When you spend this kind of money for an electric guitar, you should get two things:
1. A drop dead gorgeous instrument
2. Exceptional sounds
The gorgeous part is obvious.
The Electronic Features of this Very Special Guitar
The Jason Lollar Imperials are great sounding magnetic humbucking pickups. The top knob is the volume control for these pickups. Pull up on this knob and you engage in the CAE Jangletone preamp. On this guitar, you can pull up on the middle knob and the humbuckers are coil tapped, becoming great sounding single coils.
On the bridge, each little saddle is an independent piezo for each string. Graphtech has done a great job here with this wonderful sounding piezo setup. When the middle knob is in the down position, it is the volume control for the piezo.
The mini switch selects the humbuckers when it is in the up position, the piezo in the down position and both in the mid position. When the switch is in the mid position, you can create various blends between the piezo and the humbucker by adjusting their respective volume controls.
The lower knob is the tone control made by Stellartone. This is a single function control.
The toggle switch is the usual pickup selector for the humbuckers.
Last but not least, this guitar can be played mono or stereo!
Mono - just plug in your regular cable and everything works as I have described above.
Stereo - You need to use a Y cable for this. That is a cable with a single stereo (TRS) plug on one end that splits to two cables with regular (TS) plugs. The single end goes in the guitar while each of the other two plugs go into separate amps or even separate channels of the same amp. One signal out of the guitar is from the piezo, the other is from the magnetic pickups. In either case, the idea is to use different tone or effect settings on each of the two amps or channels to produce what might be called a halographic effect.
The versatility here is huge and although the description may seem a little complex, you will be at home with this setup in minutes. I have annotated one of the images for an easy display of the control functions.
Overview of This Guitar
Very rare Amboyna Burl top
Mahogany body - chambered, Master Class Koa binding
Mahogany neck 1 11/16" at the nut, Master Class Koa Binding
Fret wire - EVO Gold
Very cool gold wire mosaic pin inlay position markers. Subtle and elegant
Lollar Imperial humbucking pickups that can be coil tapped with the mid control knob
Graphtech Ghost piezo bridge with independent preamp
Main volume control is a push pull. CAE Jangletone preamp is engaged in the up position
Middle knob is piezo volume in the down position. Pull up and it splits the humbucker coils to single coil
Three position pickup selector switch
Three position mini toggle for piezo, magnetic or both
CAE Jangletone preamp for the magnetic pickups
Pickups and all hardware are gold
Stellartone tone control
