Kevin Chilcott
Luthier
MEDUSA JUNIOR CUSTOM
This was a Special
Custom order for a Medusa Junior with quite a few differences.
The original style of this model has a 'tongue type' neck joint to enable
complete access
to the top frets. You can also see this if you go to the
Medusa Junior Page.
For pickups she has a Seymour Duncan SH-5 HB, an
Alnico Pro II and a Hot Rails,
5 way switch, volume and tone, Sperzel
locking machines and a Kahler Pro Trem unit.
The original style did not allow for a pickup to be placed near the neck, as the 'tongue' of
the neck occupies this space, and if a hole was routed for a pickup here, it would have
the effect of seriously compromising the strength of the neck joint. Terry*, the customer,
wanted the same type of body with the fingerboard again 'perched' on the end but to
have 3 pickups - a humbucker at the bridge, and two single coils - one being right up
close by the fingerboard.
This is a pic with both the original Coral
'Picato' Medusa Junior '89,
and the later Green Custom.
The 'Custom' neck joint had
to be completely redesigned to allow for this, and
Terry has just
reminded me that she had a Mahogany through neck. The project worked out extremely well.
The other major difference was that Terry also required a
more standard type 'six-a-side'
non-reverse
headstock. The guitar was sprayed green
and had a specially designed
'pointy' black scratch-plate to surround the two single coil pickups.
In this pic above, Terry 'in the Studio' with
Custom when he was recording the
Black Bone Fever CD..... 'No Bones about it'.
In this pic above, some years later, she had been refinished
natural and is alongside some of
Terry's other guitars. Note the change of
pickups.
Royale Huntress
What is now interesting is
that I'm going to start building a guitar for myself for
the first time,
and I've decided, after much thought of what I really want.....
One of these
!
The main difference being that this will be called the Royale Huntress.
( Less of a
'mouthful' than Medusa Junior Custom.)
The major structural difference is that mine
will have a glued in neck with a different style of
joint rather than a 'thru-neck'. There will be a few minor
hardware differences for me
being..... I'm going for a Seymour Duncan JB, a Hotrails and a 'Mini' JB, probably
with nickel or chrome hardware..... a Wilkinson Trem,
'locking' machines a
New type headstock,
and she's going to be either Vintage White
(cream)
or a 'Limed'
finish..... or maybe Gold.
I suppose that I've chosen
this model for a few reasons.....
The style is actually based on my favorite guitar design ( apart from the
'V'),
the Double
Cutaway Junior
model which gives total access
right to the end of the fingerboard but
with a redesigned neck joint that allows another pickup by the neck. The
contours
and
the extended top horn
make it very comfortable
to hold and give it great balance.
It took
quite a while to originally design this guitar and the only major structural difference to
the original Medusa Junior Custom
is the new 6-a-side head-stock design.
See : - Designing and Building a Guitar
from Scratch.
MEDUSA JUNIOR . HISTORY . MEDUSA SERIES
* - Hi Terry and Mike..... Thanks very much for the photo - much appreciated.