The .:: SINGLECOIL Guitars ::. powerful rock machine that can cover much more than “Smoke on the Water”. Inspired by the numerous modified guitars Ritchie Blackmore played over the years, we developed the Ritchie guitar as a kind of tribute to Ritchie and his guitar tech Dawk Stillwell who did all the work for him. We developed a custom made single coil pickup set that is a crossover of the Velvet Hammer pickups from Red Rhodes, the Fender X-1´s and of course the Schecter F500T´s to cover a very wide range of sounds. The heavy magnets and the custom made pickup covers are for sure an eye-catcher and you will be surprised by the enormous power of this pickups. They will never sound dull or noisy and it´s easy to drive every amp into saturation with this pickup set. Because of a solid shielding work, this guitar is surprisingly noise and hum-free, even without using humbucker pickups. If you are looking for an excellent powerful guitar with a whole galore of different tones … here it is !

If you want to find out more about the concept behind this guitar and its wiring, please read my column about it on Premier Guitar here.

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Here are the main specs of the Ritchie guitar:

body:
– two piece alder or ash body, highly figured
– locally harvested, selected thermo-treated tone wood
– opaque, super-hard and ultrathin satin finish
– highly contoured for maximum playing comfort
– modified Duesenberg vintage tremolo equipped
– open tremolo compartment for maximum tone
– no finish at the contact points in the neck pocket
– super-tight fit neck pocket

neck:
– maple neck with double truss rod, highly figured with plum fingerboard
– locally harvested, selected thermo-treated tone wood
– 12″ radius
– 21 frets (Dunlop 6140) hardened and high polished
– three-dimensional headstock, body matching color
– vintage amber finished
– truss rod accessible from the headstock
– vintage white dots on the fretboard and side dots
– hand shaped bone nut
– custom 6L locking tuners
– two roller string trees
– no finish at the contact points at the heel
– 10´s nickel plated TWANGTONE strings

hardware:
– custom 6L locking tuners
– hand shaped bone nut
– two roller string trees
– four-hole metal neck plate
– two locking-ready strap pins
– oval metal output jack plate
– hand cut celluloid pickguard
– modified Duesenberg vintage tremolo with steel saddles and aluminium inertia-bar
– wooden knobs and plastic pickup covers

electronics:
– custom made single coil pickup set
– mil.grade pots with 60:40 audio taper
– treble loss free master volume control
– mil.grade 5-way pickup selector switch
– mil.grade 2-way toggle switch
– mil.grade, extra strong output jack
– mil.spec silver-/teflon wire for maximum transparency
– selected NOS tone caps
– shielded wire for all output connections

wiring:
The mil.grade 5-way pickup selector switch provides classic tones: bridge pickup alone / bridge + middle pickup in parallel / middle pickup alone / middle + neck pickup in parallel / neck pickup alone. The mil.grade 2-way toggle switch provides „7-sound switching“ with the two additional settings: bridge + neck pickup in parallel / all three pickups in parallel. All this options together with the treble loss free volume control and the very effective and even tone controls will provide a very wide range of different possible sounds.