photo: Michael Spalt
LA based custom guitar builder Michael Spalt has made a 12 string guitar for John Cale. He worked with linear tremolo designer Don Ramsay. Both of them had already worked on instruments for Cale. Micheal Spalt:
I met JC when I fixed his red Gibson flying V where the headstock had broken off. He had an old LP special which he used as his main guitar and he didn't want the risk of taking it on the road. So he asked me to build him a guitar. He selected a body and I built the first guitar, "Puzzle". eventually he wanted something close to the LP and so I made him one, with a Bigsby. Then he saw the linear tremolo at my shop and we made another one with the linear tremolo. Last year he came to me and expressed his wish to have a 12 string built with the linear trem. Don Ramsay and I worked on it together and it's a very rare guitar indeed. There's very few 12-strings ever made with a trem (tuning issues). This one came out beautifully. So, I made 4 guitars for him, all built from the ground up, and a few rather groundbreaking... I had been a fan of his since the 70's and it was great to work with/for him...
photo: Michael Spalt
The neck block extends all the way to the tremolo mount. The body block is chambered and the trough for the neck block routed. The neck is fitted and the redwood top glued on. After finishing the electronics are installed with two out of phase/bridge humbucker split switches for 6 tone variations.
» spaltinstruments.com
» lineartremolo.com
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