Less Paul II is the second (successful) build of a multimodal bowable electric guitar.
Less Paul II was born of a slight frustration with Less Paul I not achieving the true bowable nature of the guitar I had envisioned. I discovered early in the production of Les Paul, one that the bowable-ness of the instrument was dependent on the bridge and fretboard having a tight radius.
For this instrument, also originally a 5-string, I dissected and rebuilt a Kahler tremolo and was able to achieve the arch necessary to be able to reach the individual inner strings with the cello bow.
I had a fretboard carved in Spain with a 5.5-inch radius, and utilized 5 EMG single-string pickups that were made for an electric upright or cello. These got routed into a 'Guitar Hub', an innovative piece of hardware for esoteric pickup combinations. Eventually I realized that the passive pickups and the Guitar Hub were not giving me the dynamic effect that I wanted, and disconnected them, routed across the two outside pickup holes, and put a Bartolini S-style single coil pickup in their place, leaving three of the EMG pickups in place but permanently disconnected. The single pickup was connected to a Bartolini preamp.
The tuning again was cello-esque: CGDAE.
My guy who did the fret work, though enthusiastic about the work he did and the results on Less Paul I, was less than enthusiastic about doing the fretwork on this instrument because of the tight radius. No buzzy notes, but too much labor!
Down the road, I discovered in 2022 the Graphtech Ghost system, and after converting Less Paul I to use that system, I decided to rebuild this instrument and use the Floyd Rose FRX Tremolo built for archtop guitars, and transplant Graphtech pickups onto it. That did not go so well, and the action was less than optimal.
Eventually, I broke down, pulled that trem unit and installed a regular Floyd Rose and used the same Graphtech saddles. It sounded great, but the intonation was never right until I put the 4th bridge on it, the Graphtech Floyd Rose-licensed bridge, and put a Tremol-No locking mechanism on the block.
A ton of work over the years, but finally used it in performance in 2026 for MovementLab's 'Undercurrents' performance in Taos, to greate effect.
