This week I had the pleasure of visiting Fidelity Guitars in Cambridgeshire. Luthier Matt Oram jumped out of the marketing executive rat race in 2017 and started Fidelity Guitars with the aim of helping guitarists to express themselves fully in whatever style they choose by coming up with unique designs that focus on versatility and clarity of tone.
With a nod to early 1960's era design, Matt has designed the JB, Double Standard and Stellarosa models that can be fully customised at the request of the guitarist.
Current artists playing Matt's guitars are J.Willgoose Esq from Public Service Broadcasting, Richard Dawson, Josh Hayward from The Horrors and many more.
So what happened when Blutone turned up to check out Fidelity Guitars?
Well Matt also does repairs and I had a Fender 1972 Reissue Thinline that needed some work done on it and Matt does repairs too which is great, so I jumped in my car and drove over to his workshop just outside Ely.
After the initial hellos, Matt gave me a tour of his comprehensive workshop. The dry room for his wood that he sources from David Dyke's Luthier Supplies, the CNC room for carving out the guitar shapes and of course the spraying room.
In the workshop were a beautiful array of guitar bodies in vintage finishes that were drying off with some finishes taking weeks to dry.
Playing the Stellarosa Deluxe and Junior models.
Matt had a completed Stellarosa that was about to be sent to a customer. This three, P90 pickup (Charlie Christian) guitar was powered by clever electronics that brought the middle pick up in and out of parallel and series switching combined with the bridge and neck pick ups.
The neck is a compound radius neck allowing for comfortable chord work at the top with a flatter profile towards the twelfth fret allowing for more comfortable lead line work.
Whilst I found the neck to be more chunky than I would choose, this guitar got me engaged deeply with it's tone and feel and it put me in a different place than where my current Fender Tele or PRS SE Starla do. It was sublime and very enjoyable to play.
After trying the Deluxe model I then tried out the Junior model. The general specs are the same but this model is a one pickup model using one Charlie Christian P90 Mojo pickup which had pole pieces rather than the blades of the Deluxe pickups. This brought about a more punchy sound. Interestingly this particular guitar had flatwound strings on it which which affected the sounds.
Both guitars had Descendent Vibrato tailpiece, which I particular liked on the Junior model and as you will see lent itself well to my style of playing.
I found this model to be great when played with more effects such as reverb.
The video below will give you a sense of how I play and how this worked on both Stellarosa models.
Currently the Stellarosa is the most popular product at Fidelity Guitars and I can certainly see why!
Final Comments.
I really enjoyed visiting Matt at Fidelity Guitars. He is a friendly guy and is so enthusiastic about helping other guitarists with his repair services or custom builds. This article hasn't been sponsored by Fidelity Guitars and I wholeheartedly recommend checking out their website and finding out more about these wonderful guitars.
Disclaimer
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