Dick Nasty’s Hondo Explorer

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Here’s another awesome Brisbane guitar, this time from local hardcore band Dick Nasty.

I’ve already said how much I love it when guitarists have a distinctive, signature guitar. That one guitar that they always play and that they are known to play. John Mercer from Dick Nasty picked up such a beast when he found his Hondo Explorer at Cash Converters. It’s such a eye catching guitar, the first time I saw Dick Nasty (upstairs at The Jubilee), to me that guitar was the star of the show (sorry Nasties…). It just looked the business.

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Hondo is another Japanese based guitar company along the lines of Aria, 70’s era Ibanez and a million other brands… cheap, well made guitars usually based on American designs. I really like the brand name as it most probably based on the classic John Wayne western… ‘Hondo’… and I love Western’s.

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The Hondo Deluxe range looked to be based on the classic designs… Les Paul’s, Flying V’s, Strats… but Hondo always tweaked the designs slightly… bolt on maple necked Explorers and V’s with different hardware and body carves.

This Hondo V is pretty cool. The body is laminated 70’s Alembic style, which was the rage at the time. The neck is a great piece of birdseye/flame figured maple, which is pretty strange for a guitar in this price range. They’ve also cleverly solved the problem of where to put the strap button… in general is a pretty cool guitar.

They also did a cool Explorer bass. The Telecaster style control plate actually works pretty well with the shape… as does the maple neck. And those saddles are bass tone monsters.

John’s Explorer is obviously based on Rick Neilsen from Cheap Tricks’ Hamer Explorer… Rick’s trademark is his checkerboard design. And Japan is nuts for Cheap Trick, so this guitar makes total sense.

John’s guitar is pretty well built. It’s solid. REALLLY solid. The neck is a tree trunk. It’s like a ’59 Les Paul… but fatter. Instead of the usual stoptail piece, Hondo went for a hard Strat bridge, complete with string through ferrels.

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The back is also checkered, and here’s where Hondo have again tweaked with Gibson’s blueprint. They added a Strat-like rib contour, and geniously put the strap peg on the neck plate.

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