Seth Baccus is a huge fan of the guitar.
A musician and guitar player with a penchant for building and refining designs, he approaches guitar design with a unique sense of endless possibility, culminating in Seth Baccus Guitars. While certain designs have their limitations, shortfalls and problems, most of us accept these at face value, while Seth sees them as a chance to refine and improve something. These improvements have culminated in Seth Baccus Guitars, more recently in the Argonaut; a new design from Seth and Baccus.
“It [the Argonaut] pushed me on to knuckle down and finish the design work. I was trying to create both original and classic as well, and trying to capture that balance of familiarity and ‘Oh, wow, I’ve never seen that before.’” Seth explains.
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“It’s a really interesting format, the offset body, because it has so many potential options for pickups and different bridge configurations and versatility and all that sort of thing.”
Baccus has come a long way since the first design, the Nautilus, and now, with the more recent Argonaut.
“The Nautilus was essentially conceived as my own perfect guitar,” says Seth. “When I first started playing guitar. I learnt to play on a Fender Strat-style guitar, and all my favourite guitar players were playing Gibson Les Paul-style guitars. They’re quite different, visually obviously very different, but fundamentally how they’re built and the materials chosen is very different also.”
Seth goes on to explain that the feel is different as well, the scale length and neck feel led him to feeling very unfamiliar when he finally played the Gibson-style guitar that his heroes used. The Nautilus was born from this feeling, he wanted it to look and sound like a Les Paul, but feel and balance much more like a Fender.
We speak a bit about the introduction of the Argonaut after all this, Seth laughing that he’s “5’ 8” on a good day” so the larger offset bodies always looked and felt big on him. The Argonaut is offset, but in a way that’s both more measured and more extreme at once. It’s a smaller body, but the angles are more… angular?
I interject here, laughing at Seth’s ingenuity. I myself am a Les Paul player, and while I love that single-cut shape, I’ve also accepted and acknowledged the shortfalls of the heavy body, shorter scale length and sometimes unbalanced feel of the body vs. the neck. I’ve learnt to live with them, while Seth simply decided to re-think the guitar and build the Nautilus.
“I’ve started a whole business trying to solve the problem!” Seth laughs.
Seth Baccus guitars are in the business of innovation. Seth himself finds shortfalls of instruments and designs and refines them, building guitars for people all over the planet who’ve experienced the same issues. If the Argonaut is Seth Baccus’ most recent design – where does he see Baccus in the future?
“The next model, I’ve just built and delivered the first prototype, is my first first into a more S-type double cutaway body shape. Generally when I design a body shape, I like to design a whole range of models within that body shape all at the same time.”
Seth Baccus Guitars Abyss
“More like high performance, like a metal guitar?” I ask.
“Yeah, exactly. Much more modern, more contemporary sounding and feeling guitar. But simultaneously, I designed a 22-fret, vintage-vibed version of the same body shape, so I’m going to start building those orders towards the end of this year. They’ll be more traditional pickup configurations, scratchplate, vintage style trem, Nitro finishes, all that kind of stuff.”
Seth goes on to say that when he’s beginning a design, referencing a classic shape, he’ll often begin with the original and build on it. Interestingly enough, when building the single-cut Nautilus, there were a lot of obvious improvements.
The S-style guitar, now in his Abyss, made him realise just how right Leo Fender got the original Stratocaster design when he did it. It’s difficult to deviate too much without compromising rather than improving.
Seth explains that the majority of his solid-body design, particularly the bolt-ons, use a West-African hardwood called obeche, which is incredibly similar to korina.
“Y’know like Gibson used in the late 50s?” Seth asks, referring to the famous Explorers and Flying Vs that Gibson built for a golden period.
Obeche came about when a customer with a shoulder injury asked Seth to build a guitar within a weight parameter to alleviate pain. Upon finding obeche, Seth made the custom guitar as well as a few others, quickly realising that it had an inherent liveliness thanks to both the light weight and hardness of the wood.
All of this is to say that Seth is after a guitar that resonates and sings, and obeche pairs up well with roasted maple necks, that results in such a naturally resonant and musical body that whatever electronics you throw into it are going to work.
“When I choose pickups or hardware, I’m always looking for the same basic principles,” Seth begins. “Ultimately, you want to capture as much energy as is in the string, and you wanna get it out there.”
Aesthetically, sonically, harmonically and physically Seth Baccus Guitars built to sing, resonate and harness every ounce of sonic energy that the player imparts into the strings. Seth Baccus guitars are built for the players, with experimentation and a wholehearted focus on making every piece of the puzzle sound the best it can sound.
For local Seth Baccus Guitars enquiries, visit Gladesville Guitar Factory.
