I need to mention the Rains logo on my guitar. When I ordered my guitar, I wanted something different than the available logo. I told Gary I hoped he wouldn't mind if I took the liberty of experimenting with different fonts. If a different one was substituted, I would pay the price for the creation of the logo for my guitar. When I created the new one, I emailed it to him. Come to find out, he had already had a very few made of that same font, but never put them on any guitars. So if you notice, the top logo is the one I picked, the bottom logo is the current logo. He only had the new one in white, which would not have showed up on the pedal bar.
I feel one of the biggest selling points is the guitar’s copedents. I had learned a little bit of C6th while living in Nashville and sold my double neck with the thought of replacing it soon. That “soon” turned out to be 13 years. I knew my first D-10 in 13 years had to possess a copedent that would allow me to learn as much C6th as I could possibly learn in as short of a time frame as possible. To do so, I studied the C6th copedents of 5 players whose C6th playing I deeply admired. I printed these copedents side by side to see which changes these players had to have on their guitars….looking for common ground. I then borrowed a friend's guitar which only had one or two knee levers on C6th. I literally detuned the C6th neck to simulate all of these individual knee lever changes (AND floor/knee combinations) so that I could hear what this copedent would give me BEFORE I spent the actual money to have the changes put on my guitar. I would urge anyone to do the same thing so you will hear the changes for yourself. In designing my C6th copedent, it was not only important for me to nail down WHAT changes I wanted on the neck, but WHERE I wanted these changes to be placed. In fact, I personally feel the latter is every bit as important as the former. I will not go into detail here, but can email a pdf file explaining all of this to any interested parties. I will say this copedent sped up my C6th learning exponentially because of the way this setup matches the E9th tuning. Murnel Babineaux put this C6th copedent on his new guitar and it “unlocked” the tuning” for him as well.
Murnel and I spent 3 nights changing out multiple pickups and digitally recording the results to arrive at my final decision to put George L TW pickups on the guitar. To hear what this guitar sounds like recorded, go to the website below, click on Media, and click the play button on the “MP3 player”. (I must mention the first 2 tracks were EQ’d a bit on the “different” side, but the song, “In His Hands” is a more accurate representation of what the guitar sounds like).
http://jeffdugan.org/
The guitar comes with Gary’s newest undercarriage mods, plus his new matte finish fretboard. Last, but not least, I must mention the guitar comes with a SPLIT flight case made by Texas Case Co. now Red Dirt Cases. Putting the pedal bar, rods, and legs in a separate case distributes the weight very nicely! The cases alone cost over $400. A new Rains customized like mine will go over $5000. Get a like new model for $3425 plus shipping. Extra knee levers, neck polishing, and custom cases are not cheap. I bought this guitar for a job that required me to leave it packed up in Nashville 80% of the time. It has extremely low mileage on it. The ONLY two items I will consider in a partial trade are an 8-string Beard Mike Auldridge model resonator guitar, or a Dingwall 5 string bass. Pictures below:
Joe Rogers
Nice horn, man.
I promise!
