260 – 020924 ZLP-13H (full hollow) – Zachary Handcrafted Guitars | Bass| Pedals | Strings

Inspiration

With each guitar I build, I get to try out new designs, new features, new pickups I build, new aesthetic themes and that is what creativity is all about. This is totally opposite to the "McDonald's" fast food, mass production manufacturing of guitar looking objects, where with CNC computer robotic manufacturing, individuality, variability, uniqueness have been eliminated. Their goal is to involve the human touch as minimally as possible. Technology is utilized and advanced to eliminate human inconsistency, thus personality. What does this signal in terms of your own future? Those who rule over us want to eliminate us. If you haven't figured this out yet, you have some serious homework to do, while its still sort of possible and not illegal. You better hurry.

Here I wanted to make a Les Paul but totally hollow. I also wanted to make it as light weight as possible. I also wanted to make it look traditional and a homage to some imaginary Gibson Vintage guitars, referencing some iconic instruments. Gibson used Korina for their futuristic guitars of the late 50s, with gold hardware. I did the same, used a wrap bridge, along with Kluson style Gibson tuners, along with mahogany glued-in neck, the exact same vintage Gibson scale length and made some P90-looking pickups. The pickups are interesting, even though they are under p90 covers, they are actually vintage spec Stratocaster pickups. So the sound will not be what one might expect from Gibson Les Paul with P90s. With all my efforts, including the novel elimination of the tuner ferrules, I managed to get the weight down to 4.6 lb, possibly making this the lightest guitar I have ever built.

This guitar is completely hollow but I did not want to screw the pickups to the top to impede its resonance. So I mounted the pickups in a unique way, which I will not reveal at this time. I also had to make sure the bridge mounting with all of the string tension on it would be structurally viable. I could have made it much easier and used a bridge which the strings would simply sit on and put no pull on it. However the challenge was to use a bridge that also had to handle the string tension and survive. This was a real engineering challenge. Being challenged is what its all about. Otherwise, I would buy a CNC machine, pander to the Toddlers and get a production line going to target those last remaining boomers.

Nah...that would not be artistic or creative and I would feel that I was being disingenuous, although I could probably be rich and famous. In contrast, what I do is all about artistry, creativity, organics and accomplishment.