Maxwell Graf
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25 years ago I decided to design and build a special guitar out of my crappy 80's Epiphone flying V, and it changed my life.
I had been given a large computer many years before by a friend who said that I could have if I just got it out of his parent's house. It was an early Hewlett Packard Apollo CAD workstation, a huge desk sized thing with built-in monitors and keypad controls that took up half the room. It had one of the first RGB color monitors and separate vertical and horizontal scroll wheels for moving the cursor. In looking through the papers that came with it and talking to the previous owner, I learned it was built on site for NASA and was initially used to design systems for the first space shuttle program. I kept it in storage for several years and eventually had to get rid of it, but I took all the PCB and drive boards out of it and kept them because of how unusual and beautiful they were. The hard drive had over a dozen of them and they were about 18" x18".
I moved to Atlanta in 1999 and came up with the idea to incorporate them into a rebuild of my guitar. I took my V apart and rebuilt it at a furniture repair woodworking shop I had access to, covering the body with the circuit boards after carefully removing all the component resistors, chips and capacitors. Ridiculous amounts of work went into it, including cutting off the rounded ends and extending them about 4 inches with blocks of wood, connected by threaded rods, which were then shaped to match the existing body. PCB's were cut into 3"squares and then bolted onto the body like boiler plates, aluminum was cut, shaped and polished. Many coats of sprayed poly finish were applied. In honor of the year 2000 computer glitch I named it V2K.
After months of work, the owner of the furniture shop suggested I take it to a guy he knew that worked on guitars, thinking the guy would be able to give me some pointers on how to proceed with the electronics and such. I had no idea who he was at the time aside from some guy who worked on some rock stars gear, I just wanted some help in what direction to go with the build. Well, the guy he connected me to turned out to be (I found out years later) legendary guitar technician Tom Weber, who was EVH's tech for many years, as well as doing work for the Stones, AC/DC and Jeff Beck. He was really nice, rather quiet and unassuming but very interested in what I had done. He really liked the design and said that if I would leave it with him that he wanted to make it play and sound as good as it looked. We decided on the hardware and pickups and I left it with him. He was gracious enough to do all the hardware, solder and wiriing, shaved the neck, did the setup and fretwork on it. He charged me for the parts, thats all. Not even for his labor. To this day it plays like a dream, though the many layers of lacquer are now cracking and peeling, but thats just adding character I think. Dude is a legend.
There are more pics and details at the imgur link I am providing, but here are a few pics of it.
I had been given a large computer many years before by a friend who said that I could have if I just got it out of his parent's house. It was an early Hewlett Packard Apollo CAD workstation, a huge desk sized thing with built-in monitors and keypad controls that took up half the room. It had one of the first RGB color monitors and separate vertical and horizontal scroll wheels for moving the cursor. In looking through the papers that came with it and talking to the previous owner, I learned it was built on site for NASA and was initially used to design systems for the first space shuttle program. I kept it in storage for several years and eventually had to get rid of it, but I took all the PCB and drive boards out of it and kept them because of how unusual and beautiful they were. The hard drive had over a dozen of them and they were about 18" x18".
I moved to Atlanta in 1999 and came up with the idea to incorporate them into a rebuild of my guitar. I took my V apart and rebuilt it at a furniture repair woodworking shop I had access to, covering the body with the circuit boards after carefully removing all the component resistors, chips and capacitors. Ridiculous amounts of work went into it, including cutting off the rounded ends and extending them about 4 inches with blocks of wood, connected by threaded rods, which were then shaped to match the existing body. PCB's were cut into 3"squares and then bolted onto the body like boiler plates, aluminum was cut, shaped and polished. Many coats of sprayed poly finish were applied. In honor of the year 2000 computer glitch I named it V2K.
After months of work, the owner of the furniture shop suggested I take it to a guy he knew that worked on guitars, thinking the guy would be able to give me some pointers on how to proceed with the electronics and such. I had no idea who he was at the time aside from some guy who worked on some rock stars gear, I just wanted some help in what direction to go with the build. Well, the guy he connected me to turned out to be (I found out years later) legendary guitar technician Tom Weber, who was EVH's tech for many years, as well as doing work for the Stones, AC/DC and Jeff Beck. He was really nice, rather quiet and unassuming but very interested in what I had done. He really liked the design and said that if I would leave it with him that he wanted to make it play and sound as good as it looked. We decided on the hardware and pickups and I left it with him. He was gracious enough to do all the hardware, solder and wiriing, shaved the neck, did the setup and fretwork on it. He charged me for the parts, thats all. Not even for his labor. To this day it plays like a dream, though the many layers of lacquer are now cracking and peeling, but thats just adding character I think. Dude is a legend.
There are more pics and details at the imgur link I am providing, but here are a few pics of it.
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