My home made guitar

This picture is taken in 1982, in the straw roofed rondavel at the farmhouse in Chartwell which I turned into a recording studio. 

On the left - in the snare stand - is my Oberheim DMX, probably the first one in South Africa. The guitar was my home made travel guitar - which would evolve into a fantastic recording instrument before being stolen in 1989 during the burglary at my studio in Hampton Court. 

Heres the guitar story.

Jose Fernandes, with whom I shared this 500 acre rental farmhouse in Chartwell for the last two years I lived in Johannesburg, bought one of the first Midi tracking guitars. A Roland GS 500. A Les Paul style body and a midi box of sounds. Problem was it tracked too slowly - especially on the low notes - and so it soon became apparent it was unsuitable for purpose. And then Jose dropped it, smashing the top half of the headstock. At that time Steinberger had brought out the little headless 6 string - in black - and I wanted one of those as a travel guitar. So I appropriated the carcass of the Roland Synth guitar and set up a work bench. 

Bear in mind I had no experience with the craft of the luthier and no skills with woodwork. My sole qualification was having read about Brian Mays efforts with a fireplace. With a vice holding the guitar, I sawed off the headstock. I had a friend with an engineering works, and I drew a design of a piece of metal with six little dips in it, to attach to the end of the sawed of neck - where the strings would fix on. He made it for me and I screwed it into the back end of the neck. 

I traced out a design of how I wanted the body to be, modelled mostly on the Steinberg shape. The Roland was a solid chunk of wood - and so I decided to make the tuning pegs attach to a pyramid cut out on the right hand side. (You can see the original Grover heads from the Roland in the picture next to my right hand.) 

I removed the midi tracking pick up and replaced it with a di Marzio Humbucker at the back and a Seymour Duncan (purple) on the front. The Seymour Duncan was the most expensive part of the Instrument - bought from Eddie Boyle at Toms for top dollar.  

Each pick up I wired to its own jack output in my only foray into soldering electronics. It had two volume knobs, one for each pick up. One pick up went into a volume pedal - where I could bring it in or out with the accompanying sound. When I used it at gigs, the clean pick up went straight to the PA - and the dirty pick up(The Di Marzio) went to the guitar amp so I could shut it down with the volume pedal until I wanted that sound.

I found the Roland neck was too thick, and I guess I was just extremely lucky that when I shaved and sanded the neck back to get it to match the contour of my hand, somehow it worked, despite a total absence of any wood working skill. The neck became the best feature of the guitar - much like a thinline Tele neck.

The problem with my design effort was the balance. With the bulk of weight on the neck side, the guitar would not hang in a neutral way. This made it a headache at gigs. It would droop down to the left.

A few years passed, I moved the England, and found myself in a music shop in Addlestone, where I met a Luthier - Tom Anfield. I showed him the guitar, which he loved, and he came up with an ingenious design for moving the centre of gravity for attaching the strap. A six inch wooden piece on a rotating screw that would fold out to hold the strap end. By extending the strap holding width - and using trial and error on the length of the wooden add on - eventually we had the guitar able to balance neutral. And when it was stored - the 'Anfield add-on' rotated back into a cutaway bit of the body to become invisible.

With the guitar now a joy to hold as well as to play, I began using it at gigs and for awhile it became my main instrument. 

Then in 1989, my studio at Hampton Court, at 3 Bridge Road, was burgled and included in the thieves tally was this guitar.

For years I hoped its distinctive style would lead it back to me, but now, 23 years later, I have come to terms with its loss. This may in part explain my fairly extensive collection of quality guitars, compensating for the disappointment.

I have never since dabbed with either woodwork or soldering.