The guy with the Pioneer Carrera

Hello Everyone..... Chris here.
I was surfing the net this morning when I found your forum with a couple threads (and some of my pics) on my Kramer Pioneer Carrera bass with the Rockinger trem. That brought an instant grin on my face.

A little about me: I'm in Jackson, TN and own a custom guitar shop called "Messiah Guitars". I build whatever someone can dream up though I'm about to start production of some standard designs of mine. I have a full machine shop at my disposal as well and have built some prototype tremolos, including a bass unit. I also run another guitar forum called The Custom Guitar Forum (www.customguitarforum.com). Forgive me if I broke any rules by mentioning my shop or forum.

I've been a musician since the early 80's starting with drums and quickly gravitated into bass and lead. My main influences are Eddie Van Halen, Billy Sheehan, Geddy Lee and Joe Satriani.

Anyway, enough about me! Thanks for putting this forum together...really cool place!

Greetings, Chris! Again, welcome to BTF!

chris ...........

who you are,

what you do,

its all cool.

a budding luthier myself, you'll see that i talk shop with the guys here quite a bit. i look at not like business (because i got ebay, cragslist and clientele for that) but more like everyone here is ... family(?), no that not it ... the inner circle ... yeah thats it.

welcome!

and when i'm not in such a rush i'll chek out your work. i may need your services in the future (because i work out of my basement). tonite, i'm gonna run out the door and chek out The Double Planet ... best local band in local Philly suburbs .... cheggidoot .....

http://www.myspace.com/doubleplanetband

Welcome, can you post some pics of your work?

Sounds cool.

Yeah ... like it said on the message board that urged me to join to see them "no post is good without pictures."

Thanks for being interested in my work. I'm not ready to roll out pics of my prototypes quite yet but I'll show you some pics of projects that I've done:

Van Halen replicas. The Wolfgang is real, I built the other three. Took over a month to get every scratch, ding, discoloration, corrosion and burn in the precise location on the Frankenstein:





Sorry to be withholding my design work from the world at the moment but it'll be debuted in less than a month as will my website containing an online modeler to construct your axe and submit to me for a quote.....Stay tuned, my stuff is vastly different than those replicas (those were for fun). I have 3 electric and 1 bass prototype. All will have production bridges and tremolos at first until my patent paperwork clears, then I'll have my tremolos featured.

That is some incredible work! Keep us posted as to when you will accept orders!

Do you mean that you will be constructing your own custom bass trems as well?

Thanks for the compliment! That Frankenstein was a blast to make. I even built the fake single coil in the neck position. I've built quite a few guitars in the past. Just finished a raw body for a guy that wanted to mount an old Kramer aluminum neck on a body that has the elements of a Jazz, a Pioneer Double J, my Carerra and I made a few other personal designs as well. Here are a couple of bad cell phone pics of it:





I will have an available bass trem as well. I really want to show pics of my tremolos but the designs are way different than anything else out there and should be real attention getters. Until patents are in place I have to stay hushed up. The idea is to finish up my shop (just built in December), have my prototypes in place and be ready for summer NAMM. I'm in Tennessee so if it's in Nashville I want to be there. I've been doing orders already of whatever someone dreams up but can't find on the market. If anyone is looking for a custom bass or guitar, just hit me up!

I would definitely be interested in checking out one of your bass trems! I have been wanting to build one myself, but I lack the metal-working skills and the tooling to do such a thing just yet. But at some point, I want to see if I could produce a bass trem complete with a top lock and fine tuners.