'Bonita' the contoured T-Type 'Bonita' is a heavily worn T-Type built from my favoured wood combination of a solid ash body with a maple/rosewood neck. The body is contoured for extra playing comfort and finished in a gloriously aged three-tone nitro sunburst. The neck is a big old chunky ‘D’ section with our own clay dot markers and jumbo frets. Our own 'Dreamer' humbucker sized P90 sits in the neck position to offer a depth and warmth that many standard T-Type neck pickups lack, with our tried, trusted and super saucy 'T90' singlecoil in the bridge. Elsewhere we have Gotoh and Kluson hardware with split-post tuners and a three knurled steel saddle bridge. Electronics are our usual top-notch CTS brass collar pots, a CRL three-way selector switch and a Switchcraft plate mounted jack-socket to ensure trouble free jack life. Alex Ward takes you through some of the gorgeous tones onboard, and remember 'Bonita' is available to purchase on our website, or if you'd like to discuss a custom build, just get in touch via our contact page. www.eternal-guitars.com

Last year I built an all mahogany S-Type for top UK session dude and Matrix Amplification ambassador Alex Ward. Alex has since become part of the team here and you’ll probably have seen the fantastic product demo videos that he produces for me. He loved the original ‘Riggs’ S-Type but he quickly realised that he needed another - a counterpart that was similar but with different tonal options and more frets… And here it is. Named ‘Murtaugh’ (‘Riggs’s partner in Lethal Weapon, for non-fans…) it is again inherently an S-Type but fused with a healthy dollop of Les Paul DNA along with a quality onboard piezo system. Once again, it’s an all mahogany set-neck build with a 24 ¾” scale-length and a two-piece lightweight mahogany with tummy cut, forearm chamfer and modified heel carve and lower horn to improve upper fret access. As mentioned above we used a Gibson scale-length on a 12” radius dark rosewood fingerboard with 24 medium/jumbo (6130) frets. A nod to the vintage S-Type was the inclusion of our own clay dot markers on the ‘board face but with the excellent Luminlay dots along the side to aide orientation on dark stages. Having played. Loved and demoed my own PAF Replica pickups last year, Alex chose one for the neck position with a ‘Timeless’ in the middle and the same bridge pickup that we made for ‘Riggs’ which was modelled on his favourite Leas Paul ‘bucker. We’ve named this one the ‘GST’ (more on that to follow) but it is essentially a ‘Hot PAF’ style humbucker with an open musical voice and an extra bit of grunt. Alex uses a dual output set-up so as we did on ‘Riggs’ there’s a piezo loaded vibrato bridge and a simplified control layout with the signals split to separate outputs. The LR Baggs X-Bridge and CTRL-X onboard pre-amp and mixer worked beautifully on ‘Riggs’ so we used them again here. We modified the circuit to simplify the layout to Alex’s taste so there’s a dual volume layout – one for the magnetic pickups and the other for the piezo volume/preamp with a regular 5-way switch. Between the pots we managed to squeeze in the mini-toggle switch that selected between mag pickups, a mix with the piezo and then pure piezo. This switch is designed to be used with the supplied stereo/switching jack socket but as we were using twin output jacks we’d need to split this signal from the switch and preamp. Early on on the build Alex decided to go for a heavily worn black nitro finish and tort guard (which was handmade to fit the modified body outline and switching) which I think looks awesome.

Regular followers will already know of the love that myself and our Chief Demo Dude Alex Ward share for the original ‘Lethal Weapon’ films, and also that Alex named his first two Custom Eternals ‘Riggs’ and ‘Murtaugh’ in honour of the two main characters portrayed by Mel Gibson and Danny Glover. First introduced in Lethal Weapon 2, Joe Pesci’s irritating but lovable ‘Leo Getz’ became another memorable character (and one with some truly unforgettable lines) so as soon as Alex saw this little orange beauty he HAD to have it and he named it ‘Getz’ to complete his trio of LW themed guitars… Originally conceived as an homage to the home-built ‘superstrats’ of the late ‘70s, the simplicity of the build belies the versatility on offer, and here Alex demonstrates not only how a guitar of that era sounded with an original version of the Floyd Rose, a lone volume control and a hot humbucker on board (and little else!) but also how players of the era - most famously a young Eddie Van Halen - shook the stagnant world of late ‘70s rock music to its core, and wrote a whole new vocabulary for aspiring guitarists… Incidentally, Lethal Weapon was written by the genius Shane Black who also wrote or rewrote many other classic ’80s movies. The ‘GST’ humbucker that we designed for Alex takes it name from a brilliant throw away line about chewing tobacco in another 1987 movie that Shane Black not only had a role in, but also (rumour has it) rewrote the script uncredited…

To celebrate our 10th Anniversary, we're giving you the chance to win this guitar... Competition details and information on how to enter can be found here: https://www.eternal-guitars.com/egp-guitar-giveaway-competition

Like the player that inspired it, this one comes out swinging at the bell! An all nitro, heavily aged finished sits astride a lightweight alder body with custom routed reverse vibrato and additional singlecoil routs. The neck is a chunky but slick 'C' shape profile, again finished in aged nitro but an instantly comfortable and played in feel. A slab rosewood fingerboard with vintage correct 7.25" radius is topped with 21 huge 6000 size frets that make massive and sustaining blues bends a breeze. We've used two of our 'Timeless' Strat pickups for neck and middle positions with a specially wound 'T90' for the bridge using white-topped flatwork and string wrap. We've wired these through a CRL five-way switch to offer a wide range of tones and used our usual high quality CTS Brass Collar pots and cloth hook-up wire to the Switchcraft jack socket. The hardware is all aged Kluson vintage repro with a steel-block vibrato of course, and split post tuners. We've used a hand carved bone nut and is set-up with 10-46 strings in concert pitch - we'll happily up the gauge upon request and drop the tuning a semi-tone for anyone seeking that filthy Texan Tone... Our man Alex Ward takes you through some of the tones on offer - including clean, crunchy and also high gain loveliness...

I often get asked how long it takes to paint a guitar body. The truth is that the actual paint application doesn't take very long at all, but preparing the wood (grain filling, loads of sanding, sealer coats, more sanding) can take a long time, but the results are always worth it. In this instance, the shell pink will also receive numerous coats of clear nitro which will be flattened with fine paper between coats and finally polished.

Lewis Harding and 'Nikki' the hardtail S-Type 'Nikki' is an alder bodied hardtail S-Type in aged Sherwood Green nitro. A 'C' sectioned maple neck with vintage radius rosewood fingerboard, clay dots and jumbo frets. Kluson hardware and our own 'Ozone' neck and middle pickups with a warm voiced, thick sounding 'S92' in the bridge position.

Lewis 'Chip' Harding demoes our 'Lana' T-Type Guitar that features our new 'Stubby-T' Bridge pickup for Tele plus a 'stealth' P90-style pickup in the neck position. The ’Stubby-T’ uses shorter than average poles and a unique wind that give it a squat appearance, but tonally it adds some serious girth and grit to a Tele bridge position. I wanted to offer the presence and beef associated with our wonderful (and very popular) T90 pickup but voiced slightly differently and that would be a drop in fit to the majority of Tele-style guitars. Due to the tonal characteristics of bobbin shape, coil wind and magnetic field, we created an entirely new pickup - one with similar power but a more subtle voice. It also allows very neat retrofitting to vintage guitars that typically have shallower routing/cavities than modern mass produced instruments. We’re proud to say that British songwriter and former ‘Longpigs’ and ‘Pulp’ guitarist Richard Hawley uses one of these pickups in his 1969 Telecaster that he opened each night with on his latest tour. The guitar is recent acquisition, and formerly belonged to folk legend Martin Carthy, and was once used by Bob Dylan. It’s a cracking guitar, but it lacked a little oomph on the bridge pickup in common with many Tele’s from that era. We’ve been rewinding various pickups for Richard over the years via his excellent tech Gordon White (of Single Coil Guitar Repairs in Leeds) and he suggested trying one of our new models in the guitar to spice it up a bit. It was a huge success and Richard kindly had this to say about the improved tone: “It now sounds like a Tele should.' We’ll take that. Grey bottom flatwork with white string wrap. DC: approx. 13.3ks used by Richard Hawley

Our new grey-bottomed Strat pickup set demonstrated by Lewis Harding playing our 'Tallulah' S-Type guitar. As part of our 'Vintage Timeless' series, they are authentic replicas of Strat pickups from '64 in both looks and open, bell-like tones. We've used bevelled Imperial magnets, grey-bottom flatwork and heavy formvar coil wire to recreate these wonderful vintage tones.