Guitarist Diaries: Liquid Metal M1

With a clunk befitting a sack of spanners, the latest arrival to our warehouse is the Liquid Metal Premier M1 TV Jones Special, a guitar so shiny and smooth, we feel like jackdaws as we pick it up for just one more chromesome stroke.

The picture below shows the guitar in all its glory (ignore the reflected image of the Guitarist ninja; he was just passing on the way to his dojo and stopped for a quick look) and the body is fashioned - indeed, hewn - from a single block of 6061 T6 aircraft-grade aluminium and subsequently coaxed into a recognisable shape with sheer skill and a CNC machine.

How do they get it so shiny? Word has it that, after the body is plated first with copper, then nickel and finally good old chrome, it´s hand-buffed for up to six hours for that unmistakable sheen.

Amazingly, the pair of TV Jones pickups help the guitar´s inherent voodoo to sound really rather special. We were expecting the aural equivalent of a razor blade that had been dipped in lemon juice and shoved under a fingernail, but the tone is in fact warm, deep and pleasantly unusual…

We´ve played it, we love it, we´ve checked our hair in its flawless reflection and we want one. So will you, and it´ll be featured in the May issue of Guitarist, on sale 10 March.