This guitar is inspired by The Model 1 designed by Rick Turner and made famous by Lyndsey Buckingham. The body is made from a top and bottom blank, each radiused, carved and jointed together. Each half is first hollowed out to reduce the weight of the guitar, internal cavities routed out and cut to rough shape. The top and back are then covered in material and which is then sealed and hardened to allow routing of the pickup cavity neck pocket and electronics compartment. The two halves are then joined, the sides covered with material and the whole body sealed again. Binding is applied to the front and back edges. The body is sealed and finished with a clear polyurethane.
The neck is made from strips of bubinga and maple with an Indian Rosewood fret board and a dual action truss rod, accessed from the headstock. Metallic, eccentric fret markers are filled with epoxy fill and a colour matched feline motif is inlayed around the 12th fret. 3x3 Hipshot locking tuners provide excellent tuning stability and wide Nickel-Silver fret wire is used and complemented with a hand-carved bone nut. The neck has 24 frets and uses a 25.75 inch or 628 mm scale length, as used by Gibson. The neck has a stacked heel made of maple and mahogany. The neck is joined with a tenon and treated with a polyurethane finish.
The Cheetah 1 uses an Iron Gear Hot Slag Humbucking pickup in the neck position. It is mounted in a circular holder made from bubinga that allows the pickup to be rotated to adjust the tone. The pickup produces a beautiful warm, clean sound at low volumes but becomes filthy when the gain is increased. The pickup can be coil-tapped with a push-pull volume pot. A three-way switch allows selection between the neck pickup and a piezo pickup integrated into the tunomatic bridge. A push-pull tone potentiometer switches in a blending potentiometer that allows the contribution of neck and bridge pickups to be blended, allowing a huge range of sounds from heavy rock, jazz to 6 and 12 string acoustic sounds.
