Regular readers of this website would have heard me mention Moniker Guitars this year. They were the the fourth guitar in my 52 Guitars series and I also stated back in March that they would build my next guitar after I won their Ugly Guitar contest. I also mentioned Moniker Guitars when they had their Kickstarter campaign going. I pledged to purchase the custom guitar pedal (Hype Box) they were building with the intention of ordering my custom guitar from Moniker Guitars in time to have it delivered at the same time as my Hype Box pedal. Well guess what? That time is now. I have begun the official journey and my Moniker Guitars custom Reedsdale Solid is underway. I am surely months away from what will be a difficult time for my family as I refuse to leave my guitar room.
Before I go into the details of the guitar I’ve decided to build, I just need to pay credit to Kevin from Moniker Guitars. I have emailed on-and-off for months with questions.
“How much would this design cost?”
“I see you added a new feature to your online guitar builder … How much would my guitar be if I added the Da Vinci tuners?”
“Can I send my own custom graphics? What format do you need them to be if so?”
“Do these questions make me look fat?”
That last one may be made-up, but you hopefully get the point. Kevin has put up with my child-like enthusiasm with great patience and incredible professionalism. That made the purchase easier even as I watched the Australian dollar dive against the US dollar. There was no way I was not getting this guitar.
So, what exactly have I ordered? Let us list!
- Reedsdale body (Alder) with white paint
- Maple C-shape neck (22 frets) with black inlays
- White headstock with a 13 degree angle to improve string tension
- Black hardware and mounting rings
- Seymour Duncan Distortion SH-6 in the bridge position
- Seymour Duncan Jazz (white) in the neck position
- Black dome knobs with white pearl tops
- Schaller Da Vinci tuners (black)
- D’Addario XL nickel wound 10-46 strings
- Custom graphics.
I opted to not put a pickguard on my guitar. I wanted the design to feature strongly with this guitar. What design I hear you say?* I’m glad you asked. If you haven’t looked already, please scroll down and admire the guitar I’ve been referring to in this article.
If you’re still reading, you either opted to not scroll down further or you made it back. Kudos to you either way! I created that main guitar graphic because I wanted to achieve a few different things with one design. Here was my thought process (simplified).
- Create a black and white guitar because my main guitar hero had a black and white guitar (Randy Rhoads)
- Create a design that pays homage to the Bullseye design made famous by Zakk Wylde
- Design the graphic so the lines are not uniform in thickness just as Eddie Van Halen did with his famous Frankenstein guitar design
- Create a design that starts at the bridge pickups and grows outward to represent the awesome sounds that are going to scream from that Seymour Duncan Distortion pickup.
And you thought it was just a black and white spiral.
So there you have it. There is one more thing that Moniker Guitars is going to attempt for me with this guitar, but I’ll save that for another article. Another article? Yes … I anticipate this guitar will be written about a fair bit (by me—I doubt many others will care as much). Now I’ll just wait for my first progress report from the folks at Moniker Guitars. The wait for that email will be like a scout group on camp … Intense!
Go design your dream guitar at Moniker Guitars.
* Don’t worry. I actually can’t hear what you’re saying or thinking. I don’t even know who you all are!
