The client is an old schoolmate of mine whom I've known for some 40 years. His friends call him Lalli - hence the name. The original Lalli was a Finnish farmer who lived in the 12th century during a crusade led by Swedes and is widely considered a national hero and a symbol of resistance against intruders - or a villain to the Catholic church. According to the legend (or one of them) an English bishop called Henry, travelling with the Swedish troops, had entered Lalli's house while he was absent and demanded to be served food and drink, but refused to pay for them. On Lalli's return to his house his wife had also accused Henry of molesting her. Infuriated, Lalli had picked his axe and, assisted by his brother, chased the bishop out of the house and onto the ice of the nearby Lake Köyliö. When Lalli caught the bishop, he struck him to death with his axe. The church declared the slain bishop a saint, but most people consider Lalli the hero, a man who protected what was dear to him. The community of Köyliö takes pride in its festive hall Lallintalo (Lalli's House), a popular venue for rock concerts.
Last summer my friend Lalli asked me to build him an electric guitar and deliver it on his birthday. He gave me hints of the colours he liked and the music he likes to play but said he didn't want to know what kind of guitar I would build. It should be a birthday surprise. He's seriously into Pink Floyd, so I decided to build him a Strat. The colour he talked about is very close to one of the banner second from top on the MIMF site. I let my intuition lead me, hoping that he would like the guitar, and to my delight he did. A surprise is a surprise and you'll never know if it's a pleasant one. I put a lot of effort to figuring out what would please him and evidently succeeded. He could have hated it. Phew!
This was the third Strat I've built and the best one so far, so obviously I've learnt something over the years. There's actually nothing spectacular about it. If I hadn't replaced the bridge single coil pickup with a single coil size dual blade humbucker (that can be split to a single coil with a push-pull pot), it would have been pretty much a standard Strat. I just wanted to spice it up a bit.
Here come the specs:
Body alder, light blue, 2-component acrylic finish, blue pearl coloured pickguard and tremolo spring cover
Bolt-on neck maple 25,5"/650 mm scale, rosewood fingerboard, bone nut, pearloid dot inlays, 2-component acrylic finish
Pickups - neck overwound single coil GFS 8.25 kΩ, middle overwound single coil GFS 9.55 kΩ, bridge Belcat BHS-94 single coil size dual blade humbucker 12.6 kΩ with coil split on volume push-pull pot, middle pickup RPRW
1 volume 250 kΩ with push-pull switch for coil splt, 2 tones 250 kΩ with 47nF cap, 5-way switch, treble bleed filter in volume pot, Live Saver filter at the grounds
Wil Series Strat style floating tremolo bridge, Wilkinson tuners - 19:1 ratio' Chrome hardware
After I finished the guitar I took it the the photo studio at work and took some studio shots. If anyone is interested, I also have a pile of work-in-progress pics. Here's the studio stuff.
- Frontal pose
- Body from the front
- Headstock with my logo and "Lalli's Axe" decal
