photo 427557833905665036_zps1423272d.gif
Showing posts with label Ron Thal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ron Thal. Show all posts

Thursday, November 15, 2012

My Fretless Strat, Just Because I could ...

Local Music Gear Feature Story 
Written By: 
Jac Harrison

Earlier this month I had the chance to see Guns n Roses, in my opinion one of the greatest bands of all time, perform in sin city. The show was amazing and full of great music. As a guitar nut I was more interested in the guitars that the guys where using than the half naked dancers on stage. One of the guitars that blew my mind was a double neck Vigier guitar that Ron “Bumblefoot” Thal was using. This guitar was sick; it had a standard fretted neck on the bottom and a fretless on top. Knowing that I would be in Philly for the Bee 3 vintage guitar show in just a few days and that Vigier Guitar would have a booth there I decided I needed to try one of their fretless guitars.

At the Bee 3 show DJ Scully, from Vigier Guitars, let me play the fretless for about an hour and I knew I needed to have it. But with a price tag of $3,300 I also knew that it was not going to happen right now. Since fretless is a unique beast I wanted to learn how to play it as well as a fretted guitar before I put down that kind of cash. I did a little research online and called Fred, (the head luthier at WD Music Products) to get his advice on how I could make my own. To my surprise it was very simple. I needed to remove the frets, backfill the gaps and sand with a radius block.