[halsinden]

initial payment has been received, the 3rd moon is in mercury's shadow and fortune has tipped me the wink… it’s finally happening.

in the middle of one of my rondo-rants on here, sebastian [apophis] of roter custom guitars PM’d me and offered to take on what i’d so utterly failed to find elsewhere. we’ve gone back & forth with various discussions and everything he’s said and offered just seemed so spot on. so here we have it, coming soon - my first custom guitar.

details currently confirmed are:

- 7 strings
- 27” baritone scale neck
- wenge body, arched wenge top
- 7 piece wenge / maple neck-thru
- natural / oil finish, stained black
- ebony fretboard, 24 frets - no inlays (luminous neck / side markers)
- ibanez style reverse headstock
- kahler trem (details to follow)
- black hardware, all recessed
- BKP nailbomb 7s
- 1 volume pot w. push/pull killswitch
- 2 x on/off switches (coil tapping & phase)
- 5 way selector
- angled jack port beneath strap nut

the neck will follow the profile and dimensions of james [7DT]’s 1077xl. i played it whilst fitting my RG7620 with the BKPs and was blown away by the marked improvement in my playing, so whilst the grass seemed greener on the other side i’m about to extend the garden (so to speak).

the main inspiration for this instrument is a mixture of the cazares / broderick / mcgrath ibanez RGA-7, the ESP f-std ‘sanskrit’ 7 and jeff carralini’s barillon 7 string bass. i’m working mostly on the principle that i have always preferred the idea of having a smaller bodied guitar as i’m very fond of how many of the more compact 7+ string basses make more of a feature of focus for the fretboard than a ‘table’-like body top.

to be begin with, i rendered an outline of the broderick RGA-7 in photoshop and hacked at it with the erase tool and then set about rebuilding. after a number of attempts i began to hack at it further this weekend into making the top half (the cutaways) more like the F-series than the standard RG shape. we’ve agreed on last night’s draft as a basic starting point for body shape but i’m yet to work on the inner bevelled shape which i want to make a real feature of - i’m quite the fan of very pronounced / heavily cut bevelled edges on archtops.

the choice in finish was a mixture of a few things - initially having heard (and at first balked at) dougie’s reasoning for avoiding lacquer / paint finishes, then extensively using my bassist syan’s 5 string corvette from her warwick endorsement which has the most beautiful black natural finish - it’s just so tactile and detailed in its show of the wood’s grain. after this, seeing sebastian’s work on his most recent RCG 10 string ERG in wenge i could only agree with him when he recommended the wood for the best grain finish available.

Roter Custom Guitars

H

[arnoroth661]

[skinhead]

That sounds fucking cool. Want to see that alive

[-K4G-]

hmm...sounds tasty

[halsinden]

Originally Posted by skinhead

That sounds fucking cool. Want to see that alive

cheers man.

hopefully it won't be too long, but in the meantime i'll be putting up picstories.

H

[djpharoah]

Nice man

[newamerikangospel]

Post the pic dude (the photoshop one)

Fucking great, good for you and good for sebe.

What's the price BTW ?

[Randy]

What's the tuning gonna be like?