Nik Huber Bernie Marsden Signature
Dream gear to beg, borrow and steal for...
Nik Huber Bernie Marsden Signature €14,995
CONTACT Nik Huber Guitars
WEB https://nikhuber-guitars.com
Bernie Marsden is never short of a signature guitar. In recent years, his very mainstream PRS SE signature has gained quite a cult following; he even had a very rare Private Stock version. Then Gibson Custom Shop offered a Collector’s Choice Les Paul based on his well-documented 1959 ’Burst, ‘The Beast’, while in 2021 Cream T’s Thomas Nilsen scanned and recreated its pickups as the ‘Bernie Buckers’ – and now he has a new signature guitar to put them on.
“Just before the pandemic I was doing a clinic for GuitarPoint in Germany, where Nik Huber, who I’d met before, came down to see me. I asked him if he would make me a guitar. He looked at me and grinned and said, ‘Are you serious? I would love to make a Bernie Marsden signature!’” In fact, there are now two signature guitars: the flame-top version you see here in its Faded Sunburst semi-gloss finish at €14,995, and another in a Goldtop Semi-gloss colour, with Cream T P-90s, slightly less costly at €12,995. Huber will make only 12 pieces of each style.
Bernie’s new model is based on Nik Huber’s longrunning Orca, which starts around €5,495, and it differs in numerous ways from the guitar it’s inspired by, not least that it uses a 635mm (25-inch) scale length and is chambered. “Bernie asked me for our hollow version where we have big pockets left and right next to the centre block, and we also do a version where we counter-carve the top, like an archtop,” Nik explains.
“But I said, ‘Why don’t we do a honeycomb pattern?’ I’m not the first on the planet to do that, but I always had it in mind to create a more solidbody feel and sound with reduced weight. I also wanted to use this beautiful flamed mahogany I have that is too dense to use on a standard solidbody guitar.
“I chose the nicest Eastern maple I have [for the flame maple top]. I really picked the outstanding wood, the best I have in stock,” he adds. Another distinctive feature is the solid Madagascar rosewood neck and fingerboard, plus the guitar has a rounder heel, again requested by Bernie (“That different heel will never be used on any other model in my range,” says Nik), two volume controls and a master tone control.
“I got the pictured prototype [in April],” says
