John doesn't like touring the USA with two guitars, pedal board, suitcase and all his merch. It's especially difficult if one of the guitars is a full size acoustic. Reminds me a little of my early days walking three miles to the local pub and back in Birmingham, carrying guitar, fiddle and banjo. I don't think I ever managed to take a mandolin as well. It's ok in a car. No use at all on foot, in a plane or any other form of transport.

Anyway, John's solution was to find an acoustic guitar that was the same size as his electric so he could carry them both in one double gig bag. Now who could he get to make him such a thing?

Take a guess.

He'd tried a few of the existing options, none of which did the job. So we cooked up the idea of a more or less standard acoustic body, much slimmer than usual, and rather shrunken in other dimensions, but maintaining a full "professional" neck. That did raise the question- would it sound like an acoustic guitar?

Only one way to find out, and I do love a challenge . We hoped that we could recover anything "lost" in the sound by choosing the best pickup system that would suit John's latest needs.

Once I'd made the first decisions, parts of the job worked out very easily. It's a modified "Goodfellow" shape so the top and back were straightforward. The sides were rather more difficult. Guitars are built in a dedicated "mould" to keep everything in shape, and we had to tweak the size and shape continuously while we worked, so that was a challenge, mostly for Paul! I did suspect that he was tempted to punch me every time I changed something, so I settled on the details and made a proper mould. It was much "easier" after that.

I particularly like one feature of this guitar, it has a back panel that can be removed for access. The pickup system is the LR Baggs Dual Source which unfortunately is no longer made but I have a few "in reserve". It would have been impossible to fit in such a shallow guitar, but with the access panel it became more of a joy. I say joy, because it wasn't me that did it, it was Alex, I couldn't have done it.

A few years ago I did all this sort of thing myself, but Alex's hands are less damaged and more mobile than my ancient appendages, it's now part of his job description.

But - the real reason is that we would have the option to try other pickup systems if this one didn't work. We can move the internal microphone around, and fit batteries somewhere else, clever things like that. So far, I would say that this pickup works very well, and the acoustic sound is far better than we had any right to expect. I might try and write about that more at some point.

John is very pleased; he is touring America with it as I write this. This must be the longest he's ever been without an acoustic, I hope he doesn't turn to the dark side.

"Smithcaster" was an obvious thought for a name, but if I want to stick to the Shakespeare theme, "Goldsmith" seems quite appropriate and fits in with "Alchemist" quite well.

But I'm not sure if we will make any more of these, I will wait until I get proper reports back from John. If anyone wants to try and persuade me, feel free. That's assuming Alex and Paul are still speaking to me of course.