In Progress: Custom Strat/Tele Neckplate

Custom Sun Neckplate

Original design. Definitely not your mother’s neck plate…

 

This is a new design for a Strat/Tele compatible neckplate. It’s at the factory right now and should be finished in about a week. It will be silver/black/white enamel finish on zinc alloy. If this one turns out right I have plans for another 4 or 5 designs in the near future. Below you’ll find a shot of the mold that was just sent to me from the factory. Kind of hard to make out the details but it should come out something like the original design. I’m really looking forward to seeing this one!

neck plate mold

Birth of a neckplate. The mold.

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Oh Crap! (and Hooray!)

The new Hell gig bags. We’ve spared no expense to bring you the best. …Really! (Please click to enlarge)

As the “Oh Crap” part is considerably longer, I’ll start off with the “Hooray!”…

…Our shipment finally arrived! We’ve got everything back in stock including, for the first time, a limited number of lefty guitars (ZeroDot and No. 2 only for now). This time we also have high grade gig bags as well with the Hell logo beautifully embroidered on the front pocket. Nicely padded straps and nice thick padding everywhere which leads me to…

Oh Crap! Or to put it even more American, Holy crap! These wonderful-nice gig bags (which cost an extra $10 to manufacture) also cost me about 35% more to ship. Why? Well shipping rates are calculated by weight and cubic meters and this time the shipping boxes are considerably more massive. The weight is about 17% heavier as well. Further, we usually ship a carton within a carton but now all of the outer cartons we had are too small, so even more waste! Actually I could go on with the Oh Crap section for a while longer but I’ll just leave it here for now. Suffice it to say, artists are not usually naturally gifted when it comes to shipping logistics and their ramifications. At least this artist isn’t. But I do have a working memory so I won’t be repeating this kind of mistake again. I hope…

But I don’t want to detract from the contents which are, in fact, fantastic. Including (and now especially) the gig bags! Hooray!!!

BTW: For those of you who have been waiting for your guitar, please give us a few days to check things over and stock our shelves. Thanks!

Posted in Guitars, Hell News | 1 Comment

Hellwires pre-press sample pics

Hellwires package front

Hellwires package inside

Hellwires package back.

The Hellwires packaging is coming along really nicely. I just got these photos of one of our packages from the printer. Here you can see the front, inside and back of the package. There’s a lot of nice spot varnishing on the front, some of which you can make out (the raised shiny bits). The devildudes also have the spot varnish but it is difficult see in this shot. You’ll perhaps notice that the inside artwork is taken from my tattoo design. I think it looks real elegant there…

In other news, our guitars finally ship tomorrow. I had to delay the sending for logistical reasons but we will have them in soon. Packaging art for our Toggle switch washers and truss rod covers was sent in today. I’ll try to post some of those designs soon.

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Super Blacks guitar picks packaging design

If they’re good enough for the Devildudes they’re good enough for you!

Work is going fast and furious here to get our Guitarsh!t ready for the NAMM show in January. As mentioned before, our new strings, Hellwires, should be ready in about a month along with some really incredible gloss finish aluminum pickguards that are coming out better than I could have dreamed. And above you can see the packaging for our new line of picks which should be coming in in about 2 weeks. In fact, package design has been taking up quite alot of my time of late. I want to have a harmonious Hell look for all of our products. Still have to design and print a brochure/catalog and design a backdrop for our booth.

And oh yes, we also have guitars! In fact a whole bunch of them should be shipping to us on Monday. I actually tested nearly every one of them myself at the factory last week and was especially happy with the quality/quality control for this run. A record low needed any attention at all and they played and sounded superb. We have some lefty ZeroDots and No. 2’s coming in for the first time. I must say it was rather mind bending to test those. Especially since I played a ton of guitars over about 5 hours before I got to the first lefty and wasn’t mentally prepared to have my world (and my headstock) turned upside down like that. I wonder if I could ever manage to switch the other way. Not that I’m keen to try mind you…

Posted in Gear, Guitars, Hell News | 9 Comments

beginning of a long day.

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waiting for a 9 am flight to Beijing from Shenzhen. Then a 4 hour layover beforr flying to Osaka. Another two hours should finally get me home around 11 pm. If there are no delays of course. It’s only a little over 3 hours from Shenzhen to Osaka but I couldn’t get a direct flight. So now I’ll have plenty of time to play with my Korg M01 on my Nintendo. Its nice to be able to make sounds on the road…

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Bender Harlequin Special

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Here’s the finished (except for knobs) Bender Harlequin. I tried it out yesterday at the factory and it looks and plays like a dream! I will take it to NAMM with me for sure. Right now I’m on my way to visit one of our accessory makets in a very bumpy Guandong taxi so I apologize for sny typing errors. Looking forward to seeing prototypes of some of our new products. I’ll try to report more soon!

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NEW! Hellwires strings. First packaging direction.

My idea of a perfect 10…

Hello again…

Time to peek up out of my hole to see what the world is up to. Or more accurately, to let the world (or a very tiny fraction of it) know what I’m up to.

To be specific, I’ve been busy designing more truss rod covers and switch washers as well as pickguards, neck plates, control plates, guitar picks and, yes…guitar strings! Well. I’ve designed all of the above except for the strings. Those come from a company (to remain nameless) that I recently discovered. I am, however, designing the packaging. My first attempt you’ll find at the top of this post. Although it is my first stab at it, it may also be the final design. This is because i need to send in the artwork very soon if I want to have the strings ready to show at the upcoming NAMM show in January. Fortunately I kind of like the direction. Please feel free to tell me what you think of it.

The strings themselves are surprisingly good. After testing for a while, I find they produce a clear, bright (but not harsh) tone. They stay in tune after a good stretch and seem to be durable as well. My goal was to find a company that produces good quality strings at a bargain price and I think I’ve done just that. I am hoping to offer the strings for under $3.00 a set online. Quality strings that are cheap enough to be changed often.

Hellwires. Remember, you heard it here first!

Posted in Gear, Hell News | 5 Comments

greetings from Shanghai!

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I thought I would post dail y updates of the Music China trade show but it seems that China blocks wordpress! Let’s see if I can get through on my mobile ( I hate typing on this bloody thing… ).

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Prick Room

Lotus and snake (Media: ink under skin)

Actually, The Prick Room is the name of a local tattoo shop that I didn’t actually go to but I always thought they had a great name. Still there were plenty of (needle) pricks to be had at Tattoo Magu today in Osaka.

Magu-san (the owner) did a terrific job inking my design and I am very happy with how it turned out. It looks pretty grisly in the above photo as several hours had passed by the time the photo was taken and there is a protective sheet on top of it. And now, about 7 hours after the fact, it is fairly black and hard to see. I’m sure once it has healed it will look terrific. I’ll try to post a final shot once it’s all back to normal.

A very interesting exercise getting a tattoo. A few years back I was really ready to get one. This time I was almost indifferent when the time came. But once the process started I felt very happy to be there. I knew the lines of my design pretty well as I had made quite a few changes to them, so it was quite surreal to actually feel those lines being drawn into my skin. One note regarding the feeling part… For the most part, the pain was not too bad. Sometimes it was almost relaxing. But maybe 10% of the time it felt like a gash was being ripped in my flesh. This was usually in the area nearest my spine. Must have lots of nerves around there.

Before the tattoo was finished I was already thinking about what to have next. If I do elect to do more I really want to consider both the design as well as the “canvas”. I would like to keep a sense of continuity and balance. But I suppose I should first see how I get on with this one first.

I once read about a tattoo artist somewhere who would always say something like “One less of them, one more of us” right before starting on a customer’s first tattoo. Now, I’m pretty sure I’m the same person I was before I went and did this, but something does feel different. And not just because my wallet is $350 lighter…

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Tattoo update

After a bit of back and forth on the tattoo, I finally came up with a design to go with. I had to revise my plans a little bit because of some things I learned out about a health condition I have and the possibility of a reaction with the tattoo. I thought it best to do a test in an area that’s not so apparent in case any problems arise. Should be fine though, I think. This one will be on my lower back.

As you can see above, I’m going with a lotus and the world famous (well, sort of) Hell Guitars snake. Both have a special significance for me. I drew up a few lotuses before going with this one. It will probably be simplified slightly by the tattoo artist, but this is pretty much it. After studying quite a bit about tattoos in preparation, I’ve decided that the ones I liked best were the ones with a bit of mystery to them. Tattoos that look like they have a story to tell and not simply decorative.

I’ll post “after” pictures, well…, after it’s finished!

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