CNTarasi Guitars

Mission

To make a distinctive guitar! One that looks good and more importantly plays and sounds great. A unique guitar that is hand made using quality hardware, great pickups and good tone wood. A guitar that gets better with age. Most of all a guitar that is affordable to everyone who wants to own and play a great guitar!

Profile

I built my first guitar in 1986. I didn't have the money to buy a good guitar but that's what I wanted so I improvised and made one for myself. The project worked out well and I got just what I was looking for along with something I wasn't expecting. I wasn't expecting to become addicted to building guitars.

I began to build and re-build all kinds of guitars. I tried everything from using different woods and scale lengths to custom electronics and finishes. At one point I even had a guitar with over 100 different pickup switching options. I learned a lot about what makes a good guitar and how to go about building one.

After building more guitars than I knew what to do with for myself, I realized that the guitars that I was building were playing just as well and sounding better than the expensive "name brand" guitars my friends were playing. More importantly, I was building them for a lot less money than they were paying for theirs!

It was then that I decided to go into business.

Information

THE NECK

CNTarasi necks are made from hard maple with rosewood fingerboards. The 25 1/2" scale length comes standard with 22 medium jumbo frets a 16" radius fingerboard, cream dot inlay and white side dot markers. The necks are 1 5/8" at the nut and 2 1/8" at the heel. The neck profile is 13/16" thick at the 1st fret and 15/16" thick at the 12th fret. The tuners are set 3 on a side with an offset and the neck has two barrel string guides for the A,D,G and B strings.

THE BODY

The bodies are made from alder and topped with Corian*. The body is 1 3/4" thick, 15 1/2" long and 12 1/2" wide. It will fit in standard electric guitar cases. The Corian* top is 3/16" thick.

THE FINISH

CNTarasi guitars are finished with Waterlox* tung oil. Tung oil by far is the finest natural wood finish in existence, one that can not be duplicated synthetically. I believe that wood should look like wood and not plastic. This is why you will not see any lacquer, poly or enamel finishes on my guitars. These finishes prevent the development of patina but tung oil promotes it. Tung oil allows the wood to continue its aging process. In other words, tung oil produces a beautiful finish that looks better with time and will allow the guitar to sound better with age. It is also impervious to water, alcohol and many acids/chemicals. Because you can not spray a tung oil finish each guitar has a brushed and hand wiped finish that is fine sanded to 12000 grit and then hand polished to a gloss with Milsek* oil. There is no finish on the Corian* top or the rosewood fingerboard. Simply the Corian* top is hand sanded up to a 12000 grit luster and the fingerboard is hand rubbed with Milsek* oil and played raw.

THE HARDWARE

The standard hardware on CNTarasi guitars are Grover* 1:14 mini rotomatic tuners, an Earvana* compensated nut and a Schaller* flat mount roller bridge. The bridge can be adjusted for different string spacing to accommodate your style. The compensated nut is designed to keep the guitar in perfect tune. The design of the nut ensures that each string is in tune at every fret all of the way down the neck. This can not be accomplished with a standard nut ever. The combination of the nut material and the roller saddles on the bridge help to eliminate string breakage at those points.

THE ELECTRONICS

The electronics are passive and you will have no batteries to deal with. The guitar is equipped with Lawrence* 500 series pickups. Each pickup can be switched into single coil mode with the mini toggle switches. The volume control has been built to give you a very even taper and to retain the high frequency of your pickups as the volume is turned down. The tone knob and chickenhead selector switch work in conjunction. This system is based on manipulating the mid frequencies of the guitar. As opposed to a standard tone control that simply bleeds treble to ground making that familiar muddy sound, this is a tone system that actually works and is very useful!!

WHAT IS HANDMADE

Well contrary to popular belief I do use electricity when I build these guitars. That’s right I don’t make them like Fred Flintstone might with a chisel and a hammer. Very simply I just don’t have machines making all of the cuts and routs for me. I do them all by hand. Some things actually just with elbow grease and some with power tools. “By hand” means that I do all of the work with my own two hands or with something in my own two hands. No assembly line process here! I may make 4 or 5 at a time but I am still the one making the bodies, measuring, finishing, wiring and assembling everything. Because of this process I am able to set each one up and make sure it is up to my standards. If it doesn't make the grade it will never be sold. As I stated before, because this is my procedure no two are clones of each other. Yes they are all the same shape and type with the same hardware but if you get out the ruler you will find that when I say the body is 12 ½” wide it may actually be 12 3/8” or 12 7/16”. If you look at the finish very close you may even see something that may look like a brush mark. That’s what hand made is…everything’s just a little different. But hey, isn’t being a little different what legends are made of?

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

What does the guitar sound like?

That’s a hard one to answer but I will give it a shot. CNTarasi Guitars have great volume a very powerful response. You could say high gain but NOT distorted like “hot” style pickups. It’s got great headroom with a nice solid bass response and good clear treble. Not mushy sounding at all but very clear. Great for playing the clean stuff! Also great with distortion! With distortion the harmonics jump out of the guitar. You can get an unbelievable crunch out of the guitar and in the lead position it really screams.

Why don’t you set the action very low on the guitar?

Low action is like fingernails on a chalkboard to me! I think one of the biggest misconceptions today is that low action is good action. I guess if your playing really fast runs all of the time I can understand it but it just doesn’t lend itself well to anything more. I set the action on my guitars a little higher, 3/32" give or take on low E string at the body fret, because of a few things. I use big frets on the necks, so fret rattle with low action could be a problem if you have good attack while your playing. Tone is a huge concern for me and tone suffers with low action. I have found that with a the 16” radius fret board these guitars are very easy to play and not fatiguing at all.

Can I use strap locks?

Probably not the ones you’re used to using because CNTarasi Guitars have an end pin jack. This is where you will need to plug in your patch cord. However, CNTarasi Guitars come with a lokstrap system. Two small polymer circular rings that fit over the strap button and endpin after you put your strap on. You just twist the ring once you slip it on and your strap is locked. They are cool and work very well.

How do you take care of the guitar?

Not much to do really just a good polish when you change your strings should do the trick. I like to use Milsek oil but you can use any guitar polish that you would like. For the fingerboard I like to give it a drink of Milsek oil each time I change the strings so that it doesn’t dry out. I just rub it into the wood until it changes color and string it up.

Tell me about Corian?

Cool stuff! Mostly used for high quality counter tops but some ingenious folks (CNTarasi Guitars) build other things with it. It has the consistency of bone and many guitar companies use it for their nuts. It works just like wood with the exception that you can’t screw anything into it. The bridge and pickup rings on my guitars actually screw into the wood past the Corian top. No finish is needed on Corian. You can sand out any scratches you may get on it. Corian can be heated and bent so it is susceptible in high heat situations (IE: long time in the hot sunlight, ovens, prolonged periods in hot cars, extreme heat, etc.) Corian may chip if dropped.

Why does the volume control work so smoothly?

Essentially there are three legs or connections to a volume pot. One goes to ground, one is connected to the output of your pickups and the third is connected to the guitars output jack. When you turn down the volume on your guitar you are simply shorting out part of your signal to ground. But, volume pots do not normally do this magic in an even or smooth way. I add a feedback resistor (no it doesn’t make your guitar feedback) and a capacitor between the two legs of the volume pot that don’t go to ground. The resistor smoothes out the taper of the pot and the capacitor retains the high frequency of your guitar when you turn it down.

Can you build a guitar with wood other than whats listed?

Yes I can and would be happy to do so. However, you will need to contact me about costs and other considerations like weight and tone.

Tell me about the tone controls?

A normal tone control simply bleeds treble frequencies to ground giving you that mushy dark useless sound. Our tone controls have a 6 position rotary switch that selects from five different capacitors (position six is tone bypass) and a push pull tone control that selects from two chokes. Along with the tone pot you have 10 different settings that work in conjunction to shape the mid frequencies of the guitar. You will no doubt find 3 or 4 of the settings that you’ll like to use most of the time but, the rest are there if you need a change. The two extremes would be…the neck pickup in single coil mode with the tone rolled all of the way out sounds kind of acoustic. The Bridge pickup with the tone control rolled all of the way up played with some distortion will provide singing leads. The rest of the positions are everything in-between.


Disclaimer * Please note Corian, Earvana, Grover, Lawrence, Milsek, Schaller and Waterlox are all either trademarks or independent companies and in no way are affiliated with CNTarasi Guitars.

Products/Services

PRICES

CNTarasi Guitar
All features listed above w/ chrome hardware and your choice of cream or black pickups and knobs.
List Price $1,240.00

SALE PRICE $990.00

CNTarasi Guitar (same as above) w/ Gold Hardware
List Price $1,400.00

SALE PRICE $1,120.00


OTHER OPTIONS

Dome Knobs
Add $ 20.00

Bigsby B-50 Vibrato w/Schaller roller bridge
Add $210.00

Hipshot Extender Key (Grover) GT-1
Add $100.00

Schaller Locking Tuning Keys
Add $125.00

Chambering
$ Free


CONSTRUCTION

Each CNTarasi guitar is built to order. However, there may be times when you catch me with a few just hanging around in the shop. Each CNTarasi takes anywhere from 8 to 10 weeks to build. It takes this long mostly from allowing the finish cure properly.

News

*************************************************************************************
NEW GEAR ON THE DRAWING BOARD

CNTarasi Guitars is currently developing two really cool accessories…

***The prototype "Speaker Hub" is complete!!!***

We are now in the testing phase and expect the price to be around $50.00 to $60.00.

What is the “Speaker Hub”. Imagine connecting two 8 ohm and one 16 ohm speaker cabinets to the same amp without blowing your output transformer to smithereens. Well, the “Speaker Hub” will allow you to connect 2 or 4 matching or 3 mismatched speakers to your amp safely. Or use two "Speaker Hub's" for even more options. Got a 4 or 16 ohm rotating speaker that you want to run at the same time as your two 8 ohm cabinets? No problem the “Speaker Hub” will be the solution!!!

Did someone say rotating speaker?

New Product #2 is a rotating speaker named the “Little Spinner”. The “Little Spinner” will have some advantages over traditional rotating speaker designs. Can you believe that the “Little Spinner” at about 30lbs will measure around 13” in width and depth and around 20” in height? This means that you can actually take them with you without the help of your 3 closest friends or a forklift! The cost of the "Little Spinner" is expected to be far lower than any rotating speaker new or used on the market today. Can't say for sure yet but we are aiming for less than $200.00. Also, we are working on a way to make the speed of the "Little Spinner" variable with the option to combine multiple "Little Spinners" together at any time.

We will keep you posted on these two cool new items.


*************************************************************************************
HOT NEWS
CNTarasi Guitars is now providing a chamberd option on it's guitars. Best of all it's FREE!!! You may request the option on any guitar at NO CHARGE!!!

**************************************************************************************
Remember new guitar construction is not our only business here at CNTarasi Guitars. We can modify or repair your existing guitar or build something out of guitar parts that you may already have laying around.

We also mod and repair tube guitar amps. Want us to bring that Sears Silvertone Twin Twelve back to life or work wonders with those silverface Bassmans? Just ask we can work on almost any tube amp that needs some helping.
**************************************************************************************
For photos and more information please visit our main web page by clicking the link below.


Thank you for coming and I hope to hear from you soon about your new CNTarasi Guitar!

Related links

• For information, photos and ordering, please click here to visit our MAIN WEBSITE