Manne Custom J1

This is an Italian guitar which I had custom-made to my specs in sept. 1996. I like it.
Here are the features: construction is neck-thru body, 24 frets. The neck is a 5-piece maple sandwich with a phenolic resin fingerboard and a reverse headstock, with Sperzel locking tuners. The neck radius is thin on the bass and thicker on the treble side. The body wings are made of solid flame maple, the flames are not particularly deep, but look good anyway, color is a yellowish stain with a satin finish to it. It's loaded with a single coil Kent Armstrong vintage neck pick-up, a Seymour Duncan JB humbucker bridge pickup (which has replaced the stock Manne 'bucker), and a piezo built in the Fishman VS100 Powerbridge. The electronics include a 3-position switch, piezo/pickups/both selector, volume for the magnetic pickups, volume for the piezo, tone w/coil split and two output jacks (piezo and mix).
It comes with a nice padded gig bag, a couple of wrenches and keys and some instructions, but not many goodies here.
My rating here has got to be 10, as I chose the specs and had one of Europe's premium luthiers build it.

The solid maple body and neck-thru construction make it sound quite bright and with lots of attack, with good sustain. It lacks a bit of bass response, but the overall tone is solid and versatile. It is a rock guitar, designed and built to play big, and you don't really wanna get one if you're after that Wes Montgomery vibe, but if you drool over Vai, Van Halen and all those fret wankers ya can't go wrong. Since it has a piezo system along with the standard magnetic pickups, you got to have the proper toys to make this lady sing, cry and whisper at her best: the piezo signal fuels the PA via a Lexicon reverb, and the pickups output goes into a Mesa Boogie Mark IV, with the usual special fx smorgasbord we depend on. I modified the wiring to have all sorts of split-coil, out-of-phase and standard combinations, plus I can mix'em all with the piezo (think Parker Fly...), so with this system the guitar does have a very wide array of sounds, and all of them has a voice of its own really, with the exception of the neck pickup which is very Strat-like. I had replaced the stock bridge pickup with a Duncan JB, but still it doesn't give me the all-out ultragain manic harmonics sound I want, so I'll replace it again with a DiMarzio Evolution, or I'll just dip it into some exotic acid and then fry it in a microwave...

Here I got some remarks. We're talking about a completely handmade custom instrument, priced accordingly. Yet, although the overall setup is good, it did show some amateurish flaws which I cannot condone. First, the bridge do not seem to be perfectly aligned with the neck and this causes major intonation problems especially on the upper frets of the bass side. I haven't and cannot sort this problem out myself, so I will have to send it back to Italy. Also, the neck after 1 and 1/2 year of light gigging and studio work bananized noticeably, so I had to work up the truss rod: I don't like doing it so soon... The 3-way switch, made by Shaller, had a curved blade which broke after 2 months.
However, what I consider the most critical construction element. i.e. the neck joint, is perfect (it is a neck-thru...)

It is a very solid guitar, and it will withstand years of heavy petting and stickball games with no problem nor a need for a backup. The satin finish has actually got a sort of an elastic, self-curing feel to it, and it's very hard to ding it or scratch it. I wish my surfboard was this durable. The hardware is as good as it gets, and this is mostly due to the customer's expertise in choosing it. I did replace the standard strap buttons with those Straplok pins though.

A. Ballarin, the guy who built it, (I believe he owns his company as well)is great, we exchanged opinions while he was building the guitar and I met him at a trade show, and he's always been very nice and helpful. The standard warranty is 2 years, but I hope it is flexible, you know, at least for Italian customers... Eventually, I will have to send it back for the above repair, so we shall see if things will remain idilliac then. So far, so good.

I've been playing for 20 years now, and I do own other fine pieces although I'm not one of those tone wankers who spend $ 250 for a crappy Klon overdrive which doesn't overdrive butthisisanotherstory(I own a Custom Shop Fender Strat Relic and Les Paul Classic), and this guitar complements my other gear with very modern sounds and look. It is quite unique, and you could compare it to an hybrid between the Ibanez Jem and the Parker Fly (which is an hybrid in itself, so it's an hybrid of an hybrid...)
If it were stolen or lost, I would get a big fat "lupara" (that's the Mafia shotgun of choice) and go after who stole it or lost it. To conclude, I know that Manne's production is really picking up, and that's a good thing, because the inherent business standardization will help them get rid of some constructive flaws that still affect even their high end instruments. I wish them good look, and it'll be nice to see some of their guitars for sale here in the US, for they are truly world class instruments, especially when they are co-designed by me (?).