Grateful Dead Music Forum

Lefty Scott Walker Santa Cruz ...

Swamp ash body, 24 frets, mahogany neck, brazilian fingerboard ... custom Jangletone buffer, master volume, pull for single coil, effects loop, buffer bypass, master tone, adjustable preamp boost control

Wait! You're a lefty? Fuck. That explains alot. That makes you, Tom... Geez.

I like the looks of her. But I am a real stickler for fingerboards. So far ebony & glossy maple are the only ones I really love.

It's a beauty. I'm assuming it plays like a dream. I'm not real fond of the cavity cover on the back...either match or go with a higher degree of contrast. Do you really need something other than the tiger? I would imagine that would be the ultimate. I guess none of us really know when to say when. If I may be so bold...what kind of price tag are we talking here??

Thats the nicest PRS copy i've ever seen!
the pup plates? are gay!
call Ed Roman!

playingdead wrote:

Thoughts? Yeah... the first thought I had was what's a multi-thousand dollar guitar doing sitting outside in front of a pile of junk?

Hippie Ghetto, 5000$ guitar god knows what else 6^ and oh?

jdsmodulus wrote:Thats the nicest PRS copy i've ever seen!
the pup plates? are gay!
call Ed Roman!

Ed Roman?!?! Holy crap, I used to deal with him when he had a little shop in Danbury, CT 30 years ago. What makes you recommend calling him?

Emoto wrote:

jdsmodulus wrote:Thats the nicest PRS copy i've ever seen!
the pup plates? are gay!
call Ed Roman!

Ed Roman?!?! Holy crap, I used to deal with him when he had a little shop in Danbury, CT 30 years ago. What makes you recommend calling him?

Ed's got a huge shop now in Las Vegas with tons of custom stuff.

Scott lives in Santa Cruz, that looks like the back of a winery to me. He is about the nicest guy you'll ever talk to.

The cavity covers are brazilian rosewood, like the fingerboard; he typically uses rosewood accents all over the guitars, usually his knobs are carved rosewood, as well, although these are silver. He is an expert carver, hence the intricate carving on the body, scrolled horns and the handmade pickup rings, etc. He got his start carving necks for Santa Cruz acoustic guitars, which are some seriously fine instruments.

This guitar has Lollar low wound pickups, which I've never heard before.

Basically, he will do anything you want for $4500 or so ... he is a serious builder, he's built guitars for Steve Kimock and Barry Sless, I've heard he's making or made one for Warren Haynes as well. He works closely with John Cutler and Kimock on the wiring of the guitars, hence the ability to completely bypass the unity gain buffer if you want to, which Kimock likes for certain pedals in his setup, and the modified Cutler buffer with the adjustable boost when it's active for driving effects and preamps harder than you can with just a unity signal. Steve was talking to him about my guitar, maybe putting in two buffers, a CB1 (or Waldo's), and the new Jangletone and being able to switch between both, or none at all. Interesting idea.

This particular guitar was built for a guitar show happening this weekend, and it happened to be a lefty. He has a deposit from me, I'm just deciding whether to scoop this one up at an attractive price or pay more and get something like a cocobolo or quilted maple cap over some other core wood (maple, mahogany or purpleheart, maybe), with the Super IIs, and so forth. He has four basic shapes; this one is the 24-fret model. I also really like the body on his Walker Special, but it's a 22-fret guitar and I miss being able to get that high D. He also has an interesting Strat-like guitar that he built for Kimock and a new stereo guitar that is just nuts.

More examples of his work:
http://www.scottwalkerguitars.com/PHOTO_ARCHIVES.html

Vic, if you bought this one and it wasn't right for you would he take a return and then build you one to your specs?

He probably would, but it would certainly cost some bucks to get it from Santa Cruz to Boston and back ... LOL ...

I got wind of the guitar right after the body was carved, and we talked about putting a single coil DiMarzio in between the humbuckers, which would've been Super IIs, and customizing the wiring with a 5-way, but we were rushing decisions, I was torn over the swamp ash body, both tonally and cosmetically (although it came out gorgeous), plus the color, and he had a deadline for the guitar show to finish the guitar, so I told him to go ahead and build it out like he was planning to (2 pickups, 3-way selector, raspberry burst) and I would decide at that point if it was for me. Plus the changes we were talking about were starting to push the price of the guitar up closer to the point where I could design it from scratch, so ...

My basic thought for this instrument would be to be able to get the correct Garcia tone out of the middle pickup, but also be able to get a wider variety of other tones out of it using the bridge and neck pickups which could be something completely different than the Super IIs -- Lollars, P-90s, big single coils, anything. As nice as the Tiger guitar is, it's really a Jerry guitar through and through, and I have that already (or will again, at some point when Mr. Brawer is done working it over ...).

Barry Sless and a Walker Special (22 frets)



Kimock with an Atrezzo ... nice axe.



Burl top ... interesting.



Killer cocobolo ...

strumminsix wrote:

Emoto wrote:

jdsmodulus wrote:Thats the nicest PRS copy i've ever seen!
the pup plates? are gay!
call Ed Roman!

Ed Roman?!?! Holy crap, I used to deal with him when he had a little shop in Danbury, CT 30 years ago. What makes you recommend calling him?

Ed's got a huge shop now in Las Vegas with tons of custom stuff.

Well, I'll have to check it out. Presumably, he is doing quite well, then. He's a smart guy, so I am relatively sure he's learned and grown as time has passed, but back in the late 70s/early 80s, the guys who used to work for him in the shop were all "rock stars" if you know what I mean; nice enough but so full of themselves that it was a little off-putting. Although my few dealings with Ed were fine, he did seem a little scary. Some of the local musicians used to refer to him as "Sluggo" behind his back. Again, this was decades ago, so things have probably changed...

Re: Ed Roman
He's still bananas.
Do a search.