Oliva 135th Ann. - O135DJE - Darrin Jackson - The Encounter

 

One of my favorite custom builds by far, the challenge was to make one of my Oliva 135th Anniversary cigar boxes into a versatile, stage- and studio-ready instrument that would please a devoted Fender Stratocaster player, Darrin Jackson (The Darrin Jackson Encounter, etc.). Darrin's dad commissioned this one, and I wanted to make it something special. This was my first attempt at replicating the Strat-style configuration into a CBG, and I tried to make this one special for someone who I know is a local performing musician.

I went with an all-maple neck, because come on, if'n you're gonna' play a Fender style instrument, you can't go wrong with a maple-on-maple neck, especially fitted with some tried-and-true vintage Kluson-style tuners. 

At the other end of the strings, I picked a solid, smooth and reliable Wilkinson hardtail bridge. To capture all those "Stratty" sounds from "biting" to "glassy" to "throaty", I went with some GFS noiseless single-coils, since Darrin's a gigging musician like myself, and we always appreciate anything to keep the buzz and hum to a minimum. I mounted them in sleek aluminum mounting rings to keep the look clean. 

Where it gets tricky is that I decided for the ultimate experience in versatility, I'd use on/off switches for all three pickups instead of the normal 5-way switch. This adds two additional sound options not available with a normal Strat-style instrument, because you can do bridge + neck AND "all on" with this setup. The vol (magnetic pickups)/master tone/vol (dual under-lid passive piezos) control setup is topped-off with some nice knurled chrome dome knobs. Sending the signal to the amp is the standard Strat-style "football" jack. 

The end result was pretty breathtaking, and I hear tell that Darrin digs it--and D, if you're reading this, feel free to comment with a pic or two. I ended up making his dad a matching bass as well, so this was special for me getting to see a father and son enjoying music together, and looking cool doing it!