Mason Bernard

guitar The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected string ...

s are primarily

stratocaster The Fender Stratocaster, colloquially known as the Strat, is a model of electric guitar designed from 1952 into 1954 by Leo Fender, Bill Carson, George Fullerton, and Freddie Tavares. The Fender Musical Instruments Corporation has continuously ...

-style solid body

electric guitar An electric guitar is a guitar that requires external amplification in order to be heard at typical performance volumes, unlike a standard acoustic guitar (however combinations of the two - a semi-acoustic guitar and an electric acoustic gu ...

and electric acoustics made from 1990 to 1992 by Bernie Rico, the founder of

B.C. Rich B.C. Rich is an American brand of acoustic and electric guitars and bass guitars founded by Bernardo Chavez Rico in 1969. History The company started making electric guitars in the 1970s. In the following decade B.C. Rich gained a broad expo ...

, and feature the "M Bernard" branding on the

headstock A headstock or peghead is part of a guitar or similar stringed instruments such as a lute, mandolin, banjo, ukulele and others of the lute lineage. The main function of a headstock is to house the pegs or mechanism that holds the strings at the ...

. It is believed that about 225 guitars were made, but there are examples of Mason Bernard guitars with serial numbers as high as 352 and at least one acoustic model has been discovered in the wild. There were two electric models and one limited acoustic model produced. The MB-1 was based on the BC Rich ST III body, and featured a

humbucker A humbucking pickup, humbucker, or double coil, is a type of guitar pickup that uses two wire coils to cancel out the noisy interference picked up by coil pickups. In addition to electric guitar pickups, humbucking coils are sometimes used in ...

pickup in the bridge position and single coil pickups in the middle and neck positions. The Standard model was based on the BC Rich Assassin template, and had a slanted humbucker pickup in the bridge position and a slanted single coil pickup in the neck. All models were handmade, and featured a recess behind the lower horn to make access to the upper frets easier. Both electric models were produced with bolt-on necks, however there are examples of neck-through construction. The bolt-on models had an angled neck plate to further facilitate better access to higher frets. The BE-140 acoustic featured a piezo pickup in the bridge and a 21 fret cut-away body style. They are even more rare than the electrics with only one known example found "in the wild" with others only being built to order. Most of the Mason Bernards have plain ebony finger boards, however there are some special player guitars that feature inlays. Many Mason Bernard guitars have custom graphics. They were made with both normal and reversed headstocks. There are examples of both non-recessed and recessed

Floyd Rose The Floyd Rose Locking Tremolo, or simply Floyd Rose, is a type of locking vibrato arm for a guitar. Floyd D. Rose invented the locking vibrato in 1976, the first of its kind, and it is now manufactured by a company of the same name. The Floyd ...

tremolos In music, ''tremolo'' (), or ''tremolando'' (), is a trembling effect. There are two types of tremolo. The first is a rapid reiteration: * Of a single note, particularly used on bowed string instruments, by rapidly moving the bow back and f ...

References

B.C. Rich electric guitars Electric guitars {{electric-guitar-stub