The Jaguar X
Recently I got to visit one of my biggest inspirations in the flesh. Just a short distance from me is the home and work shop of none other than Saul Koll. I’ve termed Saul “The Heavyweight Champion of Guitar Makers.” There’s lots of guys out there who can build amazing guitars. Then there’s slightly fewer who can build a wide variety of amazing guitars. Then there’s even fewer who can not just build a wide variety of amazing guitars, but who can build any possible guitar you can imagine, and build them all equally amazing. Saul Koll is one of those guys.
When I walked in the door of his shop he was in the middle of repairing some pickguards for a long-time customer of his. He told me that he actually stopped doing repairs some years ago, but that here he continued to do anything that this one guy asked him to do.
I do repairs. Lord knows I could use the money! Yet somehow, the vast majority of my work has been my custom guitars. I do repairs, it’s just that no one ever asks me to do them. But I have a guy that is to me as this other guy is to Saul Koll. I’ll probably be doing any random guitar repair/modification/custom build for this guy until one of us dies.
This one is for him. It started life as at least three other guitars that he picked parts from. The neck is from a Japanese Squier Jagmaster, the body is from a Japanese Fender Jaguar, and the pickups are from an old Teisco. Some of the plates are custom ones that I’ve fabricated. The most notable feature is that I’m adding four tuners on to the headstock to convert it into a ten-string guitar (thus the Roman numeral “X” designation).
July 22nd, 2010 at 2:31 am
wow! 10 strings!! awesome!