A little late with this but things have been hectic in the Haze shop lately. However, its time to discuss the guitar I’ll be making for the winner of Radio Nova’s Rocktober competition (see posts below if you want to catch up).

As you’ll know if you tuned in for the final, nail-biting, minutes, the number one song in Nova’s 500 Countdown was Stairway To Heaven. Greg Dunne was one of those that guessed this and his name was picked from the hat. I met with Greg and a guitar-playing friend, Erin, recently and we got geeky with some instrument-talk.

So what’s it gonna be?

Well, the instrument I’ll be making and presenting will be a Haze Bassmaster 6.

Cool.

I’m actually really pleased with this as I love these things. The Bassmaster is a six-string, short-scale bass. It’s a 30″ scale-length bass but it’s got a really guitar-like feel to it. It feels very much like a middle-ground between bass and guitar and it’s got some great versatility to its playability and its tone.

A little about the specs we’ve agreed:

The finish will be a toned, black-burst effect so I’m sourcing some nicely figured ash for the body and that grain will look great through the burst. The neck will be maple and the fingerboard, ebony to keep the black theme going. A white/black/white pickguard will be broken by all of those shiny, chromed, control panels and the instrument will be fitted with a vibrato tailpiece and roller bridge.

I think it’s going to look great. A little bit like this but with a few changes. What do you reckon?

A proper FAQ about having a guitar or bass custom-made is probably overdue around here. I’ll add it to my To Do List and, in the meantime, I’ll offer this hastily cobbled together blog post in response to some of the questions I’m getting about the Super Amazing Win A Custom Haze Guitar With Radio Nova’s Rocktober 500 Countown (from here on in referred to as Rocktober as that’s a lot to type).

Naturally enough, I’ve gotten some queries from people who want to know how it will all work for the ultimate winner and from those who have questions about doing the custom guitar thing in the normal, non-competition route.

Hopefully this will help a little. If you think of something I haven’t covered, feel free to shout in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer.

Q: What can I win?
A: You can win yourself a completely custom guitar or bass. By that, I mean that you can sit down with me and we can design and specify as much or as little of your guitar as you like. Then I’ll build it.

Q: How can I win?
A: Tune in to Radio Nova on 100FM or listen online. Call when they tell you and make a guess at what the number one song in the Rocktober 500 Countdown will be. All correct answers go in a draw to win.

Q: Do you know what the number one song is?
A: Nope. And if I did, I wouldn’t tell you. Well, maybe for cash. Or biscuits. It’s all moot though. I don’t have a clue.

Q: I can play a few chords but I don’t have an in-depth knowledge of how capacitor value and no-load potentiometers can be used in a tone control. How can I design a guitar?
A: Don’t fret (guitar humour). We can talk capacitors if you like but you can just as easily chat about what guitars you think look cool or sound cool and I’ll handle the science bit.

Q: Can you build me an exact copy of <insert famous guitar here>?
A: Not really. Legal issues aside, that sort of misses the point of a ‘custom’ guitar anyway. This is your chance to get something unique. Now, that said, there’s no problem looking at existing guitars to garner some inspiration. Exact copies are out, though.

Q: Did you really make a guitar for Joe Bonamassa?
A: Are you calling me a liar? Sure did. Check it out. You can have one too if you like.

Q: I want a guitar made of jelly, with a Waterford Crystal neck and pickups that can curve space-time in such a way that I can see the Big Bang. Can you do that?
A: What flavour jelly? The honest answer is that I may need to advise on practical considerations as we progress through the design and specification process. I’ll do my best to accommodate your craziness but it may not always be possible.

Q: Ha! I’ve caught you, Hayes! You mean to tell me there are terms and conditions to this?
A: Of course there are terms and conditions. You can check them out on the Rocktober competition page and they’ll be here after that’s moved on in case you need a reminder.

Q: How long will it take?
A: It depends on the specification you want and the availability of any parts that are needed for your guitar. Custom orders are generally turned around in a few months but I’m estimating around 20 weeks for this to be safe. It most likely will be shorter but could be a little longer if you want something mental.

Q: I live on a small island off the coast of Laois and I need to charter a Lear Jet to meet you for the design process. Will you reimburse me?
A: Nope. You’ll have to make your own way, I’m afraid. I might make you a cup of tea though and, let’s face it, you’ll get a snazzy guitar out of it so it’s not all bad.

Q: I reckon that the solid gold guitar and platinum strings I want falls well within budget. Is this ok?
A: Nope. I get to assess the actual realism of costings and final value. I’m not daft.

Q: I never win anything. Can I have a guitar anyway?
A: ‘Course you can. And for a surprisingly reasonable wad of cash.

Radio Nova’s ROCKTOBER has begun.

That means your chance to win a completely custom guitar or bass has begun. More details are on Nova’s site but basically, here’s the deal:

Radio Nova are doing their Rocktober 500 Countdown of the best guitar songs ever. You tune in, listen to some great songs and, when you hear their cue to call, phone them on 01 440 4100 and tell them what you think will be number 1. If you’re right, you’ll be in a draw to win.

Easy, eh?

So, what are you still doing here? Warm up the valves in your wireless and twiddle it to 100FM or listen online.

So, I told you it was gonna be good.

I’m assuming that a lot of the (Irish) people that read this probably listen to Radio Nova for their fix of great, guitary music. Well, now you’ve got another reason to tune in.

The teasers have started to air and I can now announce that I’ve been working with Nova to help spread guitary-goodness.

Next week (first week in October) Nova will be running a fantastic competition for their Rocktober 500 Countdown. It’ll have a rather special prize:

A custom Haze guitar or bass.

Yep, the lucky winner will get to design their perfect instrument with me and I’ll build it for him or her.

This will be a completely custom instrument. I’ll meet with the winner to discuss and decide on specifications and then I’ll hack at bits of wood and metal and strings and stuff to make their dream guitar or bass.

Pretty cool, eh?

More details to follow. For now though, if I were you, I’d turn on the radio.

Things have been crazy-busy in the Haze workshop just lately. There’s sawdust and pickup wire and rusty nails and stuff everywhere. Apologies are in order, therefore, for my lack of posts here in the last couple of weeks. Sometimes the blog gets prioritised down—sorry about that.

I’ll try to make that up to you by showing you a pretty picture.

This is a snazzy guitar in emergent form. This is a budding axe, if you will. As you can see, it’s got a nicely figured top. A little more unusual than many of the figured tops you’ll have seen though (just a little). This is redwood. Pretty, isn’t it?

Now, this isn’t exactly a rare thing, but as many of you will be used to seeing maple tops on guitars, I thought I’d throw this in the mix. The photo shows the roughly cut-out body of the guitar. There’s no finish applied—I’ve just wet the top slightly to let the figure stand out a little.

I think you’ll agree, this is shaping up to be a handsome hunk of wood. I’ve got enough, nicely-figured, redwood for a few more instruments (any requests?) so this is likely to be the first in a redwood series. I can think of worse things to make guitars from.

Nobody likes to see this. It’s the headstock of a Gibson SG and, as you can see, it’s broken. Ouch.

Something slightly unusual about this is that this guitar suffered a headstock break while still in its case. This is unusual but not unheard of. I’ve seen a few in my time (and I mention it in my general article about Broken Necks). It’s a real pain to hear this but even a good case might not protect your guitar in all circumstances. If you want to be even more safe, you can slacken off the strings before you pop your guitar in its case. Not the most practical solution but it is what it is.

Anyway, we’ve looked at headstock breaks before but I wanted to show you some unusual clamping arrangements on this one.

First off, let’s get the glue pot heating up. I’ll often use hot hide glue for repairs. If you use it correctly, it’s very strong and creep-resistant. I like the ‘traditionalist’ vibe of it too. Depending on the repair, it can be particularly suitable too (as it was in this case).

And the next photo—whoa, what’s going on here?

We’ve looked at various clamping methods before and discussed making custom cauls and whatnot. Sometimes though, headstock breaks can be very soundly and securely clamped by the clever application of ratchet compression straps.

“Are you mental?” I hear you cry.

Nope. If the neck crack is held on by the headstock veneer and, if it mates cleanly and securely, it can often be easier to use this method of getting the break back together. The strap is secured at either end—around the strap-button and through the tuner holes and it can apply a strong, directional pull to keep the break together for glueing.

The block of wood I’ve used at the front of the headstock just protects it. Likewise, the cork padding on the rear of the body. Once the glue has been applied where it’s needed, tightening the ratchet applies the pressure that pulls the cracked headstock together again. There’s plenty of force—in fact you could probably pull the headstock off completely if you over-tightened.

Let the glue cure and clean up the excess with some hot water and a rag (another great advantage of hide glue) and it’s done.

This guitar will be making another appearance soon. Stay tuned.

Incidentally, I didn’t invent this clamping method (more’s the pity). Years ago, Stewart MacDonald’s catalogue used to include occasional tips from guitar techs and luthiers. I read this there and have been thankful for it plenty of times since.

An acoustic guitar with a dodgy, onboard preamp that had to be replaced.

What should have been a straightforward job became a little more complicated becauset the original preamp had a particularly large footprint. It was an older, discontinued model and the manufacturer was unable to supply a replacement that was as large. As it turned out, it was pretty difficult to find any manufacturer that had a unit that would cover the existing hole (and patching and recutting wasn’t favoured for cost reasons).

After quite a bit of internet rooting, a unit was found that would cover the hole in the guitar’s side. Great.

Just one problem though… Although the bezel covered the hole, the mounting screws were located such that the front two had nothing to screw into (see the locations marked on the blue masking tape).

The solution: glue in some wood for the screws to mount in. As this is the shoulder of the guitar though, the wood patch needs to be bent, or curved, to mate properly with the guitar’s side.

No problem. Out comes the trusty bending iron. I cut a piece of mahogany a bit larger than needed for the final patch as tiny pieces are very difficult to bend. Even larger pieces need gloves as that iron gets hotter than the surface of the sun. Making sure to keep the mahogany damp, I gradually worked the wood until the heat and steam loosened the fibres—you can feel this happen. Then, working along its length, I bent the piece to the right curvature to match the guitar shoulder.

Once it was there, I clamped the bent wood in an acoustic mould (I picked a suitable position to mate with the bent wood) and waited for it to cool and dry. I could then cut it to shape and glue it in place.

The sides of an acoustic—and in particular, this area—play a very small part in its overall tone. This is why it’s possible to cut bloody, great holes for preamps in the first place. This patch is not going to have any effect on the guitar’s sound. It will, however, allow the new preamp to be mounted and will get this guitar gigging again.

So what do you think? I’ve whittled and carved and hammered and sawn my way through a complete web site update. I reckon it looks quite snazzy.

I think things should be pretty stable and solid around here but if you notice anything odd over the next few days, I’d appreciate it if you could drop me a line.

Other than the new coat of paint, I’ve managed to get a few more images of some of the custom instruments I’ve made. I’ve been a bit remiss, in the past, about keeping photographs of my guitars and basses but have managed to pull a few together for your viewing pleasure. I’ll be more careful about this in the future and will try to get some more images of older instruments too.

I’ve also enabled comments on these blog posts—the future is interactive, I understand. Do feel free to pipe up with questions, thoughts and whatnot. At the moment, as this site is for my business, I’m moderating comments. We’ll see how we get on.

You’ll also notice some sharing links down the bottom. If you used them to tell your friends all about the shininess here at Haze, that’d be great.

I hope you like the new look.

The Haze Blue Collar is a no-nonsense guitar in the tradition of simple, one-pickup, slab-bodied axes. It’s made to play and play hard.

The Blue Collar. It’s called that for a reason; the Blue Collar is designed to rock in the most workmanlike manner you can think of. This guitar is not about lavish and sumptuous, this guitar is about getting on stage and playing.

Stripped back brilliance.

In the tradition of the Fender Esquire and the Les Paul Junior, the Haze BC-1 lets you get to the music with the minimum of fuss. One pickup. But it’s a doozy – well, a Duesenberg to be exact. The Duesenberg Domino is a P-90 style pickup in a humbucker housing and it looks and sounds amazing. Powerful and raw with that edgy growl you’d expect.

Unadorned, this guitar may be but that doesn’t need to mean unattractive. The Blue Collar has a handsomely figured, solid (damn solid), ash body married to a bolt-on, maple neck with a rosewood fingerboard. Neck and body are finished in a boutique, oil and wax finish which not only looks great, but it feels amazing to play on.

A wraparound bridge couples strings and body incredibly well and contributes to the the unique tone and sustain of the Blue Collar. The guitar has a genuine bone nut and is set-up with the care and attention that a production-line instrument can’t receive.

It plays great and it looks great but it’s the sound – rock, blues, punk and garage are all catered for here. Thick and meaty P-90 tones with plenty of muscle but the longer scale-length (25.5″) and ash body help retain focus and a strong top-end. It’ll chime, it’ll roar, it’ll take the heads off the front row. Make no mistake: the Blue Collar is built to brawl.

The Haze Blue Collar (the BC-1) is the model that Gerry Hayes presented to Joe Bonamassa. Joe’s got a truckload of plush, beautiful, incredibly expensive guitars so it was great to see him play an upstart like the Blue Collar. Read more about Joe Bonamassa and his Haze Guitar.

Grand, lavish, opulence. Deep gold, darkest black, and custom off-white. The Haze Interceptor has been built with style in mind.

That’s certainly not to suggest that there’s no substance here though. A multiple-ply neck-through design ensures stability and concentrated tone. Neck and body-wings are all mahogany. Three custom-wound P-90 style pickups give this looker the snarl of a junkyard dog. The Interceptor growls and sings in equal measure and individual volume controls for all three pickups give masses of flexibility to dial in whatever measure of each you need.

A cool-looking vibrato tailpiece introduces the option of a little wobble. Like the rest of the hardware, it’s all dressed up in gold finery. The bound, ebony fingerboard is inlaid with mother of pearl block markers. The binding is continued on the ebony-faced headstock, inlaid with a wooden rising-sun symbol. Even the nut on the Interceptor is special—fossilised mammoth ivory for a tone thousands of years in the making.

The whole package is wrapped in a custom off-white, nitrocellulose finish. The Haze Interceptor is the perfect marriage of beauty and brawn.