222 – 261120 ZLP-13

Body Style:  ZLP-13

Body Wood:  Flamed Hard Maple

Neck Wood:  Maple

Fingerboard Wood:  Pau Ferro

Scale:  25.5"

Frets:  24 Stainless, 110/57

Fingerboard Radius:  12 inch

Tuners:  Gotoh sealed

Pickups:  Zachary Hand Wound Strat-o-Bucker set

Controls:  master Volume and Tone, 6-way rotary switch

Pickup Selection, 6-way rotary switch:
1- neck humbucker;   2- neck inside coil;   3- both inside coils;
4- both humbucking;   5- bridge inside coil;   6- bridge humbucking;

Neck Joint:  bolt-on with Spike isolation coupling and angle adjustment,

Strings:  Zachary Optimum Tensions, 10++ RW set

Weight: 7.9 lbs.

Price:   $2500 USD + extras, + case

Inspiration 

This guitar was inspired by a piece of wood. A strange piece of wood, I should have photographed prior to working it.  It was an odd shape with very odd grain. I could have made this guitar as a one piece body but the figure was so oddly placed on two opposite sides and outer edges, with nothing in the middle of the board, so I had to cut it and find the right place to glue it together to show as much figure as possible and to make the two sided of the body as uniform as possible. Even this way, as you can see, one side is more figured than the other side and the two sides are quite contrasting, even though it is one piece of wood (from the same board).  This I think adds to the uniqueness of this guitar.

My other problem was that this is hard maple and quite heavy. I was going to make a conventional Les Paul Special/Junior body but realized that it would too heavy. I had to do something and my only option was to take off as much wood as possible. I did not want to give it Fender style contouring. That would have been gross and highly unfitting, thus quite tacky.  So I have a cutter that would radius both the front and back edges of the entire body at a shallow angle, as found on a Gibson SG type guitar.  This removed the most wood and made the body as light as it could be. The guitar is still on the heavy side, at least in terms for what I make. 

The other reason to make this guitar is to build and install another set of Strat-o-bucker pickups, which I invented. The previous guitar actually had under-wound Strat coils, since my initial aim was to balance the Gibson side and the Strat sides, in terms of power, as much as possible. However, with this build, I scrapped that idea and simply made fully wound Strat coils, identical to what is found on a traditional Vintage Strat. So this is the most Strat-sounding Strat-o-bucker set, since on the Fender side of each pickup is an actual Strat pickups, in terms of materials, wire gauge, number of winds and ohm reading. 

This is a fancy guitar, NOT reliced. It has a maple neck, longer than a traditional Les Pau (25") scale and Pau Ferro fingerboard with no face dots. This clean aesthetic and the contrasting color black hardware is what I was after for this theme.Â