Home

Guitarnerd Junior’s Axe Of Dooooom

With a six month old bub ruling guitarnerd HQ, this is the axe of choice.

So, you may have noticed the guitarnerd stories slowing down to a trickle this year. That’s because I’m now the proud father of the cutest baby EVER. This also means I haven’t played a gig or seen any bands for the last 6 months, which makes tracking down stories for this fine blog near impossible. So for your viewing pleasure, here is my son’s favourite guitar.

You may say… “That’s just a toy!” but I think of it as the first step in Guitarnerd JR someday taking over the mantle of Guitarnerd after my fingers are gnarled with arthritis and my ears ringing with the sound of a million crickets. Kind of like the Phantom, but with vintage Matons instead of skull rings. So let’s look at this beast in detail.

The shape is reminiscent of Steve Vai’s Ibanez Jem, complete with monkey grip. This is great for whacking your Dad in the head with said guitar. Which hurts a bit. I blame Steve Vai for this design feature. And Walt Disney. And maybe Mickey Mouse.

The single pickup is obviously scatter wound as it makes crazy noises and feedbacks badly. Probably needs to be potted. It’s also active and drains batteries like crazy… especially when pressed over and over and over and over and over again. I believe it was hand wound by Seymour Duncan… but I could be mistaken.

The whammy bar is easy to use and is less Bigsby… more Goofy. It’s got a smooth action and stays in tune. That tune happens to be very annoying and stays in your head for hours. HOURS. Next to the whammy bar is the off switch. This is good for that Randy Rhoads stutter effect or turning the guitar off. Or turning off the Randy Rhoads stutter effect.

The frets are impeccably fitted and finished beautifully. The numbers are OBVIOUSLY an homage to Jason Becker’s famous Peavey super Strat. The LED lights help when you’re playing those dark stages and add that Ace Frehley touch to the guitar. All it needs is a smoking pickup and fire shooting out of the headstock and you’d have an awesome KISS axe.

The neck is made of a high tech composite material, most definitely carbon fibre, Kevlar or recycled Cola bottles. The neck profile is quite square. Less C shape… more box shape. Not really suited to a six month olds hands. Maybe this is meant to be a slide guitar and played on your lap? Actually… that makes sense. The lack of strap buttons supports this theory.

The headstock is a piece of genius design. It’s like they cut off Mickey’s arm and stuck frets on it. The lack of tuning pegs hints at a hidden tuning system… probably designed by Steinberger or Floyd Rose. The nut has been hand carved to look like Mickey’s glove cuff and is probably a Buzz Feitan. Plus I’m sure a guitar of this quality has been Plek’d. I’m not exactly sure what plekking is but it sounds painful.

Guitarnerd Jr’s bandmate, Farty Bum Bear, wails on this axe. His technique is reminiscent of Alex Skolnick in his early Testament days before he ‘found’ Jazz and hair started looking like Cruella Deville.

So there you have it. My vintage Maton’s have been superseded by $30 worth of plastic. And I’ve never been happier. Fatherhood… it’s just frikken’ awesome!