I’ve always had a thing for Italian guitars - Welson, Eko, Wandre, etc. I love the way they look. But the few vintage Italian guitars I played always had issues - dodgy hardware, warped necks and the like. Sure, they looked lovely, but to play? Even in Italy the general consensus seems to be that they’re great to hang on a wall and look at, but if you want something to gig with, you’re better off sticking with Gibson and Fender (and preferably those made before 1965).
But I didn’t want another guitar like the guitars I already had. I wanted something different. And I wanted it to be beautiful to look at and beautiful to play. Enter Anthony and Harvester Guitars. I was fascinated by his ‘Antonio’ series, loved the idea of a hybrid aluminium neck and was impressed by the way he was able to solve seemingly any design problem that came his way. Then he started making a guitar based on the Wandre Cobra - my favourite Wandre design - with Mastery hardware added to the mix. So I followed the build. And the more work he did on it, the more I liked it. I kept thinking someone would snap it up and put me out of my misery but they didn’t, so I dropped Anthony an email with a few questions and a few days later I’d put down the deposit to claim it.
Working with Anthony on the process was great. He’s enthusiastic and really knows his stuff. If I had questions (even stupid ones), he had answers. We figured out what we needed to figure out and he got on with the job. And man, did he deliver.
First, it sure is beautiful to look at. There are plenty of pics on the Harvester site as noted above.
But I also thought it would be a good idea to show it next to a couple of more familiar shapes as reference points:
Believe it or not, the pictures don’t really do it justice. It’s hard to capture just how remarkable the candle-smoke sunburst finish reflects the light, or just how rich and red the colour of the paduak fretboard is. When I first pulled it out of the case I was stunned, and I’d been obsessively staring at pictures of it for a long, long time.
But how was it going to feel? I guess going for the hybrid aluminium/paduak neck was a bit of a gamble because I had absolutely no experience with aluminium guitars and really didn’t know what to expect. I certainly understood the idea behind Anthony’s approach - the ‘compound radius’ of the paduak board attached to the aluminium ‘spine’. Wandre did it a similar way. But I always knew that having it in the hands would be the ultimate test.
I mentioned this above, but when I first picked up the guitar the neck felt so weird to me that I had a moment of panic, thinking I'd never be able to play something so unfamiliar. Five minutes later I was fine. The compound radius of the neck and fretboard is kind of odd and there are spaces where you're just not used to finding spaces on a guitar neck. But then your mind and your fingers start to feel what is there, not what's missing - the back of the neck, the edges of the fretboard, everything you need to make the sounds you want to make. And the combination of the metal and wood feels great in the hands. I’m usually a rosewood or nothing kinda guy when it comes to fretboards, but the paduak has a really lovely feel to it, especially on the rounded edges.
After the first few days I stopped feeling like I had to adjust to the neck and really started to enjoy playing it. When you’re barring chords it has a solid, chunky feel (the depth of the aluminium and paduak combined is similar to a C-shape) and fretting notes feels great, too. It helps that Anthony spends a lot of time getting the frets right.
Sometimes my thumb would settle into the little gap between the metal and wood on either side of the neck, which is really comfortable but not exactly great technique for barre chords (although it’s kind of awesome for shuffle rhythms), so I’d consciously position it better - probably a good idea on any guitar. And now it feels perfectly natural - just another guitar neck - that I can switch back and forth with my other guitars without skipping a beat.
What else do you need to know about the neck? It’s got 20 frets, fretboard radius is 12” and the scale is 25”. Board width is 42mm at the nut and around 54mm at the end of the neck. I hadn’t played a 25” scale guitar before but I switch between Fender and Gibson scales all the time so it wasn’t an issue.
The body carve is great and the balance of the guitar is really good, too. The overall weight is around 8.5 pounds, I think. It feels about the same weight as my Jazzmaster and maybe a bit lighter than a Les Paul. Most of the weight is in the neck, so that’s a little different to other guitars, but there’s no neck dive and it hangs from a strap really well.
And despite the crazy angles from the brass nut/string guide to the tuning pegs and the presence of a tremolo, it stays in tune remarkably well. The Mastery hardware (bridge and trem) probably doesn’t hurt, but it’s a pretty phenomenal setup achievement all the same.
The Mastery tremolo is also really worth talking about. The trem action is awesome, really smooth and solid, and it feels to me like it combines the best bits of a Jazzmaster trem with the trem units from 60s Yamahas, which I love.
The pickups are made by Jerry Sentell and they’re phenomenal. Kind of like a cross between Jazzmaster pickups and P90s, A5 at the bridge, A2 at the neck. Output is 7.7k at the neck and 8.6k at the bridge. They’re really clear and articulate and sound lovely in all three positions. The bridge has a touch of P90 spank to it and the neck has a kind of dark Jazzmaster feel (pots are 250k with a .022 tone cap, so that helps to tame any brightness). And the middle position is just beautiful. I usually prefer bridge and neck pups on their own, but this is something else - a really rounded treble sound with great detail on every string.
On any setting, the metallic shimmer that comes from the guitar’s construction - with all the cool harmonics I was hoping for - always comes through. I’ve never played a guitar that sounds anything like this before. Yes, it clearly sounds like a guitar, but there’s something else there that makes it different from my other guitars, which is exactly what I was after.
Quick and dirty clips linked above and I just finished up a demo of a new song (one of mine) that uses the Harvester for all the guitar parts. Demo is recorded with Garageband. Guitar and pedals into the Vox recorded with an old SuperScope mic through an Apogee Jam. The guitar tracks are all played straight through and should sound pretty much as they would “live”.
[soundcloud]https://soundcloud.com/boy_called_horse/circles-of-the-sun-harvester-42-demo[/soundcloud]
Left rhythm track is both pickups, clean amp and a phaser (Infant Compact Faye Sing B) with an expression pedal controlling the rate. When the song “heavies up” the phaser goes off, I switch to the bridge and stomp on a jerms Rat. Right track is the bridge pickup through a Castledine Stingray (guitar volume rolled off) for a bit of warmth. Lead track (full left) is the neck pickup into a Faustone Fuzz Unit. There’s a fourth track that comes in towards the end that is the bridge pickup running straight into Garageband modelling a Marshall stack to open things up a little more. I hammered on the whammy as much as I could…
Hope yours is the #newguinearosewood. 
