Certainly one of the most complicated and ambitious guitars I have ever constructed is the Black Swan. Not only is it a headless ergonomic design, it also utilizes a multiscale fretboard for the seven strings; it is one of the only guitars in the world to combine this with a tremolo system. The unique headpieces, tuners, and bridge are made in Italy by T4M, and luxuriantly gold-plated to stand out from the crowd. For extra stiffness and stability, the neck is five-layer laminated padauk and walnut, with a unique striped ebony fretboard. The body is a fantastic fusion of a very light and resonant spruce "core" with front and back "skins" of padauk and bookmatched, quartersawn african ebony.

The electronics had to be very special to live up to the rest of the guitar: two high-fidelity Lace Almumitone "Deathbuckers" run through a three-way toggle switch and two push-pull pots. A pull on the volume knob puts the neck pickup out of phase with the bridge, so in the middle position the guitar sings with that evocative and mysterious Peter Green tone. Pulling on the tone pot splits both pickups for a spanky single-coil sound.

The end result is a guitar that can do almost anything asked of it, from twangy vibrato-heavy surf, to dark and heavy djent rhythms, and do it with style.