NGD - Something completely different - McSwain

This is my newest, which I bought at the Dallas show. I had seen pictures on these, but never in person.

I've always been attracted to the intersection of art, craftsmanship, and playability of guitars. This one certainly landed right in the middle of all that for me.

This is a McSwain Red, White and Bullets. Mahogany body, ebony fretboard, real .357 magnum shells as decoration, metal binding, and the feel of LP Jr. This top is overplayed with various handcrafted metals and distressing. TAnd then there is the matching display for it (which weighs about 30 lbs.)

The builder is Stephen McSwain. He makes a lot of unique guitars, many with a real interesting back story. Super nice guy.








And here is the builder showing this guitar to the Nuge, who, for obvious reasons, loved it.

sws1 showed me these at the show and I was blown away - infinitely cooler in person than photos or brochures. The picture in the flyer - 'oh another funny painted guitar'... NO. The guitars are very 3-D in person with the silver lines around the top on top of the top by about 1mm or more. The neck shape is IMO perfect and even feels broken in - with metal binding! Not at all like new guitars I've played from certain companies where the binding feels like a hard 90 degree corner :ganz these felt great. Some of the McSwain guitars even had inlaid badges or dials that lit up when you pulled up the volume knob, very cool. I heard one of them played onstage at the show and they sound great too!

Hey sws1 - SCORE!!!! :dude: :salude

Very nice- what are the PUP's?

corpse said:

Very nice- what are the PUP's?

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The are made by Arcane. The vol knobs are push/pull, which do something like split the coils. Interestingly, they don't have any hum in the split sound, so I'm not entirely sure what's going on. It's almost like the bass drops out when pulled and it sounds jangly, but with no hum. Maybe it's a series/parallel switch.

Very cool looking. I like it.