WHAT IF A CARTOON GUITAR HERO WOULD WALK IN TO OUR WORKSHOP?
Brainstorming – or killing time?
So. What is this Mr Fastfinger custom guitar and movie all about? It started in 2012 on a flight from Helsinki to Frankfurt. Mika Tyyskä and I happened to be seated next to each other, and we started talking about guitars. What else, right?
I thought it would be totally awesome to make something special to Mr. Fastfinger (Mika’s animated alter ego), and he expressed a mutual interest, explaining that he happens to be kind of looking for new inspiration regarding guitars.
Our sky high conversation continued, leading us to the Frankfurt Airport, and by the time we landed, we had more or less summoned up a script for a fiction movie, in which Mr. Fastfinger – the infamous cartoon guitar hero – would come step in to my guitar workshop and order a guitar. At that point, I don’t think we were dead serious about making a movie for real, though. It was more just killing time on the flight.
If we only knew…
We met again at Musikmesse a couple of days later and found out that neither one of us could stop thinking about the project! So we figured… why not.. Let’s do it!!! Oh boy, if we would’ve known into what kind of a gigantic, megalomaniac undertaking we were sticking our heads into…
True Fiction TV
The Spirit of the Guitar Hunt is kind of a fiction movie but ties up into reality too. I’ve never seen anybody do something like this, so it’s no wonder some of you (or us) might be slightly confused about what it is. Time will tell – maybe a future underground classic? Who knows – something like this might well be the next trend of True TV.
THE SPIRIT OF THE GUITAR HUNT
A film to finally reveal the secrets and the magic how the best guitars are made. A legend tells of Mr. Fastfinger – a guitar master, whose instrument got shredded by a demon. A fearless guitarmaker of the north, Master Juha, encounters an unexpected visitor. The vision emerges: spiritual dimension – tiger sharp attack – mountain like tone! Master Juha faces the challenge of his lifetime – can his guitar open the door to infinity for Mr. Fastfinger? Balancing between two worlds, these men join forces to hunt down the true spirit of electric guitar. Two worlds. Two men. One mission. Six strings….
THE GREEN GUITAR – AS SEEN IN THE MOVIE
Music first, always!
Another dimension in this project was obviously the guitar itself, which was all real – no fiction, whatsoever. I have to confess I am a huge fan of Mika’s music – and I have been long time before I got to know him personally.
Later on, as we’ve become close friends, Mika keeps astonishing me with his fantastic musical visions and his tasteful style of playing guitar – the music and the story comes always first in Mika’s book, even if he has the skills to play faster than lightning when needed.
Which tonewood to use..?
With this background explained, you can understand why I took this particular guitar project as a personal challenge. The truth be told, I was really nervous how it would turn out! Mika knows exactly how he wants the guitar to feel like, and how it must sound like – but he is not so much interested in all the nitty gritty tech specs. Which tonewood to use? What technical solutions to this or that detail? All that stuff was my headache.
This is a great way to work for me, actually. Mika tells me what he wants, and I have basically free hands to offer him my vision of what might take him where he wants to go.
THE NITTY GRITTY DETAILS
Finally! The stuff for us, the diehard guitaraholics. Every detail of Mika’s Green Guitar listed:
Mr. Fastfinger custom green sunburst
Thermally aged alder body
Thermally aged rock maple neck
Thermally aged arctic birch fretboard
Bolt-on recessed/rounded neck construction
25,5″ scale length
12″ fretboard radius
24 jumbo sized stainless steel frets
Mr. Fastfinger ‘Custom C’ neck profile
Glossy polyurethane body finish
Oil/Wax neck finish
Hipshot Grip-Lock locking tuners
Gotoh/Wilkinson VSVG vibrato bridge
Hand forged trem arm
Nickel plated hardware
DiMarzio ‘Evo 2’ bridge pickup
DiMarzio ‘Jem’ middle pickup
DiMarzio ‘Paf Pro’ neck pickup
Mr. Fastfinger custom wiring (explained below)
Moose shin bone nut
Schaller straplocks
NYXL 9-46 strings
FIVE ELEMENTS… THREE WAVES… WHAT..!?
Wiring FAQ
One of the most frequently asked questions I get about this guitar is the wiring. In addition to the regular 5-way lever switch the guitar has a 3-way lever switch as well. Very rare to see such switches, both in one guitar…
Mr. Fastfinger has (obviously) much cooler guitar hero style names for the switches!
The ‘5 elements’ switch
1. Bridge pickup
2. Bridge + middle pickup
3. Middle pickup
4. Middle + neck pickup
5. Neck pickup
The ‘3 waves’ switch
This switch affects to certain positions of the 5-way switch. Like so:
1. All normal
2. The middle pickup out-of phase. This means that the 2. and 4. positions of the 5-way switch are now out-of-phase
3. Both bridge and neck pickups splitted. This means that the pickup configuration transforms into a classic S***t -style format – 3 singlecoil pickups.
Universal balance
Uhmmm… It means the volume pot. Ha! But not just any volume pot. This one has a built-in treble bleed circuit to balance the eq when doing sweet volume sweeps. See – universal balance!
After the movie? More guitars!
Honestly? We slept. For a long time. Nah – back to work. A year (or two?) after the movie and the guitar Mika ordered another one. Without a movie, this time. That guitar has pretty much the same specifications as the first one, except for two things:
New guitar, new body wood
Before we started making the second guitar, Mika showed me his old Ibanez Jem. He felt that guitar had a nice, a bit mellower unplugged tone, that he’d like that new guitar to have – if possible. After playing the guitar for a while, I got an idea that we could make the body out of spanish cedar and slab a birch top on it. It would be painted over, but I felt this tonewood combination might bring just the right velvety character to this instrument. Since Mika got the guitar, it quickly became his Nr 1 instrument, so it appears we succeeded!
The Cracking Frog Green
The body of Mika’s second guitar has a pretty cool custom colour called ‘The Cracking Frog Green’. It is a green paint Mika modelled after his Converse sneakers colour. Seriously! He also wanted the paint to be worn down – not so much in the usual relic style but more in an exaggerated cartoon style, more fitting to Mr. Fastfinger style.
Photos, ladies and gentlemen
We’ve collected a few photos of this unique project below. You’ll find plenty more material from the dedicated Guitarhuntmovie.com website. Enjoy..!
