The Miura 'Supernaut'
|
The seeds of this guitar were sown during a conversation with the legendary Tony Iommi about his guitars. We especially discussed his original ‘Monkey’ guitar that was used on the first four Black Sabbath albums, and his Floyd Rose equipped SG guitars.
I listening to Tony as he listed the modifications he’d made to his original guitar to make it suit his particular style, and also where it was lacking. He also told me of his reservations of a locking tremolo, so I put forward the idea of a 24 fret ‘Monkey’ guitar with a non-locking tremolo, a humbucking pickup at the bridge and a P90 at the neck. Tony was really up for the project, and preliminary designs took place during December 2025. Hardware The choice of hardware was easy. I'd fitted a few Vega-trem bridges to various guitars and I had been impressed with their build quality, feel and compact design. Visually, when paired with a black fulcrum block it could almost pass for the ‘Monkey’ guitars wrap over tailpiece. Tuning is trusted to Schaller’s excellent M6 back locking machine heads. Pickups Pickups were an easy choice too. These days my only port of call with custom pickup winding is Sean Wilson at Old Bones pickups. Having had experience with his ‘Kraken’ pickup, a staple P90, it was decided to fit one of these at the neck. This pickup has a fairly strong output with 10KOhms of resistance and has incredible clarity coupled with a wonderful ‘flutey’ character, even with large amounts of gain. The bridge pickup, a Supernaut 90, has a strong output with a resistance of around 16KOhms. This pickup was custom built from the ground up featuring a custom brass baseplate, 3D printed bobbins with 52mm spacing with custom machined pole pieces and Alnico II magnet. It all results in a pickup with remarkable clarity even at huge gain levels. Both pickups are housed in a polished Nickel Silver cover. Mounted under the pickguard is a dummy coil, named the ‘Fools Gold’ which is connected to the neck Staple P90 to form a ‘humbucker’ but sacrificing none of the legendary tone of that pickup. Construction The basic construction of the guitar follows that of the original ‘Monkey’ very closely. Mahogany body, mahogany neck with a bound Rosewood fingerboard inlaid with mother of pearl dot markers. Tony told me of his preference for a lacquered fingerboard with small frets that aided his comfort whilst playing, so these are featured too. The body is slightly thicker than usual measuring 38mm rather than 36mm. This decision was made for two reasons, slightly more low end to the sound, and to help accommodate the depth of the Vegatrem bridge. The bridge was also slightly modified by shortening the block and shimming the pivot block with a 1.5mm brass shim. To give the guitar a little more upmarket appeal, I decided to not only bind the headstock, but to fit a matching rosewood headstock veneer. Finishing touches As a custom guitar builder it’s very difficult to resist the finishing touches. This guitar is full of them. The pickup rings were designed to closely mimic Tony’s original modified items. They were cut from 5 and 8mm thick black acrylic and carefully bevelled and angled to match the 1.5 degree neck pitch. These were then polished and fitted with custom machined and polished stainless steel M3 Allen bolts. These modified bolts have been used throughout the guitar. The rear tremolo plate has been given the same treatment as the pickup rings, e.g. bevelled and polished, and there is also a spring cavity ‘vanity plate’ just to visually tidy things up. The ultimate finishing touch has to be the incredible truss rod cover. This was supplied by my good friend, the incredible Greg Goodwillie. I cut and polished the cover from 1.5mm brass, and asked Greg to engrave ‘Henry’, Black Sabbath’s famous flying demon into it. What came back was an amazing piece of art that was then nickel plated to match the tuners and pickups and fitted using the same modified stainless bolts. The guitar is lacquered with a thin, full gloss finish named ‘Vampyre red’ (Christened by Rebecca Wilson) |
Full specification
|
|
