Birth of a Guitar - ICHIBAN
About two years ago my brother took one of our busted Del Ray bodies home and came back a week later with a wall clock. He flipped the body over and used the pickup cavity to house the clock. What could I say but, "Hey. Cool!"

Every day I came to the shop I looked at that thing. After a while I started to really like the shape - probably because of my love for MOSRITE guitars - and I began imagining a new model.

I contacted my builder and sent a blank TEISCO DEL RAY body to him for review. I asked him to use the existing AIRLINE neck, two mini-humbuckers and a Fender style tremolo. "Slap together a prototype, your choice of color, design any pickguard shape you want and send it over as soon as you can".
Four weeks later, here is what we received:
Right out of the box it was a killer player! But we sat on it for a few weeks and decided to make a few changes. First, the headstock is cool on an AIRLINE, but not so here. We adopted an old favorite, the Italian GALANTI. Next, dumped the Les Paul style fret markers and replaced with the subtle but sexy Mosrite mini-dots. Changed the bridge to a simply fantastic roller bridge that is also Mosrite reminiscent. Something about the body shape was making me crazy. Was it the pickguard? The Body contour? We did some work in photoshop and found that the "waistline" needed to be more curvaceous so we put it on a diet and took a few inches off the waist. With that, we looked at Johny Ramones original Mosrite and took a page from the upper curve on the pickguard. Now, the waist looks so sweet and the neck so sleek! Here is the final result:
BACK