Xylonix Guitars by Michael Gnapp | Successor To Rex Bogue?

John McLaughlin with Rex Bogue Double Rainbow

I just received a comment from Keith Bohanna over at blog.dbTwang.com on my Rex Bogue Double Rainbow article.  He also shared a link from one of his site's members, Michael Gnapp who was Bogue's woodworker. 

"Nice information on Rex Bogue, a unique guitar maker. Over on our blog we were able to share some experiences which one of our members, Michael Gnapp, had while working with Rex. 

Here are a couple of cool excerpts:

"I learned inlay from Rex; his shell work was very detailed and immaculate. You can see it in the “tree of life” inlay on the two necks of John McLaughlin’s 'Double Rainbow'.  Rex was extreme in everything he took on."

"If he took an interest in anything, he took it all the way. He had in interest in rum; my first duty in the morning was to prepare a 5-gallon water cooler full of pina colada, and it would be empty at the end of every day. There were always clients and friends hanging out in the shop, which was a small house he’d inherited from his grandmother, I believe, and so 5 gallons of the potion was usually just enough. I did the woodworking, another young man, a master of electronics, did the pickups, preamps, and wiring."

You can see the full post here: http://blog.dbtwang.com/rex-bogue-guitar-maker-a-lovely-piece-of-his-life-story/"

Michael Gnapp is also about to re-launch his own line of guitars shortly.  A luthier listing for Gnapp's Xylonix Guitars states:  "Custom thinline hollowbody archtop and solidbody guitars, funerary urns and artistic wooden home accessories."

Funerary urns?  Talk about diversifying..

http://www.xylonix.com/ is still under construction but stay tuned. 

You can check out some of Gnapp's earlier Xylonix guitar creations here:  http://www.dbtwang.com/guitars/filter?name=&type=&maker=Xylonix&year=&handed=&extra_filter=all

And here's my earlier article on Ibanez's take on the Rex Bogue Double Rainbow

Ibanez 2670 Artwood Twin Double-Neck Prototype | A Reader Comments

I recently received this comment on my post on John McLaughlin's Double Rainbow from reader Jeff Saginaw who claims to have owned the original Ibanez 2670 Artwood Twin prototype!

"Hi- I owned the prototype of the Ibanez McLaughlin double neck. It was purchased by Hollowood Music in McKees Rocks, Pa at the Dallas, Tx Namm Show and flown back to Pittsburgh wrapped in a blanket in it's own seat on the plane since there was no case built yet.

I sold it many years ago when I was in Chicago and the owner will see that if he unscrews the pickups on the lead neck he will find 2 PAF's I installed from my 58 Les Paul Custom. I put DiMarzio Super Distortion pickups in the neck and bridge of the 58 (who knew) and put the PAF's in the double neck since the original pickups were (well) less than PAF's so to speak.

It was an ok playing guitar and did a few trips to Bermuda and the UK with me. It was really heavy! I bought a wide hand tooled leather/sheepskin backed strap to hold it that was later stolen in Puerto Rico. I'm Jeff Saginaw--ask anybody in Pittsburgh or Chicago about or call me."

Thanks for that slice of history Jeff!  That was pretty informative!

Here's a link to a reissue Ibanez 2670 Artwood Twin recently found on eBay.  A little less ornate than the original but still breathtaking nonetheless.

Ibanez 2670 Artwood Twin Reissue on eBay

This is one gorgeous instrument. (Item #: 110433904762)

A slightly less ornate version of the Rex Bogue Double Rainbow that was built for John McLaughlin, the Ibanez 2670 Artwood Twin came out around 1975 and was available only on special order. This was a top-notch, no-expense-spared instrument.

Reissued in 2006, the Artwood Twin was faithfully recreated from the original blueprints by the same luthiers who built the early models. The only specification changed was that Ibanez replaced the original Super 70 pickups with Super 58's on the reissue.

Interestingly, the Tree of Life mother-of-pearl inlay on the 2670, adapted and simplified from Rex Bogue's original intricate design on the Double Rainbow, is still used by Ibanez today on their Steve Vai signature and higher-end Prestige models.

A layout of the controls and the various switching possibilities on the 2670 is shown in the diagram below. Again the 2670's controls nearly duplicate Bogue's original design sans built-in preamp.

John McLaughlin's Rex Bogue Double Rainbow

John McLaughlin has always had a penchant for unusual instruments.

And the Rex Bogue Double Rainbow was easily the most visually striking guitar that McLaughlin has used in his illustrious career.

An earlier custom built double-neck by Gibson left him largely disappointed. According to McLaughlin, Gibson had generally ignored most of the specifications he had requested.  "It took them a year to do it -- they had strikes and everything.  Finally I got it, but they had only done one thing I had asked, and that was the writing of 'Sweetest Is My Lord' on the necks.  The one thing they'd done was the least important as far as the music.  The electronics they hadn't done, the neck they hadn't done, the body shape they hadn't done, they hadn't even used the right wood."

But all was to soon change. California luthier Rex Bogue introduced himself when McLaughlin was playing at the Whiskey club in LA.

Bogue had brought with him a guitar he had built with "flowers going down the neck and this beautiful ebony board". Taken by the high degree of workmanship and attention to detail, McLaughlin commissioned Bogue to build him the double-neck of his dreams.

Bogue took exactly a year to build the instrument, completing it in July 1973. From that point, the Double Rainbow, as it came to be known, became McLaughlin's signature instrument, closely associated with the early days of the Mahavishnu Orchestra.

According to Bogue, the 24 3/4" scale Double Rainbow had a body made out of fiddleback maple, laminated necks made from maple and Brazilian rosewood, and Gaboon ebony fingerboards with 22-frets. An ornate 'Tree of Life' inlay traversed each fingerboard to symbolize a musician's progress in achieving his ideals.

For its electronics, the Double Rainbow had individual volume controls for each of the four pickups and a single master volume that controlled the overall output from the guitar. There were no individual tone controls for each pickup; instead, a master tone controlled both necks. In addition, the humbucking pickups were rewound with coil divider taps so that inter-coil phasing and adjustable quad-coil phasing were obtainable with the flick of a switch. Finally, a preamp was also built into the guitar.

Sadly, McLaughlin has said that the Double Rainbow fell off a bench in 1974 under "perculiar circumstances" since no one was near it. It hit the ground on its front, splitting it down the middle and according to its owner "would have to be virtually rebuilt".

It is not entirely clear if the Double Rainbow was the only one of its kind.

Ibanez copied the famed Double Rainbow and came out with their own model around 1975, the 2670 Artwood Twin as shown in the ad on the right.

The Artwood Twin featured a simplified 'Tree of Life' inlay based on Rex Bogue's original design which Ibanez later also featured on their Bob Weir signature model in the late '70s.

The 'Tree of Life' inlay is a design that Ibanez continues to use to this day on their higher end models -- in particular, the Steve Vai Jem signature series.

Another notable design idea 'borrowed' from Rex Bogue is the 'cloud' tailpiece design as shown in detail in this previous article.





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