Tomado de:
http://www.guitarplayer.com/gear/1012/john-lennons-weirdest-guitar-the-sardonyx/49784
Think of John Lennon’s guitars and most likely his Epiphone Casino comes to mind, or maybe his Rickenbacker 325 or Gibson J-160E acoustic-electric. You almost certainly don’t think of the Sardonyx 800 D II.
But
as the above photograph shows, Lennon—who died 35 years ago today—used
the Sardonyx during the making of his last album, 1980’s Double Fantasy.
So what exactly is it?
As
it turns out, the Sardonyx is something of a mystery guitar. Its
builder, Jeff Levin, was a guitar repairer at Matt Umanov’s guitar shop
in Manhattan’s West Village back in the Seventies. He built his Sardonyx
guitars at home and sold them through Umanov’s, which is most likely
where Lennon acquired his
“[Levin] and I went to Brooklyn Tech high school together on the subway every day,” Umanov told Guitar Aficionado
magazine. “We sold a few through my store and John Lennon ended up with
one. He might have bought it from us, as he had an apartment a few
blocks away and came through a lot."
From
the earliest days of the Beatles onward, Lennon was on the lookout for
new sounds, and the unusual design of the Sardonyx most likely drew him
to the instrument. Although the guitar looks as if it’s made of a
synthetic material, it actually features a wooden body and an ebony
fretboard. The matte black finish has a thick lacquer clearcoat that
gives the Sardonyx a plastic appearance.
The guitar’s
electronics are as unusual as its appearance. Its two Bill Lawrence
pickups are connected to a complex, three-output wiring system that
allows the player to send completely independent pickup combinations,
including different phase-reverse and series-parallel configurations, to
two separate stereo outputs or to a single mono output. Other features
include Schaller hardware, a pair of stainless-steel “outrigger” bars
with anti-skid rubber feet, and an adjustable balance arm on the upper
bout.
“Back
then, Brooklyn Tech was still based on a Twenties and Thirties
curriculum that included a lot of technical stuff, like a machine shop,
technical drawing, and pattern making,” Umanov says. “There was even a
foundry. You can see all of that training in the design and execution of
this guitar. If you look at the work of some of the most famous
industrial designers of all time, like Raymond Loewy, who designed the
most iconic Studebakers, or Henry Dreyfuss, who designed the Princess
phones, the lines are sharp and deliberate, just like they are on this
guitar."
Only
15 to 20 of the Sardonyx 800 D II were built, making it one of the
rarest guitars associated with Lennon, a guitar legend who remained an
original right up until the very end of his life.
