I just spotted this at Guitar Noize. An axe that combines two of my passions -- guitars and model railways!
And this, to be exact, is a model railway on a guitar!
If you've browsed my Link list you would probably have stumbled onto my model railroad blog -- The Sunny Model Railroad. (Yeah I know it hasn't been updated in a while, but it's a work in progress that is proceeding very slowly)
This guitar belongs to Japanese melodic-fusion guitarist Masayoshi Takanaka -- who's probably crazier than I am about model railways.
The guitar's body is completely covered in a miniature scenic landscape, replete with track, tunnels, electric catenary train, palm trees and a river that forks around the middle pickup.
Tres cool!
Judging by the size of the train relative to the pickups, this looks like a 1:160, N-scale railroad, probably of the Kato brand. Kato is to Japanese model trains like Ibanez is to guitars.
Funnily enough, a friend of mine used to play Takanaka's cassettes in his car all the time and that was when I first became aware of the distinctly '80s phenomena that was Japanese fusion. Think Casiopea, T-Square and of course Takanaka.
Although I didn't count him as an early influence, I do remember that the guy did have a pretty nice vibrato and a singing tone.
And after all these years it's good to know that Takanaka is still out there hitting it.
Picture Source: http://www.guitarnoize.com/
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