12th Fret guitar was a tremendous little instrument, totally versatile, quite functional, and so pr-e-e-e-tty. Who could ask for a better marriage of form and function?

I think this guitar cost me $500 in the late 80s. It was a steal. Apparently no one was interested because it was not a 'brand' guitar. Any player with fat fingers was turned off right away as well. I believe I recovered my money and then some when I consigned it a year or two later.

Those were the days, when guitars flew through my fingers without a thought. There was always another fine guitar to be played just around the next corner. To any of you who play now I say enjoy the moment. You never know when those guitars will dry up and become only a distant memory (though a truly fond one) .


Handmade Gibson SG-style body
I forget precisely what sort of wood was use but it was good quality dense material
Body hand-carved with concave back for additional comfort (and sound properties)
I don't recall whether the neck was a screw on or through the body, probably the latter
Ebony fretboard
Fretwire was not really, really wide but wider than any standard off-the-wall guitar of that day
Brass hardware
2 styles of mini-humbuckers
Coil tap switch to utilise the bridge pickup as a single coil or a humbucker.
Volume and tone pots for each pickup