With
its revolutionary asymmetrical trim, Ferrington Guitars is the world’s
first entirely digitally-imaged and -designed book. It features
the work of Danny Ferrington, renowned luthier, and the artists
for whom he has created personalized guitars, including Pete Townshend,
Elvis Costello, Mike Campbell, the late Kurt Cobain, and many others.
Some of the artists also used their Ferrington Guitars to contribute
original recordings to the audio CD packaged with the book. A profile
of Ferrington is contributed by Orville Schell.big orange solidbody
overview
The Big Orange Solidbody is a culmination of my own personal preferences and opinions about what a truly versatile electric guitar should be. In 1996, tired of slogging to gigs armed with too many guitars, I set out to design and craft an instrument that would provide me with the sonic diversity necessary to cover all of my musical bases, sound great, look cool, and allow me to sell off all my name-brand instruments. The Big Orange Solidbody is a classic example of how form can follow function and look great at the same time.
The body outline was inspired by some acoustic guitars created by Master Luthier Danny Ferrington. I decided on a transparent orange finish, since at the time there were no contemporary orange solidbody electrics being marketed in the United States. I have always loved the look of an orange and chrome guitar, the classic Gretsch® Nashville® being one of my favorites.
wood selection
The body of the Big Orange Solidbody is oversized due to a personal design aesthetic. But the sonic side-benefit is that the added body mass enhances the beefy tones that are easily extracted from a monolithic slab. While this guitar looks huge next to a Gibson Les Paul, carefully chosen woods result in a relatively lightweight instrument despite its size.
One-piece mahogany body with a half-inch thick maple top.
The body was cut from a single solid piece of mahogany. Mahogany was chosen as the main body wood due to its warm sonic characteristics. The back of the body is heavily contoured with a deep cutaway designed for comfortable playing and to reduce the overall weight of the guitar.
The highly-figured birdseye maple top is half an inch thick, enhancing the already ample snappiness of the 25.5" scale length. I string it with GHS TNT (thick'n'thin) strings gauged from .010 to .052.
The birdseye maple neck is capped with a birdseye maple fretboard and is bolted to the body using a standard four screw mounting plate. The neck pocket is shallow to compensate for the string height necessary when using a tune-o-matic style bridge. Consequently the backside was contoured extensively to enhance the upper fretboard reach allowing for easy access to all 22 frets.
pickups
Close-up of Seymour Duncan Mini-Humbucker pickup.
I chose mini-humbuckers, optimized for both neck and bridge positions, because their clear tone and true hum-cancelling performance. Seymour Duncan "Seymourized" Mini-Humbuckers to be exact. A departure in design from Duncan's SM-1 and SM-2 models, each coil contains a high-carbon steel blade coupled to the bottom-loaded Alnico V magnet. The result is punchy midrange, excellent clarity and vivid detail. Four conductor cable allowed me to wire for coil-splitting, resulting in chiming bell-like tones when necessary.
The pickups are screwed directly into the body cavities without the use of mounting bezels. Such a configurations required the creation of custom templates for routing the pickup cavities into the body.
hardware
Close-up of chrome plated guitar hardware.
If there was ever a major complaint I had about Fender electric instruments it was that the strings sit too close to the body for my tastes. So while The Big Orange Solidbody utilizes Fender-style bolt-on construction, I set the neck pocket shallow in comparison to Fender's typical spec. This allowed the end of the fretboard to sit higher off the top of the body than a typical Fender guitar.
A wraparound tune-o-matic style bridge from Schaller is used to get the strings up off the body and to give me something substantial to rest my hand on.
The master volume control is positioned close to the bridge to allow for turning with the pinky finger, but not as close as a typical Fender Stratocaster, which is too close for my playing style. All hardware is chrome plated for the "orange and chrome" aesthetic I was interested in.
challenges
The aniline dye used to color the maple top in transparent orange was applied shy of the guitar's edges, creating the look of a natural maple purfling against a dark red stained mahogany back. The look is often seen on top of the line instruments such as those manufactured by Paul Reed Smith. It is a very difficult and time-consuming process—not for the faint-hearted or for those seeking shortcuts. The entire guitar body must be masked leaving only the edges of the top exposed. The exposed area is then sprayed with clear laquer. Then the masking is removed and the aniline dye will penetrate all the raw wood leaving the previously laquered portions intact.
specifications
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