What type of alder is it? Is it Ukrainian?
Exactly, it is Ukrainian alder. I want to talk about this a bit, as there was an opportunity to compare American and Ukrainian alder with the same body shape. In terms of characteristics and feel, they are slightly different woods, and the sound will differ as well. The neck of this guitar is made from roasted maple. This technology has become popular relatively recently. I ordered this maple from the US because this technology isn't highly developed here in Ukraine yet. Here's how it works: they take a piece of maple, place it in a vacuum chamber, and heat it to about 400 degrees Celsius. With this heating, the remnants of maple fluids in the wood polymerize. The result is a modified wood. I was initially skeptical about all this. But after we tried making a few necks from this wood, I concluded that this technique really works.
Tell us a bit about Bond finish and coatings.
This is one of our unique features. When I played a lot of gigs with my band, all my guitars were gloss-finished. Often, I didn't have enough time to wipe them down after soundchecks at concerts. It all looked quite messy. that’s why I decided to explore the issue of guitar coatings: whether they affect the sound, what types there are, and so on. The idea emerged to create a finish that would appear satin, slightly matte, and wouldn't show fingerprints. And we succeeded. The Bond Finish doesn't show fingerprints, unlike regular matte or glossy coatings. We achieved this while preserving its harmless impact on tonal characteristics and deep color, as we used nitro paint coated with a modern protective layer.
Regarding color, do you think the guitar's color affects its price? Is that a myth?
It's more of a myth. Based on what I know, here are two examples. If you have an acoustic guitar covered in black paint, its top won't perform as well due to the substantial thickness of the paint layer compared to a transparent coating. There's also the case of the Les Paul Studio from the early 2000s. There are rumors with some evidence that wood of lower quality was painted in non-transparent colors, while higher-quality wood was used for Wine Red models because the wood's texture is visible in those. That's all I've heard.
Tell us about your Bond Guitars anchorless system.
This is quite a spy technology of ours! The first anchorless system, or rather a reinforcement system without a non-adjustable truss rod, was developed back in the 50s in American Harmony guitars. Guitar strings under standard tuning apply almost 50 kilograms of tension on the neck. In other words, they constantly pull, and the neck must have a certain response to this tension. In most cases, this response is achieved through a compression truss rod inside the neck. However, we had a different idea. To achieve the best guitar tone, we decided to investigate how the guitar works, especially how string vibration is distributed from the perspective of acoustics and physics. Among guitar makers, there's a statement that the neck should be rigid and stable for the energy to stay in the strings. The vibration of strings is being detected by the pickup, which sends the signal to the amplifier. Considering this, we had the idea to create a neck so powerful that the strings couldn't excessively bend it. We made a test series with our original non-adjustable truss rods. It turned out they were just too good. It might sound a bit strange, but they were absolutely great in terms of technical characteristics and tonal results, so we decided to keep this feature exclusively for our Custom Shop.
The last guitar made with this technology was manufactured a few years ago. Clients typically choose more classical solutions. Although this system provides maximum sound and stability, it might raise questions with certain string gauges combined with non-standard tunings. In reality, a great compromise exists – the Japanese U-Channel truss rod system. This is a standard compression rod located in an alloy profile. This simultaneously gives great neck reinforcement and the ability to adjust the truss rod as usual.
I've also heard the opinion that sound in an electric guitar isn't just about the sound of the strings near the pickup but throughout the length of the body. What's your view on this matter?
Definitely, that's true. It's a very interesting topic, I'll try to explain. There are YouTube videos where people experiment. They put guitar strings over a rock, make guitar bodies from stone, etc. This allows us to understand how the string system sounds without the influence of wood, hardware, bridge. There is a good analogy with sound engineering – we have an active and passive equalization. Many people believe that wood actively influences the sound. But in reality, the wood can only "take off" certain frequencies, which is a form of passive equalization. For instance, if you have a guitar made of mahogany, it will absorb high frequencies from the sound. But if the string system is put over a stone or a metal beam, its tone retains almost the full sound spectrum, and it all depends on the pickup. In a real guitar, the core of the tone is set by wood, hardware, bridge construction, and from there, it's the electronics. However, the significance of the electronics' impact on the overall tone is quite big.