Master guitar designer, Andy Powers, has played or worked on the music industry’s greatest instrument designs, but in his recent design of the new Powers Electric A-Type he has reached for something more: an electric guitar with not only great musical utility and playability, but with fresh West Coast look and unique innovations that are sure to inspire. “I wanted a sound and a feel I didn’t have,” he says. “I wanted something that shared in the inspirations of past makers but was created for a more modern context. That meant creating a fresh design from the ground up.”
The A-Type is a fully enclosed, slim hollow body guitar with a unique body shape and range colors inspired by the culture of North County San Diego where Powers grew up. With a design influenced by the area’s rich cultural blend of SoCal surf, skateboard, auto craft, music, and art, the A-Type looks great. Just as important, all of its components have been carefully designed and built in-house, so the guitar offers advanced players the precision, feel, and playability of a fine instrument with no off-color notes, dead frets or useless pickup positions. With the A-Type, Powers strived to create a guitar that “sounds and feels amazing every time you pick it up, inspires you to explore fresh ideas while allowing you to sound more like you.”
With a body shape that echoes the lines of classic cars, hot rods, and surfboards, the A-Type is lightweight and perfectly balanced whether you’re standing or sitting. The contoured armrest and radiused body edges add to the playing comfort. The neck was designed to feel good in all positions with the treble side of the neck being slightly flatter all the way from the first fret to the end of the fretboard. This allows for maximum playability and easier, choke-free string bending.
A new single-coil pickup design adds to the unique features of the A-Type. It’s a bit of old and new blending a modern magnetic structure with an old inspiration. This design allows the strings to vibrate more naturally and produce both fidelity and warmth. It comes in two variations:
The trussed hollowbody design of the body includes two internal soundposts fitted into a braced, solid-wood top. This allows the top and back to move in tandem which maximizes resonance, suppresses feedback and creates a lyrical sustain.
Bridge and precision tailpiece of Powers Electric A-Type (Image credit: Powers Electric)
Any discussion of the A-Type wouldn’t be complete without mentioning the Powers Electric tailpieces: CamTail (camshaft tailpiece) and Hardtail designs. Powers says, “I engineered a camshaft tailpiece with string ramps compensated for tension and gauge so the strings move in pitch relative to each other.” It’s actually machined in-house to ensure precision and smooth operation. The top-loading Hardtail tailpiece is available for players preferring a fixed-pitch setup.
For colors and finishes, players can choose from a rich, vibrant palette of options inspired, of course, by hot rods and classic cars. Choose from two finish styles: solid, classic auto-inspired colors or select figured maple and transparent bursts. More than 100 color finishes have been produced to date and more are on the way.
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If the A-Type has not been on your radar, it’s not a surprise. For the last year or so the company has kept a low-profile. They launched initially just to a few retailers and worked with several on-the-road artists, evolving the design in response to player feedback. Now that Powers Electric is ready to go global, it will be available through select dealers across the UK and Europe, along with Canada and Australia. For up-to-date information visit Powers Electric or find a dealer at Find a Dealer – Powers Electric.
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