DoctorPaul's Guitar Emporium

Jaden Rose Custom Shop Art Series 'E.R.O'

"Escher"

 

Well, well.  THIS was a difficult guitar to come by.  My affair with this started many moons ago, probably about the time that I bought the Ghost Fret prototype ("Leaf") from Jaden.  I remember clicking through the beauties on his web site, when THIS thing hit me square in the face.  What the hell WAS it?  A fancy-pants paint job or what? I wanted it so badly that it made my eyes itch.  You know that churning ... NEEDING feeling that you get in your stomach?  It was crippling.  I did a bit of digging around my contacts (... there aren't really THAT many guitar collectors in the UK) and found that it was owned by one of the well-heeled collector boys, which I assumed was a nail in the coffin ... like I'd NEVER get my hands on it.

 

Jaden describes this on his interwebz as an "Incredibly special, limited edition guitar".  No shit.  It turned out that the pattern on the guitar was produced by Jaden carving chunks out of the mahogany body to a depth of 12mm, then inlaying a latticework of chunks of maple (the light coloured sections) and purpleheart (a rare timber with a deep reddish hue), over a period of 50 to 60 hours.  That's two week's work to some Civil Servants. Anyway, the resultant latticework of timber was then carved into the "OS" shape archtop that is common to my other carved top Jadens ("Lauren" and "Blu-Tack").  Beautiful.  The body was then bound ... not in plastic (the usual material used for binding guitars, even quite posh ones), but with ebony.  EBONY.  A very classy finishing touch.  This guitar was the first of a range Jaden referred to as the "Art Series".  Although I'm aware that a second guitar was made with a similar pattern to this one, that guitar was a slab body (not a carved top like this, making that guitar cheaper and easier to produce), making this guitar a unique one-off.  I've not seen any evidence that any more Art Series guitars were made, so I'm confident that this is one of a kind (Edit ... Jaden has since confirmed that ... there was only one of these made).  

 

The neck is a sandwich of purpleheart in wenge, and has a birdseye maple board, bound in ebony.  Bloody hell.  All topped off with the old school "Faden" logo.  Fantastic. The hardware is by Gotoh, and the pups are a 'MoJo' in the bridge and a 'Chopper' in the neck (both DiMarzio, of course).

This REALLY IS one of my dream guitars.  Acoustically, this is vibrant and jangly with great sustain.  Plugged in and cranked? That's something else entirely.  This thing WAILS.  The neck is very similar to "Lauren"; that chocolatey, smooth, creamy goodness that Jaden injects into many of his necks.

SO, not only beautiful, but also awesome.  A bit like finding out that Kimberley from Girls Aloud eats sausage butties and drinks pints of brown-ale.