About 101Guitars…

Hi – I’m Edward… and I love all things art and music and started what I called ™101Guitars in 2000 when I re-styled my ’86 Japanese Fender Stratocaster (see below) and began when I had time (I had a day-job and a small Internet enterprise (101Networks/Fusion101.com) to paint and customise my and guitars.

Being both a guitar player and an artist, and then working for some years as a retail shop hand/ad agency runner/ad and graphics paste-up artist/desk-top publishing (DTP)/traditional illustrator/graphic designer (in that order – oh and other jobs like painting/decorating cutting lawns and preparing potatoes for fries when I was stuck for cash:) for various agencies and design companies – I always imagined someday I would get time to start customising my own guitars in terms of parts, playability and feel – but specially interesting to me – creating custom guitars in terms of the way they looked. Of course this was nothing new – Hendrix, Van Halen and other before have surely done this.

Guitar Re-Styling’s origins

In the beginning the guitar-gods made Jimi Hendrix – another guitar player who was interested in the aesthetic look and feel of his guitars and was well-known for getting out his paint-brushed to produce some iconic custom-painted guitars which are now re-created by guitar companies and sold for $1000’s! Hendrix interesting was a pretty good artist himself – just take a look at his doodles as a kid – you can see what his mind was like and how it morphed into the creative musical gems we now have – beautiful in their melody – story-telling and simplicity and yet hard to recreate as he was a true improvisor and unafraid of making mistakes as it was all new ground.

Then of course we guitarists of the heavier persuasion have all heard and seen the master of tap and feel in my book – Eddie Van Halen’s ‘Frankinstrat‘ – a home-made guitar literally thrown together from old and not particularity good quality guitar parts (a rejected body or neck I can’t remember) – but that with a little loving care and a careful setup – and of course magic-fingers and ooooodles of talent – he made sound like nothing this planet or any alien had ever hard!

I created 101Guitars’ first re-style in 2000!

I know that guitars are something very personal and unique to each owner and player – but have never been too fussed about perfection when it comes to finish (though I’m not denigrating it – a well guitar can be a work of art in itself) – but personally I’m much more interested in guitars that tell a story – or that have some history – or that are unique in design, features or decor! If it’s a bit beaten up or battered who cares? And oddly ‘relics’ – guitars actually made to look old and worn and loved has become quite an industry in itself!

Anyhow – sometime in 1999 I got involved in a covers group that did various local events like weddings, parties, pub dos and even a few larger gigs – end-of year Christmas company parties and so on. It had an Elvis twist (I’ve always been a huge fan of him and James Burton amongst other players) and it was while in that band I thought I needed a guitar to match.

Looking no further than Elvis’ incredible jumpsuits I set about recreating one of his jumpsuits on my trusty old Japanese Fender Stratocaster.

A little while later I saw in some guitar magazine an amazing Fender guitar detailed and customised to with Harley Davidson look and was blown away not only by it’s appearance but it’s price – a cool $20,000! Surely I could make something like that if I ever had the time for a fraction of the cost? Maybe.

So a few years went by while I was bogged down in another project and still no more custom guitars – that was until 2018 – when I threw together my own ‘Harley Davidson’ jazz bass starting with my trusty old Toakai I’d had lying around for a5 years and bough from a fellow called Mike. Whilst it was no masterpiece I was very pleased with it and since it played so well anyway am now super-fond of it.

Finally it was in 2020 that I got a breather from my day-job and picked up a few guitars to do a semi-touring gig which for some reason never transpired. so I took these guitars one day and unconcerned about ruining a super-valuable vintage Fender happily began to play about with them using anything and everything I had in my paintbox. Ta-da! you can see the result below – boy was I chuffed with this. Not only do these guitars look cool and inspire me every time I look at them – they play well too as I’ve had many years experience at setting up actions and intonations.

I always wanted a ‘blog/magazine’ website called 101Guitars, but recently it occurred to me – how about building a website dedicated to bringing together all the custom painted guitars and guitar-makers I can find? Hey presto – 101Guitars website was born!