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Vitaly’s From Russia With Love…

This guitar I think went through the greatest temperature transition… from here in Vancouver to Rostov-on-Don, Russia, 11  above to -25 C…. ( 52 to -13 F ) yeessh… The first neck we sent, the poor ebony retracted and split.. so we sent a replacement, changed the ebony to rosewood, which is way less prone to cracking…. Turned out pretty damn nice…

It would be great to publish the photos on your site. It would be nice to attach this text to them:

This is my first build, and I got to tell you – it wasn’t easy… As for parts I used Gotoh tuners and bridge/tail, Tonerider alnico IV classics AC4 pickups, bone nut. Nitrocellulose finish which is more dim, rather than gloss, thanks to my friend Dmitry Nemtsoff who covered it several times with a spraygun. Have to make some fret leveling/crowning/polishing to get rid of a fret buzz on a few first frets and 6th, 5th strings.

After that I can set rather low string action: something around 2mm for 6th string and 1.5mm for the 1st string on the 12th fret – which is very playable for me. I was glad to have a double action truss rod in the neck, thanks for that. The wood quality is very high in my opinion, and it has a very beautifull grain. The sound… superb!

Thank you Phil and Kevin!

Vitaly Volkov from Rostov-on-Don, Russia.