An AnD Collaboration

I met Mimi Leung a couple years ago when she watched COCKFIGHT's first (and last) gig. She had designed the gig poster, and I was intrigued.Her art both grabs and holds my attention; while the first is no great miracle, the second certainly is. I have the attention span of a chipmunk.

A chipmunk on meth.

We talked a few times about music and guitars and art and music and guitars, and before long I asked her about a mutually beneficial collaboration:

If she painted two guitars for me, I would build her one. Actually, it started as 1-for-1, then I convinced her to do the 2nd.Mimi wanted a Telecaster, but with a more versatile pickup configuration.Kisekae is a virtual guitar building program invented by a Japanese guitar nut. You can mock up virtual guitars to see if you like them before you buy/build/paint them.

I wanted a Soloist and an Iceman.The neck will really be that purple; it's made from purpleheart, which looks like this:This picture is too dark, but you can see the neck:I (vaguely) remember the 80s fondly; it was the greatest guitar decade in terms of both musical and physical advances for guitars. Eddie Van Halen popularized the '1 pickup/1 volume knob/Floyd Rose' design.

Of course, his guitar was wired so simply because he couldn't remember how to put it all back together after taking it apart.

But in the 80s, this design (like Van Halen) was immensely popular.

Given all that extra space, it was inevitable that graphic artists began to exploit it. I'm not saying that I'd want to own many of these, but I think objectively you can at least admire the skill that went into them:Sometimes they didn't even use paint. That's real snakeskin.Spot the Easter Egg on this cover?On one hand, I'd love to own these last two. On the other hand, I don't have that kind of $ and if I did I would never touch these guitars.Mimi also loves this style of guitar (swoon), so we were both pretty interested in the project.Kisekae doesn't have an Iceman modeler, which is odd since the Iceman is a Japanese design!

But I knew I wanted it to be visually loud. The shape itself is rather 80s and eye-ssaulting (!), and I knew that with Mimi's colorful artwork and my own thoroughly heterosexual/discordant instincts vis a vis accessorizing, we could make a guitar that would need batteries even when sitting quietly (at least in sonic terms):

I bought the bodies from Warmoth and a company called KnE.I sealed them, sanded them, painted them flat white and black, and sprayed lacquer on them. I let them dry for several months.I scuffed the lacquer with 320-grit sandpaper and gave them to Mimi.

She had asked me about ideas for my guitars and I told her truthfully that she was the artist and I would leave it to her. I knew she could do better than anything I'd ever dream up.And I was right.This art is so good I see it first andthenthe guitar. Nowthisis art I can understand and appreciate. The Iceman is ready to be painted; you can see the pencil lines Mimi put there for the painting. I can tell it will be great, and when I see it I am certain it will be even better This guitar goes to 11. Once they are finished, I will put more lacquer on them and assemble them and then play them a lot.Then I will play them some more. When my fingers bleed, I'll stop and look at the guitars.But only for 10 minutes. Then I'll play them some more.