C Fouke Industrial Fly

My "Industrial Fly" is a one-off custom made left-handed aluminum guitar with a custom designed body based off a stylized drawing of a "fly"-style body. It has aluminum front and back, synthetic sizes, and a hollow body. The 22-fret, satin black maple neck w/ebony fingerboard was custom made by USA Custom Guitars (http://www.usacustomguitar.com), Warmoth-style custom shop that does great work, but was many weeks late.

It's difficult to decide on any sort of meaningful "features" rating for a custom guitar, since if its done well--as this one was--its going to have the features that you asked for, no more, no less.

This guitar is loaded with what I specified: 2 Kent Armstrong humbuckers, Tune-O-Matic bridge, stop tailpiece, coil splitting switches, 2 tone knobs, 2 volume knobs, Axon 13-pin MIDI compatible HEX pickup, grover locking tuners. I had schaller strap locks installed as well. I guess I'll give it a 9 simply because some of the features I we initially batted around (drop D switch, tremolo, RMC MIDI system instead of external MIDI unit, etc) didn't quite happen, but much of that was more due to the fact that our world is cruel to left-handed people than to Chris Fouke.

I am not sure how you would describe what I play, but I guess you could call it Techno Rock. I wanted an electric guitar that would lend itself to everything from gut crushing savage grind to glassy clean folky riffs.

I took my time before writing this review--I've had the guitar for months now--and I can say with authority that even though the honeymoon period is over, I am still in love with this guitar. It has a substancial presence even unplugged, which is great for practice, and when you plug it in, what you play is what you hear. Any electric guitar is only going to sound as good as its pickups, and the Armstrong pickups are able to translate the power and sustain of this guitar very well.

It has a bright sound, full and clear but still thinner than a wooden hollowbody guitar. It can sustain for days. It sounds great either distorted or clean in humbucker or split mode. Sometimes I've wished for a "woodier" tone, depending on the sound I'm going for, but hey, it's aluminum after all! I'm guessing that a Mahogany neck might "mellow" the sound a bit, but of course not having one, I can't be sure. The way it is works for what I play, so I am happy.

The guitar was set-up pretty well. I had asked the guitar to be tuned to open D and with a custom string guage, and it arrived in great shape and playable. One knob came loose about a month after I got it; I'm assuming that it was loosened in shipping. I also took the opportunity to get the guitar set-up professionally, which wasn't necessary but did make a difference.

This guitar is aluminum. You can smudge it, but I'm betting that 90% of the damage common to wood guitars when you drop them, they tumble off their stand, etc. wouldn't even touch this puppy. The wood neck, of course, is as vulnerable as any wood neck, but Chris's bolt-on work looks absolutely rock solid, so I certainly have no complaints.

One of the joys of buying an Industrial Guitar is that Chris was always willing to answer even the most silly questions -- and I'm a writer, so by nature I tend to be rather verbose! I coudn't ask for any better customer service than I received during the building process, and I'm sure that if I had problems in the future he'd help out as much as possible.

I've been playing guitar seriously, at home, onstage, and in the studio, for 15 years now. I've owned a sizable number of mediocre guitars, and the occasional good one. This guitar definitely ranks as one of the best. I would not hesitate in ordering another custom guitar from Chris. With different pickups, tremolo options, neck woods, you can really make every aluminum guitar play and sound different, and his workmanship is wonderful. Considering that other models of aluminum/metal guitars sell for 2-3 times what Chris charges, I think these guitars are some of the best kept secrets in the guitar world.