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Mutronic Mike’s EGC Baritone

A guitar so heavy metal that it’s literally made out of heavy metal.

Apologies for it being quiet on the guitarnerd front lately. The guitarnerd family has grown… I’m now the proud daddy of a baby boy. As many of you out there know, my time is now split between sleeping, nappy changes and working. If I’m lucky I find a few minutes a week to pick up a guitar… and then put it down quickly as the baby needs another nappy change.

Anyway… as I’ve been housebound for the last month, this makes it hard for me to get out there chasing stories for guitarnerd. So I asked the guitarnerd facebook community if they had any cool guitars out there that I could stories on. My friend Mike reminded me that he had an EGC Baritone that I could borrow, so I scooted around and grabbed it yesterday. I was really excited as I’d never seen an EGC guitar in the flesh, so to speak.

What we have here is a Series 1 body EGC baritone with P90’s and Bigsby tremolo. The bridge is Mike’s favourite Mastery bridge that’s been on about 4 of his favourite guitars. Looking at the EGC, it’s a different beast to a Travis Bean. EGC’s seem more…. engineered. The edges are precision sharp and everything fits together like a Swiss watch.

I have no idea how EGC get their frets in the aluminium fretboard but it’s faultess. The neck profile is narrow and slim, which is really comfortable for someone like me who has small hands. The strings tension is quite tight, which is great for a guitar tuned to B. I found doing string bends a little hard up top, but someone who has decent strength (unlike me) shouldn’t have a problem. The neck join is gorgeous and gives total fret access. This thing is a work of art.

The weight of the guitar is quite hefty. It’s in 1970’s Norlin-era Les Paul Custom territory. As in it’s ‘you could tie this guitar to a body and dump it in a lake’ heavy. Sitting down it balances quite well but with a guitar this cool looking you’re not really going to be sitting down often.

The body is hollow, so it’s got a fantastic acoustic quality that actually sounds quite superb. I’d love to hear one of these with a piezo pickup. It’d be Shellac-city.

Plugged in, there two things with this guitar. Clarity and sustain. I’m pretty unfamiliar with baritones and what you’re supposed to do with them, so I started playing sludgy dddddddoom riffs. I’ve been playing around with my Les Paul tuned down to C# and the difference is remarkable. With the added string length and tension, this guitar stays in tune much better. You can really smack a chord and the notes won’t be wavering out of tune all over the place like on a regular scaled guitar.

I’ve heard people say that aluminium necks feel cold and alien but that’s not really true. You soon forget you’re playing an aluminium neck and fretboard. It just feels like a guitar… a very heavy, shiny guitar.

Here’s a track I recorded using this beast. Enjoy!

And for anyone who is interested, this guitar is for sale. Contact me and I’ll forward your details to Mike.