Harvester On fetishguitars.com

My favourite guitar website fetishguitars has been in contact.

As mentioned previously on this site, they have been the best ( the only ? ) place on the web to view the entire history of Italian guitars. Expanding in recent years into instruments of other nations ( including some of my beloved early Matons from here in Melbourne, Australia ) and with much more english language content.

Now Harvester has it's own page on fetishguitars. Here

Due to my current workload, the page is mostly 'in progress' pictures of my wandre inspired instruments - but in a way, that provides a good introduction to my techniques and shows more of their essence than the glossy finished product ever will. I will provide more pictures as the various models are completed.

This really is an honour for me to be shown alongside the weird, wonderful & ancient denizens of the fetish zone.

As far as I can tell, I'm the only 'current' guitarmaker represented, ( except for some surviving 60s brands who continue in some capacity to this day ) but Stefano assures me he is a fan of current European makers like Pagelli and Billy Boy and has championed their work in the past.

AP

REcycle REdux

As the latest batch of customer guitars have moved onto the painting process - I've been distracted by a big ol' pile of reclaimed, remilled Baltic spruce that's been mellowing in the corner of my 'shop for a year or so.

This timber once served as roofing purlins for a Western Melbourne warehouse. After drying out under tension for 100 years or so the boards have a lovely ring to them and some real character in the form of ebonised bolt holes, saw cuts and mortises. The spruce smell is still terrific after all these years when the sawblade hits these planks.

All cavities, holes and splits have since been filled and stabilised with high quality, slow setting, translucent resin.

I have trued them, and glued them in the shape of a shapely, tight - waisted 1941 National Chicago arch-top guitar that I once knew ( with the addition of a florentine cutaway from my favourite Kay bass ).

Aesthetically, one of the ideas I'm working with on these guitars is the contrast between the hard-working industrially aged wood of the guitar bodies and the spectacular 'high end' maple caps that I have just finished clamping up onto their tops.

My typogrphic play on the F Hole tradition is just another curve ball for these instruments - I decided they were looking a little too 'traditional' so 'Exclamation Holes' it is ...

Necks will follow as the summer progresses - I'm looking into my files of old mail-order / department store headstock designs, but ultimately I'm aiming for something original, maybe even a little 'Atomic Age' to compliment the aluminium cafe-edge binding that will follow. I also have some new ideas regarding pickups -  a twist on the classic P90 styles which ring like a bell in a semi-hollow guitar.

These two instruments ( I'm intending a 25" scale 2-pickup guitar and a 30" scale, wooden bridge, mellow bass ) are being built 'on spec' and as-yet have no final destination.

Please contact me here if you'd like to talk about placing a deposit on one of them and helping me shape their final specs.

AP

Serie Antonio progress

I'm currently fitting the necks to these 3 Antonio models and planning the next batch of 4 to be commenced in November.

The padauk / aluminium hybrid necks are all machined and the bodies are mostly finished - time to plan the paintjobs !

Ignore the plastic parts and their mismatched colours - I will be casting new ones to suit each model.

Cheers, AP

With Unalloyed Joy

a new 'offfset waist' Antonio takes shape.

AP

Furniture

the brief : to furnish my guitar-collecting-customer's graphic design studio in one week flat.

groszcolab

my designer friends had some specific ideas re: the delicate look of scandinavian tables, the lofty/industrial utilitarianism of new york design/workspaces.

in around 5 working days i was able to build these four desks on site using recycled timber for the legs ( ex boeing factory flooring ) and that gloriously inert material - 25mm birch ply.

i figured a way to rout a mortise into the table for each leg - techniques borrowed from years of constructing jigs for guitar neck joints and cavities ...

this resulted in a method that while not fine, traditional carpentry - could be executed on site and with only a subaru load of hand-held tools.

while i was busy with a forest of table legs, the designers were throwing together a metropolis of 25mm plywood boxes to surround the shipping-pallet mezzanine/office space.

fun - problem solving on a larger scale - and a change from filing frets.

AP