(high-pitched electric guitar)
- Personal connection on the El Mocambo?
Well, I've seen two shows there.
I saw Jeff Healy and I saw Edgar Winner
back in the late eighties,
living in Toronto,
but the El Macambo,
they were hosting The Cars,
Teenage Head, The Ramones,
all these early punk new wave bands played there.
Great history for rock,
especially Canadian acts.
It's a great venue to be a part of and play.
I was born in Brampton just outside of Toronto.
This is why when this project came up,
it was a given.
I have to do it.
Car theme, we're Canada theme.
Let me have it please.
I'm Ron Thorn.
Proud to introduce the El Mocambo strat and tele set.
The El Macombo is a club in Toronto Ontario, Canada
which just happens to be my hometown.
Elvis Costello played there.
U2 played there.
The Stones recorded one side
of one of their live albums there.
In the guitar circle,
most people know it
from the Stevie Ray Vaughan live at the El Mocambo video,
which is an amazing performance.
I'm glad that it's back.
It was closed for a few years during their renovation
and the El Mocambo donated this wood
which was either rafters and floor joist.
It was a variety of building materials in the club
and ended up being some amazing,
lightweight, resonant pine
which is perfect for bodies for fender guitars.
The big part of the El Mocambo is that neon sign.
They have a very famous palm tree neon sign
which glows green and yellow.
It's very bright and vivid.
And the initial concepts were,
let's do something green and yellow with the guitars,
but once we got into the lumber and realized
just how much character there was into it,
it seemed like a shame to cover that up.
We don't need any color.
It's just beautiful exactly how it is.
I'm always honored
to work with historic timbers of any sort.
It makes me feel like I'm doing it justice.
We're gonna be making a batch of strats and teles.
Tracing out the orientation of what's gonna be a tele,
what's gonna be a strat.
Look at the growth rings right there.
So that's over a hundred years
just on the tree being that diameter.
Who knows how large this tree was and how old it was
before it became this floor joist.
These are the fret boards.
This is African Blackwood.
That sounds so good, so musical.
And then for the neck planks,
it's medium roasted quarter sign Canadian maple,
trying to keep as much Canada going as possible.
There it is.
There's what it's gonna take.
As a floor joist, it's cool.
As a guitar, come on.
That tree's gotta be happy.
(deep electric guitar music)
Again, the Stevie Ray Vaughan influence,
I kind of pulled from that a bit
so I put 6,100 jumbo wire on here,
Stevie's preferred wire,
and the pickups are on the hot side.
This is a 69.
This is a 65,
and then a Texas Special on the bridge.
All hand wound by Josefina.
So it's definitely a hot guitar.
It has the fat fifties wiring which means the tone pot
comes off the center lug off of the volume.
Just a little tweak.
Retained some of the high end when you roll it down.
The tele has the twisted tele in the neck and then
the tele version of the Texas special in the bridge.
And with the big jumbo wire,
just keeping it a hot rocking tele.
A lot of grind and growl coming out of this set.
It's a definite rock guitar.
(high-pitched electric guitar)
There's a few little details.
Gold mother of pearl,
just to kind of tie in with the gold hardware
and that's not common on a Fender.
And then this gold mother of pearl Palm tree logo
on the first frat.
On the neck plate,
it has the El Mocambo logo on there
with my signature overlaid on top of it.
That's it.
It's enough so that you know
there's something special about this pair.
It's gonna be tough to top as far as a project
both from a personal standpoint
and how they sound and what they look like.
These are special guitars.
Then you put in the tie in
of where the timber's been for the last 80 years.
Then it makes it a little extra special in that sense.
You know, I think each project
just means something a little bit different.
I'm still a Canadian citizen.
I'll never give that up.
So I still kind of feel like
this is even more a part of me
than anything I've built here so far,
but I'm proud and I'm extremely proud
of the instruments too.
(slow electric guitar)