Gamble Big Mama Bigsby (Bog Oak)

Sometimes it's the wood that makes a guitar special. In this case it's wood that spent several thousand years underground.

Bog oak is what you get when oak trunks are preserved for centuries or millennia in oxygen-poor peat. The tannins in the timber react with the iron compounds in the water, and the result is a material cured dark to almost black, with a grain you won't find twice. Every piece is unique, and because the material is extremely rare and awkward to work, you only see it from builders who aren't afraid of effort.

Sascha Proske of Gamble Guitars in Ratingen is one of those. His Big Mama is a guitar worth looking at even in standard form — a substantial singlecut with a mahogany body and a tasteful top. With a bog oak top it becomes a statement. The look is its own thing, dark and mysterious without shouting about it. You have to look twice to work out what you're actually seeing.

The hard, dense bog oak adds a tight attack and clear highs, which give the warm mahogany body exactly the definition an all-mahogany guitar can sometimes lack. The result is a tone with substance and warmth underneath but a presence up top that's worth its weight in a band.

The Bigsby is more than a visual addition. It suits the guitar stylistically and opens up a whole layer a stopbar can't offer. The original dark colour of the wood wasn't eye-catching enough for Ede, so Sascha gave it a wafer-thin silver nitro coat — now nobody misses it on stage. And do look at the grain in that timber.

A genuine one-off from Ede's Private Stock.