Oh all right, Gadow production pic!

I was gonna just wait until the guitar arrived, but with all the
other production pics being posted, I may as well throw up
the pic of my Gadow Custom Hollow that is due in at any time
now. I'll stick up a completed photo when I get it as well.
Enjoy.

--Tom

 

Yep, nice spalt top, eh? It's the Custom Hollow model. Generally
this model is made with a fluted carve around the perimeter,
but because of the spalted wood, which is very tough to work
with, we opted to not do this to mine. I think it looks great
without it, much simpler look to it, which I like. The alternate
fret markers were one of Gadow's standard offerings, from what
I understand. You can order them though with no inlays,
only one on the 12th, zig-zag like this, regular down the
center, etc. No charge change for fretboard choice either,
and I'm partial to maple, so the birdseye was an easy choice.

This will have a Graphtech GHOST piezo and 13-pin system
installed in it as well, like Gomez's that he posted a month or
two ago.

Ryan (Gadow) and Chris Douglas are a joy to work with too.
Very cool folks. They really seem to take a lot of pride in
their work and product. These guitars have Fralin pups,
tonepros wraparound bridges and Gotoh tuners standard.
And you can't beat the prices for handmade USA axes (at least
not that I know of at this level of quality).

--Tom

 

Ryan can probably answer this better for me if he checks back
in. It looks pretty thick in the pics (thicker than the one on
my Carvin Holdsworth .... www.ece.cmu.edu/~tms/fatboy)
but they put pretty thin tops on those. I think it may be a bit
thinner than the regular Custom Hollow thickness.

I don't believe the tops on these are "arched" in general, the
sides are carved. Go to the front page of the Gadow site:
www.rrgadowguitars.com and you'll see an orangeburst
custom hollow where you can see the thickness profile of the
normal top and the carve. You can compare that to what you
can see in the pic on mine (as best as you can) for somewhat
of a comparison.

I suspect Ryan was concerned about the spalted wood
chipping or splitting at the ends if carved due to the fairly
unstable nature of the spalted wood. Perhaps Ryan or
some of the other luthiers on here who have worked with
spalts can shed some more light on things. I've worked on
some wood over the years, but never anything this fancy,
and never a spalt!

--Tom