The 1957 Chevy - Kat Belair

Back in February 2011, I decided to make a guitar that not only sounded like it came from the fifties, but looked like it did. One of many people favourite car of the fifties, and if you ask anyone to name a car of the fifties they would probably say a Cadillac or `57 Chevy. Well A Rockabilly friend who already had one Ali Kat, also owned an immaculate original Surf Green Chevy. I had already taken photos of it 2 years previous at the Kustom Kulture show here in Adelaide.. I said to him, I am building a chevy guitar . he said what colour, I said, kinda greenish.... haaaaaaa .. he said I did`nt have a father, you knew I would want that ... LOL.... so yes I modelled it exactly on his car. The Amazing thing was I never took any measurements from the car, but when I finally went to put the almost completed guitar next to the car, the angle of the rear tail fin was identical.... the door trip I had was not really any good so I totally made my own shaping it by hand on a jenny wheel brought out from the UK. The pickups as always, supplied by Guitar Parts Australia, and are the Mostone Memphis specials. Billy Mostyn , has wound these pups to give that awesome unique blues - rockabilly sound picked up through the aluminium body.

When you look down on the fin, there are some beautiful curved lines, especially the way the top of the doors are curved. So I wanted to keep this feature on the guitar body, to do this i had to shape the top of the guitar by hand, also the fin tapers to a point, so the difficult part was taperring the top of the guitar and then from the top to the bottom in the opposite direction.