Leaderboard

Technically, the NGD was yesterday. However, it’s cold in Chicagoland in January. So, I waited the obligatory 18-24 hours after delivery to slowly bring it up to temp. 2026 Knaggs Kenai spec’d out by me. Build/completion date 1/9/26 so I got it exactly a week after it was done. 1-piece solid mahogany body, 1-piece unbound mahogany neck (cuz I prefer an unbound neck), tier-1 maple top in Blue green burst. 24.75” scale, Indian rosewood fretboard with Morning Star inlays, ebony headstock overlay, Bare Knuckle Mules and the Knaggs Influence bridge. So far I’ve only been able to plug it in to the Spark with headphones for 5 minutes to make sure all the electronics work (darn sleeping baby…) First impression is that the pickups are warm and articulate, very clear. “Bell-like” is an accurate description. Sustains like crazy… The neck is a little smaller than I expected. They say it’s a V into C carve. I would personally describe it as a chunky-medium asymmetrical C. If there’s a V to it then it’s the softest V I’ve ever felt. Flatter on the bass side of the neck and rounder on the treble side. Very, very comfortable. Can’t wait to plug it in to a real amp and get some time pushing air…

Stike did it better.

Indeed.

That’s how my Crews (and every other Strat I’ve owned) is wired. Really tames any spikiness.

fwiw... the Eric Johnson Strat has a tone pot on the bridge. the other tone pot is for neck and middle

Your ears will tell you what sounds to use better than AI or the HFC. Borrow a Strat from a friend and fukwiddit for a few weeks.

"Steal a man’s wallet and he’ll be poor for a day. But teach him to play an instrument and he’ll be poor for the rest of his life."

What is this "enough" that you speak of?

No big deal. Norm doesn't have any Hamers.

I find all the Strat positions useful, including the bridge pickup which many dislike. It just needs a tone control is all. Strangely enough, my least fave Strat position is the neck pickup alone which most people adore. I like the Tele neck pickup better. Follow @RobB’s advice and play a good Strat with good pickups through a good amp and find out which pickup positions speak to YOU. Nothing sounds quite like a good SSS Strat.

...and the agony of defeat.

I had a similar issue with PRS guitars, at least in the earlier days. Lovely, but "sterile". Roundabout 2008 they made some changes that made their guitars much better, at least in IMHO. Pickups, finish and such were improved. More vintage sound and feel, if you will. Not a secret but I like the smaller builders. Turner, Walker, Myka, Grez. Shishkov, of course. Then there are those two from Germany, one of which has now gone far beyond the "one man luthier" stage. But at least 4 of the 7 are either not booking new orders or have prices that shut me out. FWIW, Rebel Guitars (down south) deals in a lot of Knaggs guitars. Very often has what I would consider very good prices on "slightly preowned ones". Never been sorry about anything I bought from him. BTW, for those that would like a Hamer Talladega Pro but cannot find one, Wes has a Dantzig (yeah, I know!) Tulsa that seems to be virtually the same thing as Jol introduced in the latter days at Hamer. But with a few upgrades that would seem to make it a "custom shop" version of the Tally Pro. Just sayin..... https://rebel-guitars.com/preowned-jol-dantzig-guitars-tulsa-in-blood-red/

I just wanna say that @Stike did it first. https://www.gibson.com/products/gibson-custom-1963-sg-special-reissue-light-aged-tv-pelham-blue-sparkle

I agree, both of my Phantoms that the @Stike, and @murkat worked up for me were amazing. They are still around in the hands of HFC’ers.

King's X. Not really metal. Not really rock. Not straight blues, albeit a bit of Texas blues. But all good.

Sold!

A beauty! Love the model name and the Bare Knuckle is the icing. Congrats.

PM sent.

I only have the one Knaggs. Pretty much all you would expect from a PRS Private Stock at a more reasonable price. What else might one expect from a guy who was a big time Private Stock builder before taking off on his own?

Love the ebony!

Elduave and I caught dUg last weekend playing with a bunch of local Maryland superstars at a fundraiser. He did 4 songs (covers) but no KX, sadly.

Looks like a 2000. If that had a vintage carve neck I would love him and squeeze him and call him George!

You mean, because he doesn't have nearly enough already?

This is great news (though the odds of me being in Tarzana (IIRC) are somewhere between none and none). I've said it before, Carter's is among my favorite retail establishments of any type anywhere in the world. Try this: go in there and hang out for an hour and just try not to play a guitar. They absolutely want everyone to be playing the stuff hanging on the wall. They handed my son (around 12 at the time) a $50,000 vintage Strat to play just because he said he thought it was cool. They are terrific.

I was watching a video of a professor showing some system that actually showed keystrokes and time between keystrokes made by his students. I can't find it to post, but the professor was grading papers posted to Google's receptacle (Docs?) and he was able to access more or less a play-by-play of the paper's creation and seemed to infer the student didn't know he had that visibility. He tracked time between keystrokes, copy/paste, pauses, and was able to access combined averages for actions that allowed him to draw conclusions about whether the paper was created by a human or AI. The ridiculous part is the professor had to actually do that assessment as well as the normal task of grading the effort, but it was interesting that capability was there. I'm so old I typed college papers. Only in graduate school did we have access to newfangled word processors - WordStar and WordPerfect, IIRC - no mouse and a monochrome monitor - first green then amber.