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

“How much do your guitars cost?” Read more

“When will you be taking orders?”

This is a tough one for me to answer for a number of reasons, and i want to be completely honest and transparent about this, which is a cornerstone of how i want to do business and communicate with my customers and suppliers. Read more

I’ve had the good fortune to follow the meteoric rise of Misha Mansoor and his band Periphery over the last few years through some guitar forums i’ve been on for quite a while. Once Proto1 was finished, Misha sent me a message asking how he could try it. I told him that when Periphery came to Toronto, i’d get the guitar into his hands. They finally announced a tour date with Veil of Maya and Darkest Hour, and came to town on November 17.

I spent a few hours getting the guitar set up to Misha’s specs… heavier strings, tuned to drop-A flat, and tweaking the neck to get the action as low as possible but still playing clean. I showed up at the venue before the show and Misha took it for a quick whirl, and then played it for the first two songs of their set. (He would have had more time with it, but they arrived in town late and had almost no time to load in and set up.) Here are a couple of videos of his first playing impressions and then the opening of the show.

Enjoy!

I got a lot of positive feedback and constructive critique from Misha, which will help improve future instruments. Thanks again, Bulb and the rest of Periphery for such an awesome show.

Organical played a show last week… here are a few shots of me playing Proto 1:

Read more