Earlier this month, Extreme released the music video for their newest single X Out – and guitar fans couldn't stop talking about the outrageous electric guitar that Nuno Bettencourt was spotted playing.
Now, the virtuoso has shared the story behind his insane part-guitar, part-keytar Custom Shop build, which had some rather vivid inspirations: Mad Max and Jesus Christ Superstar
The worlds of post-apocalyptic desert carnage and Jesus’ betrayal portrayed in the rock opera format might seem conflicting, but Bettencourt’s vision cannot be questioned – this thing is wonderfully ridiculous.
Washburn's Custom Shop Master Builder Chris Meade was the luthier tasked with realizing the concept, which has been unveiled on the Masters of Shred YouTube channel.
It combines a guitar with a keyboard – “This is a real keytar, not the bullshit keyboardists play that isn’t a guitar,” Bettencourt jokes – and a patchwork Steampunk aesthetic that goes hard on the Mad Max part of the brief.
“Nuno calls me up and says, ‘Picture this. I want Mad Max and Jesus Christ Superstar,’” Meade says of how the concept first began.
As Meade explains, he first sent Bettencourt a picture of a mystery axe he had found online that seemed to fit the bill. Nuno had issued an order to buy it outright, but when the guitar couldn't be tracked down, they took matters into their own hands.
“It's not exact, but one of the things he wanted was a keytar,” Meade explains of the finished product. It’s fully functional and comes with a control board.
“I had no idea where to find all this shit,” he adds of the steampunk paraphernalia, which gives the guitar its distinctive look. But fate was kind to him, and he managed to source some parts close to home.
“Right outside [the Washburn Custom Shop,] they were throwing a boiler away, and all this came off that,” he remembers.
Beneath everything, this is very much a Bettencourt axe, complete with a reverse Fender-style headstock, Floyd Rose trem, and a Bill Lawrence humbucker. But his preferred Strat body has been ousted in favour of a forgotten Washburn gem: the A-20.
“Well, that's the conversation that Nuno and I had before I started it,” Mead reveals, circling back to the mystery model that helped kickstart the project. “That picture I found was of a Washburn.”
Bettencourt’s first impressions of the guitar were, understandably, enthusiastic, and he wasted no time in putting it to action, promising also to play it on stage.
“We're doing a video for every song [on new album SIX] and X Out has a lot of synths in it, so I hit up this mad man,” he says of its origin story. “We talked about a few comps and then the next thing you know, he'd put this thing together. I love it, I'm so pumped for this.”
Somehow, the Mad Max and Jesus Christ Superstar design brief somehow undersells this thing: it's easily the wildest Custom Shop creation of the year.
Earlier this year, another one of Bettencourt’s custom guitars caused a stir after it was unveiled at Back to the Beginning, prompting some to question whether he was about to launch his own guitar brand.
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