The official Sabre Guitars Thread

[sabreguitars]

Hi chaps!

Just a quick update for this month - a bit hectic over here with lots on so I'll keep it brief!!

Firstly of course we've launched our first range of Stock instruments!

Available in 6 and 7 string, our first two models, Syren and Talon will feature hand-selected world-class tonewood, premium hardware, Sabre's own renowned MetalGear Ultra and Zero humbuckers and a premium Sabre padded Gig-Bag. There's no cheap poplar or generic hardware here!!

If ordered directly there are a limited number of upgrades/options available.

Upgrade to Bare Knuckle Pickups: £100.00 - 6 string, £110.00 - 7 string.
Upgrade to Strandberg Endurneck Profile: £45.00
Upgrade to Sabre Custom Flight Case: £60.00 (recommended for international orders)
Upgrade to stained finish (enquire for colours): £125.00
Maple Fretboard Option: £FREE

Most importantly they are made 100% in the UK, here at Sabre HQ in exactly the same way as our Custom Shop instruments.

Available to pre-order from Today! To get your hands on a guitar from the first 12 Unit batch. If all 12 are pre-ordered before mid september then we guarantee worldwide delivery in time for Christmas 2013. All our first batch customers will receive one of only 12 limited edition Talon or Syren T-Shirts!!!

To enquire e-mail us at sales@sabreguitars.co.uk

***** The Seven String headstock has now been modified as a 4x3 design in response to comments both here on SS and on Facebook. Pics coming soon!)

Obviously this is a huge thing for us but its not all that's been going on!

We we're delighted last week when one of our first Wraith customers decided to post a review of his guitar almost a year on, to coincide with the release of his band's new album!

You can read it here:

https://www.facebook.com/notes/michael-lowe/review-of-my-sabre-wraithfinally/10151554704331058

And as if that wasn't enough..... Another of our customers saw this and decided to do his own!!

https://www.facebook.com/notes/carl-johnston/sabre-wraith-cjm-103-multiscale-guitar-1-year-on/416839721754082

One thing I should mention in the wake of that review is that precisely as Carl points out, there was an issue with the truss rod adjustment access on our first multiscales but this has now been rectified by using a different style of truss rod nut, improving the adjustment recess and also by fabricating our own custom allen keys!

By far our biggest news however - My wife and I had our second scan yesterday!

Baby Sabre now has fully formed hands and feet!!

 

[sabreguitars]

Wake me up when September Ends.... So nearly there!

This has, without a doubt been the most mental month in Sabre's short history.

We've seen the launch of the stock range and had all 12 guitars from the 1st run spoken for in a month! So watch this space for a BIG production run!!

Its with great sadness however that I've had to say goodbye to my awesome assistant Al who's been working with me here at Sabre for almost a year!

He's been offered an amazing job in a different field which would be madness to say no to, so I wish him every success and obviously I'm gutted to see him go because he's put in some incredible effort and done wonderful work over what has been at times a very difficult 12 months.

So here's to say Thanks and Good Luck to Al!!!

Now the practical upshot of this announcement is that obviously this leaves me rather under-staffed here at Sabre HQ. To all current and future customers, rest assured I'm going to be putting in the extra hours necessary to try and absorb any shortfall which may arise but please if I could ask you all to be a little patient regarding e-mails/photos etc. as I'm sure you can understand that a lot of the time previously spent taking photos etc. will now need to be re-allocated to sawdust production! I'm hoping that I won't have to extend any of my build times but there may be a short delay as I take up the slack.

Over the next couple of months there will of course therefore be the potential for an opening here at Sabre for an apprentice/intern to take Al's place. If you're interested please send applications to info@sabreguitars.co.uk. If the response is good I may even run a little competition or something! A penchant for lifting weights at the end of the day is a good thing.

The custom shop (as I suppose I must now call it) is of course also in full swing. This month has seen the completion of the Walnut/Black Limba Wraith 7, a Black Ash Ghost for Andy Slade of Gravil, the last elements of the craziest custom I've ever built with a full chrome body and last of all, finishing off the Ghost Multiscale Hellfire No.2 for Tom Platts.

I've also finalised the design of the Wraith Mk.II for 2014

So on to the photos!!

Hellfire II

Redwood Lace Burl "hellfire" top

Closeup - those are slanted BKP Painkillers

The back is Black limba, with a customer specified unique mahogany heel block.

A close up of our logo inlay in the reclaimed vintage maple fretboard.

A close-up of my side-dot jig. This turns the process into a science as well as an art for perfectly aligned dots every time!

Some necks for next month:

Some incredible Walnut Burl - this is available for a Ghost if anyone's interested:

Got some awesome things on the boil with VonHatski amps coming soon!!

Anyway - thanks for reading!!!

 

[BlackMastodon]

Dat Mk.II Wraith. Yowza.

 

[sabreguitars]

few more pics!

Just shipped this gorgeous Black Walnut and Black Limba Wraith HB7.

The neck is Maple and Walnut, with dual action truss rod and carbon fibre support like all my 7s. This particular neck has a black ebony fretboard with my Archangel inlay and Luminlay side dots.

She's loaded with BKP Chrome covered Aftermaths!

 

[jephjacques]

Who in their right mind would cover up that piece of limba with boring old WALNUT?

Seriously though, gorgeous guitar. That neck pocket looks PERFECT.

 

[sabreguitars]

Thanks dude - Walnut sounds SOOOO GOOOD though!!

 

[Lorcan Ward]

That is the nicest piece of Limba I've ever seen!

 

[sabreguitars]

Splices from the same piece are in your neck mate....

 

[aMetalProducer]

That limba is ridiculous. For reelz.

 

[jfrey]

so anyone here ordered the syren series?

 

[GXPO]

Got any pics of the Syren 7 Mr. Sabre? Will you do pickup changes for an upcharge? Loving the work as always.

 

[sabreguitars]

Hey GXPO - Syren/Talon Photos are in the offing! I'm well into production on the 1st 12 now they've all been ordered and once the bodies are cut I'll try to do some sort of "build diary" thing. Without Al here I'm flat out so I've had to eschew photos in favour of actual luthiery for a few weeks until I can take up the slack.

You can upgrade to BKPs from my standard Sabre MetalGears for a surcharge yes! I'm afraid I won't be offering any other pickup options because it just destroys the point of it not being a "custom" series.

 

[sabreguitars]

Hi everyone, as usual things are crazy here at the workshop and I'm on my own for the moment, save for a couple days a week when an old friend is helping out!

Here are a couple of pics of what's going on!

Mahogany and Rosewood Ghost body with cream celluloid binding!

Spalted Maple and Korina Wraith HB-2

A pretty unique Chrome finish Wraith HB-4

Carl Johnston's Signature multiscale wraith got a pretty awesome review by Paul Glover, Guitar Techniques on YouTube
Sabre Guitars Wraith Demo & Review - YouTube

put together this beautiful Claro Walnut and Robusta Ghost HB-6 for Lorcan Ward.

 

[narad]

Whoa! You probably don't want to hear this but developments like this - the walnut ghost and the chrome paint - are reasons I'm glad I delayed putting in an order!

 

[sabreguitars]

Hehe - as long as folks are happy with the developments I'm happy too!!

 

[sabreguitars]

Just a really quick update as I've got an early start tomorrow. More detailed pics etc. later in the week!!

My new Custom 3 way blade switch PCBs have finally arrived from being printed! These are my mods for the epic Schaller Megaswitch allowing it to fit into cavities less than 30mm deep. MUCH more reliable and solid than anything else on the market with amazing quality feel to the throw.

The 5 way version is already used accross my range.

The big thing this month was spending some more time hanging out with Dylan over at Daemoness Guitars in Bristol honing some luthiery skills!!

Its such a privilege to be offered the opportunity to learn from one of the world's most incredible luthiers. Really proud to be able to call Dylan a friend

Inspired by such amazing craftsmanship I decided to go back to my roots and spent a very enjoyable afternoon with the diamond files and piercing saw doing some traditional inlay work!

 

[sabreguitars]

November Update!

My new intern Khris (yeah another Chris - not confusing at all) is now doing 3 days a week and learning the basics quickly which is good as we've got more work on than ever!!

I'll get straight to the pics!!

Firstly, the McLaren is finished!! One of the coolest guitars I've had the pleasure of building. A Wraith HB-4 finished in a Black Chrome which took two trips to different specialist finishers to get right! She's loaded with a Hannes Bridge, Prototype Sabre HolyRail Bridge humbucker, Fernandes FSK-101 Sustainer Neck and also has a Mooer 90 Orange Phaser retrofitted inside. The addition of a push-push killswitch at the volume pot, coil tap for the bridge on a push-pull at the tone pot and a seriously awesome "Life Squared" fretboard inlay. The neck is a 9 piece birdseye maple, cherry and wenge laminate.

And some quick shots taken by her new owner!

In other news there are of course a raft of other awesome guitars in the making which means adding to my massive collection of useful jigs for very specific tasks! Such as this one, used in conjunction with my bending iron for bending very tight corners into laminated wooden binding without it splitting!

The metal straps (made from drinks cans are taped together in such a way as to make a flat bottom in which the binding can seat properly. This means the fibres are held together at any angle, and any thin fibre laminates on the bottom are held in as well and forced (slowly - and with the aid of heat and moisture) to bend without splitting away as the clamp is tightened. Simple but deadly effective!

Some buckeye burl gets joined before laminating to some equally beautiful chevron-pattern mahogany.

The Spalted Inca Wraith neck gets some detailing after the binding is applied to the fretboard

Flame maple and black stripe Binding looks amazing on this neck...

Scarfed goodness... I really like doing scarfs this way with the stripes lined up! That said I love the contrasting headstocks as well!!!

Finally, this little wenge and korina beauty was shipped to her new owner...

For anyone interested those are BKP Cold Sweats in Aged Nickel..

Here's the first outing of my new 2014 Headstock shape. I decided to improve our 6 string headstock with some additional 3D cutaways to give it a more aggressive profile and also to set it apart a little more from the ESP 3x3 which was a bit too similar for my liking!!

Inlay...

Korina...

That's all folks!!

 

[Jay Jillard]

Must say, i enjoy your style a lot. and this is the first time i've seen you with those custom blade switches, how have these not been made before? they would be so useful.

 

[sabreguitars]

Thanks mate - yeah I had the idea a while ago and I've used them in their 5-way incarnation for a couple of years now. I just loved the functionality of the megaswitches but they're SO tall with the standard PCB. I have a bit of a background in electronics so I thought it would be easy to print my own modified versions. Enjoyably this also allowed me to tweak their functionality to suit my needs as well.

 

[NovaLion]

This is a very cool headstock. Other than yet another negative space headstock for 7's, I'd love to see something like this for a seven.