Tuesday, May 24, 2016

Introducing ... the Jetfire Guitar!!!

All the way back in April, 2008, my son Eliot Erlandson drew out a quick pencil sketch for a guitar we wanted to build together.  We knew it had to be a kind of "Jetson's" type of retro look ... maybe it could look like a rocket or something.



Then, too, we knew we would build it based on some hardware (bridge, tremelo, and pickups) from Hallmark Guitars, since I own two Hallmarks, and love the way they sound.  Other than that, we didn't constrain ourselves too much.  We wanted a solid-body electric with two single-pole pickups, with the body being out of mahogany.


Here are some photos from our eight-year journey (in fits and starts) to get this concept of Eliot's brought into reality.  Today, it is a gorgeous, very playable electric guitar (videos to come!) with a gorgeous Candy Magenta paint job using House of Kolor automotive paint.


Routing out the body ...



Eliot cut the body shape out with a band saw ...



The plan all along was to have all the electronics mounted to a fairly large pickguard, and we stuck to that plan ...




Finally, the big day came, and we had the beast painted by Clifton Darnell of Darnell Rod & Kustom.  Fabulous!  When the sun hits this baby, it shatters your retinas!