I mentioned this build in another thread, and Bryan asked for the story and pics. Rather than take Steve's thread way off topic, I figured I'd put it here in its own place.
I've got a friend who knows Matt Holliday really well. They got to talking one day and figured out they both had the same favorite band, Needtobreathe. Matt actually knows the guys, so they hatched a plan to get them to Stillwater for a charity gig. Several months and tons of meetings later, the gig was set.
My friend asked me if I would be willing to build a couple guitars for the event: one for NTB as a thank-you for doing the show, and one to raffle off to raise money. He and I talked about what we should do for the raffle guitar, and one of us mentioned a baseball-themed guitar since Matt was a big part of the evening. Then without thinking it through (I do that to myself sometimes), I said it would be cool to build the guitar out of some of Matt's bats. Well, my friend thought it was a fantastic idea, and next thing I knew, I had 12 Matt Holliday sig baseball bats in my garage. Crap. Now I had to figure out how to turn them into a guitar.
I love doing themed guitars because I enjoy the creative challenge of making the theme apparent without the guitar being cheesy. So this is what I came up with. I inlaid Matt's number 7 on the fretboard and finished the neck to look like an old, pine-tarred bat. I also hand-stitched a white leather strap to look like a baseball. Matt was so enamored with it that he's the one who bought it.
Here's a shot of Bo from Needtobreathe playing it on one of their last songs of the night.
And a quick video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-CVPHt6054
If you want to see the build thread, here's a link: http://www.tdpri.com/forum/tele-home-de ... -tele.html
And a shot of me with Matt Holliday
And here's the guitar I built for NTB. Since they're from the Carolinas, I wanted to give them a little bit of home. The body is made from wormy chestnut that was salvaged from a 100+ year old barn in SC. They're also big University of Alabama football fans, so I made custom red fret markers.
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