Swamp ash body – Spartan issue
In 2014 I was searching the net for a Spartan issued kind of guitar which I planned to use for slide playing. Although the amount of hardware I needed was limited (1 pickup & 1 volume knob), the quality of the wood was important, since it should to be very resonant. So finally after some netsurfing, my choice fell on a Strat model guitar with only 1HB in the bridge position. It had a rosewood neck with an arrow shaped headstock, reminding me of a late 1970’s Peavey guitar.
I had never seen such guitar before in any music shop here in Holland, but I decided to take the (limited) risk and had it shipped from the States for only $ 350,-. After all, for playing slide you really don’t need an expensive brand anyway. And so within a few weeks my brand new Slick SL 54 arrived in a big cardboard box.
Unboxing excitement
Moments like these you kinda feel like an impatient kid, cutting the cardboard box open… And there it is, my slideguitar to be, dressed in relic tobacco. And although I knew right from the start that this was going to be an experimental guitar, I was of course curious about the sound and feel of this budget guitar as it was put together in the Slick factory in USA. And what a guitar it turned out to be! The resonant light weight swamp ash body was way beyond my wildest dreams, it’s tone just marvelous! In later episodes I will show you the influence of that great swamp ash tone quality, apart from the choice of hardware.
Here’s a short video I took the very same day this guitar was unboxed. For this I only changed strings and bridge action.
In part 2, I will talk about it’s first transition with the arrival of the gold foil ‘mustache’ pickup and the refinish nitro mahogany.
