Pisces Trem

Spore

PHOTOS: Spore 6-string Pisces™ guitar. Swamp Ash, carbon fiber, aircraft aluminum, stainless steel. Bare Knuckle custom Alnico pickups for superorganic tone.

Spore is inspired by the connection between psilocybin and healing the brain from Post Traumatic Stress Injury (PTSI). The terminology PTSD is both outmoded as well as inaccurate. The difference in word choice between disorder vs. injury may seem insignificant, but it is the difference between disability vs. certainty of hope.

The brain can heal.

Childhood trauma, substance addiction, combat-impact related injuries, social alienation wounds, can be healed with psilocybin. Important work is being done by Johns Hopkins Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research (Dr. Matthew Johnson) and by UCSF School of Medicine (Dr. Robin Carhart-Harris). Michael Pollan’s exceptional book “How to Change Your Mind” is perhaps the most thorough introductory overview.

Humans are a social species, with a portion of our sanity outsourced to friends, family, and to a certain extent cultural figures. The people we choose to include in our lives form a network of nodes, with whom we share thoughts and perceptions in an effort to determine reality. The narratives we agree upon form in part the reality of our individual lived experience. When nodes in our societal network become emotionally dysregulated, survival itself may be threatened.

Healing begins with self.

These tiny spores, capable of surviving the intense cold vacuum of space and germinating into psychedelic mushrooms, provide the gift of insight. Perhaps most importantly the gift of connection.

PHOTOS: Patented plus patents pending Rick Toone™ tremolo with precise action and accurate relative string-to-string pitch change. Extraordinary expression. Element™ neck machined from single billet aircraft aluminum.

Red Pisces

PHOTO: Red Pisces™ 6-string guitar. Patented and patent-pending Pisces™ tremolo.
PHOTO: Element™ neck precision machined from aircraft grade aluminum. Hipshot locking tuners.
PHOTO: DiMarzio noiseless single coil pickups designed by Steve Blucher. Carbon fiber pickguard.

Gold Top Skele

PHOTOS: Gold Top Skele™ is a perfect blend of semi-hollowbody warmth with single coil spank. Classic tones with a completely modern twist. Details on this beautiful instrument include: carbon fiber, mother of pearl, alder, aircraft grade birch. Polished stainless steel frets in state-of-the-art Richlite fretboard. Quartersawn torrefied flame maple neck w/tilt back headstock and luthier’s joint. Advantage neck profile including Fretboard Flare™ geometry. Bare Knuckle custom pickups with 10-way switching. Patented & patent pending Pisces™ tremolo precision machined from stainless steel and aircraft aluminum.

Thank You

PHOTO: Sea Monster 6-string guitar with Pisces™ tremolo system (2023).

Hi Rick,

I acquired Sea Monster approximately 10 months ago. I intentionally wanted to wait a while before providing my thoughts. I appreciate your patience.

Prior to Sea Monster I was playing shorter scale hard-tailed fiddles. So Sea Monster was different for me in many ways. The Advantage neck profile is the best feeling neck I’ve ever played. The neck profile alone makes me feel like a better player in that I’m able to comfortably execute difficult passages on a longer scale neck – I went up a heavier string gauge because I found my attack more aggressive due to the ease of play. The new trem is so much fun and so much easier to manage than a Floyd – unlike a Floyd, this trem appears to move chord shapes together in tune, which is amazing and changes the whole approach to playing a trem – excellent tremolo design.

The 10 way switching provides so many useable tonal options and again, makes it so much fun to play.

Over the past 10 months I’ve been asking you various questions and you patiently answered all of them. Since day 1 I have loved Sea Monster but it took time for us to fully bond – no fault of the guitar, but rather I’ve been accustomed to playing certain guitars/specs, and soon realized with Sea Monster, that I needed to make some changes in setup re: string gauge/action in order to fully connect – I learned all about the Rick Toone tremolo when I performed the setup. So, not only have I bonded with Sea Monster via the physical act of playing but also by learning the components that make up Sea Monster – many of those components are specific to Rick Toone guitars. I’m now a big fan of Rick Toone guitars. (Rick. R, 2024)

PHOTO: Self-portrait in sunburst nitro. Spearfish™ 6-string snapshot prior to shipping (2019).

Hey, Rick! I just want to send another thank you for the incredible guitar you built for me. Of all the luthier built guitars I own, yours stands head and shoulders above them all. The Spearfish excels at all styles of music, from rock to blues to jazz and even finger style. Clean, distorted, ambient, the Spearfish sounds great no matter what style and no matter what amp I put it through. It is the standard I use for seeing how an amp sounds. The volume and tone controls are far and away the most responsive of all the guitars I own and the single coil switch is the closest to true single coils. The neck is supremely comfortable and intonation and string balance are superb. I have considered selling all my other guitars, as the spearfish is really all I need. One of the nice features about it is that I can go from super light gauge (I’ve used Billy Gibbons .07’s all the way to .13’s) and not be concerned about the neck. Everyone who has played it is instantly impressed at how effortlessly it plays and how full and rich it sounds. A truly stellar instrument. Thank you and I wish you continued success. (Bill Mitchell, 2024)

RICK TOONE ’67 Review

VIDEO: Dr. Andre Fludd has a curiosity and passion for electric guitar technology. His YouTube channel explores recent innovations in context with historical benchmarks, providing critical analysis from an informed perspective. In this video Andre explains the features and performance of the RICK TOONE ’67 guitar, with special focus on the tremolo.
VIDEO: Dr. Andre Fludd makes it look easy. Graceful tremolo expression throughout this lovely Jeff Beck interpretation. RICK TOONE ‘67 guitar into AxeFX III.