Brendan Small of Dethklok and Metalocalypse fame is bringing the retailocalypse to Reverb, where he will be selling a ton of gear, including a bunch of metal guitars that are unicorn rare.
These instruments have been all used in battle. Small has used some of them when scoring Metalocalypse. Others have been stage-played when Dethklok went out treading the boards with Mastodon. It’s like Small says, they are part of cartoon history, used in the creation of the Adult Swim animated show.
Some of these instruments are one-of-one, such as the Ibanez Iceman that was used to track the original Dethklok theme song – and what has subsequently been modded by Small’s brother. What did he do? He took the frets off. That’s right, plucked them out, turning it into a fretless guitar.
“You’re not going to find a guitar like this anywhere,” says Small. “Unless you’re at a dump site, or underneath a city in the catacombs of some crazy trashy place. A place of your nightmares.”
If a fretless Iceman is a little too ‘Paul Stanley turns jazz-fusion’ for your tastes, rest assured there are more mainstream options. But what the heck, you’re here for the Metalocalypse and Dethklok. Let’s look at some of the crazier options, like the Gibson Thunderhorse, a Silverburst Explorer variant that was limited to just 250 units worldwide. This is a pristine example. It even has the cellophane on the pickguard.
“Classic rock ’n’ roll,” is how Small describes it. Is this an electric guitar for all seasons? “You can play everything from Cannibal Corpse to Steely Dan on this if you want to,” he says.
Nice, the worlds of Reelin’ In The Years and Hammer Smashed Face together at last – it is the shared universe we have been waiting for.
Modded rarities is a theme here, as it is with Small’s Gibson E2 Explorer, a holdout from the ‘80s that has a middle-position doofer that will give you some out-of-phase weirdness.
“I took it on tour when Dethklok co-headlined with Mastodon back in the 2000s,” says Small. “Somebody did some kind of a mod on it somewhere along the way so that when it’s in the middle position you get that Brian May kind of phase-reversing thing. It’s really cool.”
What is really cool are the two prototype Epiphone guitars, one a Dethklok Explorer with a crazy inlay on the fingerboard, the other (our favourite) evocatively titled the GhostHorse, which is another hot-rodded Explorer with a Floyd and a figured maple top/veneer.
The Official Brendon Small of Dethklok Reverb Shop goes live on July 30. Preview the collection and sign up for alerts at Reverb.
