A  wonderful hybrid in the making.

The Mandobeest is essentially a further chewed up version of what was originally the Canadian Fur Trapper (Specimen Wildebeest)

The guitar has an extra octave with 36 frets, and it also has a flying buttress-like additional reinforcement at what would commonly be the neck heel at the 12th fret. With this extra guarded neck extension we have much greater strength to combat the forward bow from the tension of the strings. I’m trying to prove the point here that with proper engineering, even an extra long neck with 36 frets can play perfectly. There’s actually about a hundredth of an inch falloff engineered into this neck, in addition to the extra reinforcement to get the job done.

The body is an additional quarter inch thick, bringing it to 2 inches total in an effort to balance the instrument because of the exceptionally long neck. The tuners are ultra light weight “Peg Hed” tuners with a 16:1 ratio. They were intended originally for Flamenco guitars, used in this application they allow us to have a nicely balanced instrument.

There’s just enough room for 1 humbucker in the bridge position just in front of the hard tail Callaham bridge. This can be coil tapped with a push pull pot on the tone control and we have a single volume control.

This piece has a black pearl very old very tall tree inlayed in the neck and a crescent moon on the headstock in memory of my recently departed father, Robert Earl Schneller.

The Macassar Ebony cap, fretboard and headstock create a monochromatic early 90’s mens sports suit aesthetic.