"This cool "variation on a theme" that Andy Elliott and I put our heads together on has now become my ultimate all-in-one, cover-all-bases guitar. The body design is one of the most ergonomic ever. From sparkling clean, smooth rhythms to exploding raunch at your fingertips, it is the most alive sounding and versatile guitar that I've ever played. I'll usually just dial my amp to full-out lead level, then control all of my sounds simply from the volume knob on the guitar. Contributing factors are the strings thru body over barrel bridge saddles, Lindy Fralin's P-90 inspired design/wind pickups and Andy's highest quality craftsmanship. Top it off with the amazing colors and finishwork by award winning custom cycle painter Shannon Davidson, we've ended up with an absolute beast! Andy's guitars are the most consistent in quality, liveliness and sustain that I've personally ever witnessed. I am incredibly proud of our collaboration and expressly grateful to Andy for my signature model Elliott Tonemaster!" - Peter Stroud
Wood Selection
The wood for the Peter Stroud Tonemaster is selected first and has to meet certain size and grain characteristics to assure all bodies are glued in the same manner, with an offset glue joint at the bottom bout of the guitar. This maintains consistency from one guitar to the next. The upper bout is contoured for a very comfortable feel. The species of wood used for this guitar body is alder.
Neck:
- Flatsawn solid maple
- Indian rosewood fingerboard
- Traditional clay marking dots
- Elliott custom side dots
- Nitro finish
Fretting
At Elliott Guitars, fretwork is one of the things they are most proud of. They go to the extreme to make sure that your guitar is going to play the best it can. The fingerboard is planed under tension. The fretting process is done with epoxy fretting, using a special blend of epoxy that makes re-fretting very easy without messing up your fingerboard. This process is used for multiple reasons. One of the advantages to this type of fretting is that you lose the hollow gaps under the fret that you find with the traditional way of fretting. In traditional fretting, with each fret you put on, it is like driving a wedge into the fingerboard, which causes back tension on the neck. With epoxy fretting, all of these issues are eliminated. The epoxy under the frets helps to transfer string vibration throughout the neck to the body, and relieves all stress and tension on the neck that occurs with traditional fretting. This results in a stress-free neck, which allows the truss rod to work properly and to adjust the neck accurately.
Pickups
The pickups are custom wound in house to Peter Stroud's specifications. These pickups are very unique and have a huge tonal vocabulary. They have a very nice tight low end, smooth mid-range, and glassy high end without being harsh.
The bridge options for the Tonemaster are:
- Elliott hardtail
- Super-Vee tremolo
The colors available for the Tonemaster, all with polyester urethane finish and pin-striping, include:
- Vanilla Shake
- Black Sparkle
- Lake Placid Blue
- Pale Surf Green
- Sonic Blue
- Shoreline Gold
- Cardinal Red
- VT1 Ultra Trem Vega-Trem tremolo: +$300
- Fingerboard binding: +$290
- Premium finishes (Shoreline Gold, Cassanova Red Candy, Cardinal Red): +$350
- Sparkle acrylic pickguard: +$110
- Hand-painted acrylic pickguard: +$100