Palir Skinny Titan £2,595

CONTACT World Guitars PHONE 01453 824306 442 WEB WWW.palirGuitars.com

Made in louisiana by John Palir and his wife Katie, Palir Guitars got underway as a professional business in 2014, although the pair had been building guitars under their own name for a couple of years by that point and John had become “very interested in ageing guitar parts and ageing necks”, back in 2009. Palir is typical of the rising number of small shop builders concentrating on quality and feel and, in the case of Palir, quite an eye for artwork, not to mention that ageing and distressing.

Palir’s range centres on Fender’s classics as this Titan illustrates – a bashed about beauty that looks like it’s had a hard life. And coming in considerably lower in price than Fender’s own Custom Shop with top-line boutique components, not to mention highly creative colour options, gives Palir validity.

Of course, a maker like this has a huge palette of options so do check out their Custom Order form on their website. This Titan, for example, uses a chambered swamp ash body (the Skinny bit of the name) with a white bound top edge that’s been beautifully distressed. Like many makers roasted maple is the neck wood of choice and here it feels as good as it looks – “we have a special ‘secret sauce’ for aging our necks to make them smooth and as comfortable as possible.” Topped with an ebony ‘board with a 254mm (10 inch) radius and an excellent fret job using Dunlop 6105 wire, set up and playability is first class.

Hardware is artfully aged too, the black plated Bigsby frame adding a hot rod bike vibe and pickups and electronics come from Lollar and Emerson.

Quality, comfort, vibe, a great weight of just under 7.5lbs, and exactly the sort of sound you’d expect, here’s a slice of modern boutique build that might stylistically be hugely derivative but remains a very good guitar. As the great Billy F Gibbons said of a Palir Titan: “Swamp Righteous!”

Since we featured the Palir Titan on the cover of issue 433 it’s been bought by reader Jason Couch, who tells us: “Straight out of the box it’s a beauty. A couple of things that stood out acoustically – the bright and defined clear tone – and the neck, it’s not until you hold one that you truly understand what people are raving about. The first time I powered it up the T-style sounds radiated from the bridge pickup but the neck pickup drove a much fuller sound than you would expect.”

It sounds to us like the Titan has gone to a good home!

A 21-fret guitar like the original, the Titan might not be breaking any new ground sonically but Alnico 5-loaded Lollar Tele Specials increase the heat, offering a “rounder top end with more midrange and bottom end” It’s all about the details, right? Well, this distinct neckplate tells you exactly what you’re playing. Note too the open grain and medium/ heavy level distressing of the Candy Apple Red finished swamp ash body. Oh, and a Palir Custom G&G Black Tweed case is included in the price The USA Bigsby B5 ‘horseshoe’ vibrato, in a far from common colour, certainly adds to the vibe. The open-back walled bridgeplate, with its trio of compensated brass saddles, ensures enough back angle for the strings as they angle down under the string bar 1

3

2

Yet another take on Fender’s classic headstock, again it gives the Titan a unique spin but remains both classy and, of course, highly functional, not least with the non-vintage truss rod access placement and standard Graph Tech Tusq nut 4