This particular craziness started when I saw Deke's column in Guitar Player magazine about the Harvey Thomas Maltese Surfer guitars and decided right away I wanted to make two. Couple that with a deep fascination I have for West Coast 60's Hot Rod/Surf culture and offbeat guitars like Hallmark(new and old eras), Thomas, Murph and imports like Vox, Aria and EKO etc. and I was off and runnin' !
I wanted them to scream surf, garage and early 60's rockabilly so I decided on metal flake, racing stripes, mother of toilet seat and other 60's style appointments. The headstocks had to be Fender style 6 on a side to facilitate behind-the-nut bends and other hillbilly tomfoolery, and the necks had to be Fender scale and bolt-on...with that criteria in mind, I sat at my drawing table and started in designing 'em. I'm an illustrator by trade so the actual design process went quickly, but I pulled them out of my head without referencing the pictures of the Thomas guitars because I wanted something original and totally "mine." The green one is called the Surf Monger and the finish is a Ford Mustang Lime Gold metallic basecoat with Little Daddy Roth "lime squeezer" monster flake with a metallic pewter racing stripe . I wanted a surk/rockabilly sound outta this one, so went with GFS Brooklyn Raunchy pickups, which are medium output single coils meant to mimic the DeArmond pups found on various Harmony guitars etc. from the 60's...they sounded great, too, which surprised me given the low cost. They look the part too. I have tried a few other pups in this one including some original Harmony, Kay and Aria units from the 60's but they didn't sound radically different than the GFS and were much noisier so I opted to keep the Brooklyn Raunchies installed.
The orange guitar is called the Dock Rumbler in honor of the Link Wray song and lipstick tube pickups. The finish is Ford Metallic Orange with Little Daddy Roth "tropi cali" monster flake and gloss black racing stripe. This one was deskigned with a blues/garage/60's rockabilly sound in mind so I went with SD Strat sized lipstick tube pickups, which are dead quiet, medium output and sound fantastic.
The headstocks are a bayonet shape and work well with the bodies IMHO. The bodies are relatively small so anything larger would look top heavy. The pedal in one of the pics is a Fuzzrite pedal I built, but it's not a clone. The second knob functions normally as a tone control, but it's a push-pull knob, and flippin' it up changes the fuzz to a MKII Tonebender curcuit. I actually use the MKII sounds more than the Fuzzrite sounds but wanted both in a single pedal. I need to install the curcuit in a smaller box but other than that I'm chuffed with it and it makes a great companion to the guitars.
So after building these, I was looking through a copy of Blue Suede News and noticed an very small picture of what appeared to be an Iron Cross guitar in an article about the 2008 Guitar Geek festival....and my heart sank when I saw that it had a similar vibe to mine. I inquired on another forum about the guitar in the picture and was put in touch with Deke Dickerson, who is totally cool and took the time to contact me with me Mel Bergman's private email address.( Thanks again, Deke !) I then had a series of emails back and forth with Mel comparing our iron cross guitars and I was relieved to see they are totally different. I LOVE his design, but his is more Mosrite whereas mine are more Fender/Thomas. I've incuded a pic of the Bergman guitar here for comparison.
I am also aware of a custom iron cross guitar in black with a single humbucker built sometime in the 80's for Blackie Lawless of W.A.S.P. as well.
There are more pics on my Facebook page, and you are welcome to friend me to check out what I'm all about, I'm under Donald Vincent Hains .
they must be fun to play. Hats off to you and all those folks who can build their own guitars!