G&L gets it started with Black Eyed Peas and Fergie!

[Special thanks to Steve Grom, G&L's Director of Manufacturing, for these photos and commentary]

This sensational tour has a futuristic, space-age theme so the G&L team responded by creating this one-off guitar. Dubbed
"The Mothership," this customized ASAT Bluesboy features a polished aluminum top which complements the Peas' elaborate stage production.

The guitar was pretty much a stock Bluesboy but we added a polished aluminum top, a special Duncan humbucking pickup that had chrome looking coils (no cover) and a Duncan “blade” pickup in the bridge. I wasn’t involved with selecting the pickups, so I’m not sure of the specifics. The headstock was painted metallic silver.

The original request was for a Bluesboy that had a metal or mirror look. The first idea was something like an entire pickguard over the front of the instrument. That concept would have presented a number of design challenges to our outside pickguard supplier. We finally found a company here in So Cal that produces a huge range of coverings used for counter tops, display cabinets, store displays and things like that. The material on this guitar is aluminum and about .030” thick. We glued the aluminum (we tried 5 or 6 different types of adhesive before we got it right) before we routed the body. Our thinking was the only way to get all the pockets (neck, control and pickups) to be clean and dimensionally correct was to have the whole things cut on the HAAS CNC machine (like we do a standard body). Once we got the aluminum on the HAAS had no problem cutting out the body.

There were a couple of versions as we tried to figure out the best ways to smooth the aluminum edge of the body perimeter (we felt having the artist with a bloody arm wasn’t the best approach). Since the back of the guitar is black, we had to sort out how we were going to do the finishing keeping the color off the front and then deciding if we wanted to put the clear topcoat over just the back or the entire guitar. The final version had the back painted, while the aluminum front is unfinished. We are not sure how this will hold up long-term …. I guess we will have to talk to George from time to time.

This was a tough project in that there were a number of options on how to accomplish what the artist requested and then once we decided on the approach, working through and testing a combination of materials we had never used before.