Big River **Sonic Blue Nitro Relic**Lollar Dirty Blondes**Waterslide Hardtail Bridge**

The Big River “N.L.O. 1.2”

8lbs. 2oz.

Up for sale is another brand new specialty build here at Big River. Introducing “The N.L.O”, part Novo, part Strat, 100% kick ass guitar and stealer of girlfriends. This is one of my favorite builds to date, it plays and feels absolutely incredible. The body was cut by our friend Scott over at Sand Hill Customs. He helped us out with a recent build, “The Tele Paul Revere” made from all most 300 year old reclaimed wood from the Globe Grain Elevevator! Make sure you check out Scott’s Store…

https://reverb.com/shop/scotts-gear-garage-1525

Anyway the body is made from three pieces of ash. Featuring a German carve, it was prepped; pore filled, sealed and given ten coats of our custom mixed Sonic Blue Nitro then left to hang and do its thing. When ready, it was wet sanded, aged, buffed, aged some more and given beautiful checking throughout! 

Our Strat neck is made from Maple with a Rosewood fingerboard along with a large CBS headstock. The specs for this neck are as follows…a 9.5” radius, 22 medium nickel frets, a C shape, and a bone nut with a width of 1.655. To give this neck an aged look and feel, I hit the neck with some Vintage Neck Amber Nitro, several coats of clear, and then sanded back, stained and aged between frets 2-12. Then i finished that section in a Boiled Linnseed Oil mixture, applying it with wet sand paper all the way up to 1500 grit, when complete I buffed it out to the smoothest, softest to the touch bare wood feeling ever! The tuners are a set of aged Hipshot staggered locking tuner and the steel string tree is from Callaham. All of necks receive a fret level, crown and polish!

For the bridge I went with the chopped stainless steel hardtail bridge from Waterslide. The guys at Waterslide are incredible builders, you should check out their Coodercasters, just incredible craftsman over there! Anyway Its made from .074” stainless steel, and has compensated and notched brass bullet saddles for accurate intonation. This Waterslide bridge also gives you the option to have either a string through or top loading setup. Im a huge fan of top loaders, they always feel extra slinky and super resonant to me when strung up that way, so I kept this N.L.O. as a top loader only. Just a super cool design here! The bridge and all of the hardware for this guitars were aged in our shop.

The wiring harness is a traditional vintage style Strat harness. I used an high grade import 5way switch because of the tight space, 250k CTS pots, a .047 Mullard Tropical Fish Cap (I love these caps!) a John Suhr Treble Bleed, a Puretone 4prong input jack for added stability so you don’t accidentally pull your cable out, and Gavitt cloth pushback wire throughout.

For this kick ass build I had to go with a kick ass set of pickups, so what better set than Lollar Dirty Blondes! Here is what they had to say about these raging single coils!

“This is one of our most popular Strat sets. It includes our Vintage Blonde® Strat pickups for neck and middle positions, with our Special S Series® pickup for the bridge. The Blondes offer a bit more sparkle, chime, and top end bloom while the slightly higher output Lollar Special S bridge is just bit warmer and more full-bodied than our other Strat-style bridge pickups.” Anyway these pick ups are legendary and if you haven’t heard or played them definitely check them out!

**You can find a demo of this incredible set of Lollar’s down below**

Anyway, the Big River N.L.O. version 1.1 is a beautifully gnarly, vintage inspired tone machine! Our aged Sonic Blue Nitro paired with this perfectly aged Maple neck gives you the look and feel of instrument that has stories from decades of being played. When you plug it in, that’s when you are really going set the gear shift into high gear! Grab this one quick, it won’t be around for long!

**We love this design and guitar so much, we have several more being cut and on their way as we speak! All with different neck, pick up and control configurations, so check back often to see what kind of heat the next one is going to bring!**