Hello all,*I'm placing my
Mike Lull built USA Custom Guitars H/S/S up for trade.
I'm primarily interested in trading for another 4-string bass preferably with 1.5" nut width and 34" or shorter scale length. *I'm also considering trading for the following:
*Guitars (equipped with PAF type pickups) with a scale length of 24.75" or 25" - Gibson ES339, SG, etc or US made PRS guitars (24.5" scale length ok).
*Fractal Audio MFC-101 foot controller for the AxeFX series processors.
Though I'm pretty focused in my trade interests feel free to propose other trades if you're interested in this guitar.I'm also willing to sell the guitar. I'll want to get $750 shipped CONUS. USPS Money Order preferred - I will accept PayPal with fees added to the price for $773
*This guitar comes with a Gator ATA flight case and a tan suede leather strap w/ Dunlop strap locks.
*Send a PM if interested. Thanks!
The frets show some wear but it's even wear across the fret board and with low action there's not fret noise/buzz or fretting out on bends anywhere. I've yet to notice any of this wear in playing the guitar - or by visual inspection. I tried to capture this in the detailed pics as best I can. There are no nicks, bumps, dents, scratches, etc at all on the neck itself. There are a couple of really small flaws on the body due to regular wear - you have to go looking for them to find them.* I was not able to capture these with the camera very well. They just don't show with the lightly polished oil finish. The black finish has worn off some of the hardware as shown in the detailed pics. This wear is clear of corrosion though - the wear is to polished metal. There's no hardware corrosion anywhere at all. This guitar has been meticulously cared for.Pics are posted at the end of this listing.
Due to an arthritic condition I'm now only playing guitars with 25" or shorter scale length as the lower string tension affords me more time and tolerance to play (no longer than 34" scale basses with reasonably low action and 1.5" nut width for the same reason). I have tried for several years since falling ill to adjust to the Fender scale length and it's just not going to work for me any longer.
About the guitar:
I started at USA Custom Guitars. I went down to their shop in Tacoma, WA and selected the woods to be used - a medium lightweight alder body blank with beautiful grain and subtly figured maple for the neck and fret board. The body has 50's contours. Yhe neck has a 'C' shaped contour and a 12" fret board radius. Headstock shape is their US-1. USACG logo on the headstock is CNC cut and filled with clear epoxy. Once finished and received I did the fine sanding and finished the body and neck with Tung-Oil, several coats hand rubbed and polished to a semi gloss with 0000 steel wool. I painted the control cavity with a couple coats of conductive paint for shielding.
I selected the following for hardware:
Bridge pickup - Lindy Fralin 'Unbucker' PAF, 4-conductor, splits at position 2
Middle & Neck pickups - Lindy Fralin Real 54's single coils
Bridge - Hipshot Contour Tremolo
Nut - bone
Tuners - Gotoh 18:1 locking
String tree - graphtec
Fret wire - vintage type Dunlop 6230
Truss rod - vintage type single rod
Pickguard - Parchment 3-ply with shielding tape on the back side over the control cavity, from Warmoth
*The rest of the hardware was sourced through Mike Lull.
Mike Lull did the assembly and set-up using 9-42 gauge strings, tremolo bridge floating, 3 black Fender springs. The resulting guitar turned out better than I'd hoped. It's an amazing instrument! It captures the sound of my first guitar (mission accomplished) and more. The pickups are ideally matched. It has a pre 'pointy guitar' super strat sound (PAF retro-fit) in the bridge position, it splits the bridge for a very nicely matched out-of-phase strat sound in position 2, and the remaining 3/4/5 positions are vintage 50's strat. I tried to give the guitar an 'earthy' look with the oil finish / parchment pickguard and just a hint of the 80's 'super strat' vibe with the black hardware.
The guitar was finished in early January of 2005.
I've posted a couple of pics below followed by a link to a directory with a lot more pictures showing the guitar in detail:
Link to more pictures (strap and case not shown here - I'll take pictures of these and post them later).
