This is the second of the Ron Sargent custom instruments that we picked up on our last US buying trip, and this one is an absolute doozy!
Wasabi pedal
From early days in the Morays - one of California's original surf bands - Ron Sargent eventually ended up at the reborn Daneletro company, designing many of the modern Dano effects pedals, including the famous Dan-O-Wah, Sitar Swami and Wasabi, along with such acclaimed guitar models as the Innuendo and Hearsay, plus the Rumor bass.
Bob Dylan, Billy Bragg, Robert Cray
As shown in pic # 8, (above), Ron Sargent builds some extremely cool guitars! With a list of Sargent Kustom owners including Bob Dylan, Billy Bragg, Robert Cray and Morrissey guitarist Boz Boorer, the San Francisco based builder will often recycle old guitar parts - even furniture and appliance components and more – into fantastic new creations, in this case an electric sitar, the size of an electric mandolin, (such as Fender's famous Mandocaster).
Pick it up and play
We don't know the origins of the body here, but the neck is from a late sixties, made-in-Holland, Egmond electric, which Sargent has made extremely user-friendly for guitarists by cutting it down to 18 fret length. You won't need to learn a new instrument, or battle odd scale length, you'll be able to pick it up and play electric sitar like it was any other guitar in your collection! The shorter string length, aided by an ever-dependable zero-fret, also seems to give a better sitar tone than longer scale conversions.
Instant vintage vibe!
The 24½" scale is immensely and immediately playable, and the guitar is perfectly set up so that the sitar effect comes in faintly on the D-string, increasing more with each string across to the high-e. The great-sounding single-coil pickups are of unknown origin – possibly hand-wound by Ron Sargent – but they're punchy and sharp, obviously perfectly suited for the sitar effect. And at just 5lb 2oz, (2.35kg), this is one of the lightest guitars on the planet! And as well as sounding absolutely brilliant, the guitar comes with an instant vintage vibe that can't be beat!
Steely Dan & The Clash
This is a very cool instrument that you will have an enormous amount of fun with. Artists as wide-ranging as Steely Dan and Guns'N'Roses, the Rolling Stones and Pat Metheny, the Clash and Stevie Wonder have all made use of electric sitar, so you'll be in some pretty high flying company. And, as with all Just Guitars instruments, it comes with FREE SHIPPING, via FastWay couriers, to any address in Australia.
I see a red door and I want it painted black,
No colors any more, I want them to turn black,
I see the girls walk by dressed in their summer clothes…
Just Guitars
