Vintage's Joe Doe range is known for its oddball aesthetics and unusual designs, but the range's latest guitar, the Punkaster, might be its oddest, and most charming, offering yet.
At its heart, the Punkaster merges Tele- and Strat-style body shapes into a wholly unique design. The guitar is built with an alder body, hard rock maple neck with a vintage “soft-C” profile and a hard rock maple fingerboard with 22 medium frets.
Sonically, the axe features Joe Doe-designed single coil pickups, controlled by master volume and master tone knobs and a five-way selector switch.
Elsewhere, the guitar is built with a vintage Joe Doe Punkaster headstock, mismatched tuners, a half-and-half pickguard, a 43mm graphite nut and a Wilkinson WVC Vibrato bridge.
Even more uniquely, the Punkaster - like all Joe Doe by Vintage guitars - carries with it a fictional backstory, revolving around the guitar having been “owned, destroyed and hastily reconstructed” by its owner, Brandon Hicks, guitarist of the fake New York City punk band FistMeetsFace.
To fit with the story, the back of the guitar's neck is adorned with a series of signatures, including “contact details for emergency lawyers and phone numbers for old girlfriends.” The fingerboard, meanwhile, sports “custom mismatched position markers and Kate’s cell phone number."
The Joe Doe by Vintage Punkaster is available now - in a limited run of 100 instruments - for £599 (~$765).
For more info on the guitar, stop on by jhs.co.uk.
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