This build has been a long time coming. I met Karan through my friend Srinivas years ago, and we’ve all been talking guitars for quite some time now. I’ve seen Karan and his friends go from a parody band/group to the underdogs of the metal world, touring worldwide with a debut album. I’ve wanted to get a guitar into Karan’s hands for some time now, and finally, its going to happen. This builds a bit experimental in that its the first seven-string I’ve built since 2017 and a straight scale 26.4 scale tuned to Drop G to that matter.
This guitar sounds monstrous, with the heart of its sound coming from dual Trident II/ Hellfire Hybrid Humbuckers made by my long-time friend/luthier/pickup maker Adam Bath of Elysian Pickups. It was a bit of fun having been one of the first ones to try out Adams’s patented Tuned aperture pickup design during its first iteration/Kickstarter campaign years ago and seeing how the refined versions of his creations sound now. He’s improved tremendously over the years and these pickups outshine most of the competition in today’s market in my opinion. He’s one of my favorite pickup makers next to Tim McNelly who’s made many of my covered pickups for new builds in the past.
This guitar is a prototype as its got many new features I’ve yet to use regularly and if successful will implement in builds going forward. I look forward to the feedback from Karan with this build and really hope it serves him well either live or for songwriting. I chose the name Temerity because it to me it means to be bold in the face of punishment or danger, to be audacious, or even reckless. The music they play and message they send may be seen similarly, and after my time in India for medical school I know there would be many people who’d say that a band like this couldn’t make it on the world stage singing in Hindi on such an aggressive musical platform. It takes a measure of talent and temerity to make this happen, and their sold out tours show their success.
This build was challenging, and it isn’t quite 100% perfect cosmetically but it sounds like something meant to be showcased.
Specifications:
Body : Roasted Basswood
Neck : Roasted Quartersawn Maple
Fretboard : Richlite Black Diamond
Pickups : Elysian Trident II/Hellfire Hybrids
Hardware : Hipshot
Jescar Fretwire
Luminlay Face and Side Dots
Switchcraft jacks and CTS pots
Strings : StringJoy 10.5 – 64 (custom gauge)
Finish : Odies Oil & Waxes
Tuning : GDGCFAD (Drop G)
Schaller S-Lock Locking Strap Tuners and Couch Brand Strap
Lutherie... 
Another exceptionally crisp buid!
You mentioned “…its got many new features I’ve yet to use regularly.”
Care to expand on those? I was going to ask what youre doing to challenge yourself or experiment with, in current builds.
Cheers
Hey there! Thanks for the kind words buddy! This build I’ve used dual carbon fiber rods going halfway up the neck, I wanted stiffness with some extra insurance that the build wasn’t going to do the pretzel act. I also only did them part of the way so I can still easily adjust relief on the truss rod. So far this all worked well. I also used a new brass ferrule block which I made the template on the fly using the shaper origin. I also used the shaper origin to drill the Jack hole instead of the forstner bits as the basswood was just too soft. It’s also my first time using roasted basswood and I love it but it’s a tad on the softer side. I think the biggest thing would be the inlay in the body. I had to really plan out what details I wanted to keep and what to exclude based on the bits and time I was willing to put into all this. Overall I’m pretty happy