After a mad rush to get the guitar completed for Misha Mansoor to play at Periphery’s Toronto show on March 29, 2011, the guitar was in playable form. I’m not sure who was more excited… me delivering it to Misha, or him opening the case and playing it for the first time!

During testing we found some odd wiring issues (not sure if it was the pickups or the switch or a combination of both) which required a quick on-the-fly re-soldering of the switch to give Misha usable sounds for the show. We also found a high fret or two around the 18th fret. The guitar had strings on it for less than 24 hours at that point, so the neck was still getting used to having tension on it and was changing by the hour. I’ll be hanging on to it for another couple of weeks to let the neck settle in under tension, and i’ll give it a final fret level and dress before shipping it off to Misha, who is a very happy customer.

Working with Misha has been a blast. He truly loves guitars and knows what he likes and needs. He was very particular on some specs, and was very open to new ideas and things to experiment with, so we went back and forth on a few other ideas we each had. The end result is a guitar that i’m very proud of as a builder and that Misha is ecstatic about playing.

Check out the specs and the whole build story at http://decibelguitars.com/dB1