GOACOUSTIC PICKUP SYSTEM
timized for the way vibration moves from string through bridge into top with both consistency and control. He saw how the acoustic and the amplified could reinforce each other when the engineering was right. And how badly they worked against each other when it wasn’ t.
Ben Shaw came to the same problem from a completely different direction. His father, a renowned engineer in his own right, believed that understanding something meant taking it apart. When Shaw was 14, the two of them bought a 1967 Mustang and disassembled it to bare metal, rewired the entire car, and rebuilt it from the frame up. Two years later, when Shaw wanted a guitar amplifier, his father handed him a schematic for a Fender Princeton and told him to build it. Consequently, Shaw grew up with an engineer’ s instinct: before you accept how something works, find out why it works that way, and whether it could work better.
He came to Nashville to study mathematics at Belmont University, where a lecture by Sal Greco changed his trajectory. Greco is the legendary electrical engineer behind Ocean Way Studios, Electric Lady, and Paisley Park,
TOP TO BOTTOM:
■ McGill Resonator. ■ Nancy Wilson Martin with Go Acoustic installed. ■ Peter White’ s Blondie Super Ace with Canadian silver maple back and sides.
COLLECTIBLE GUITAR | 107