The metal-clad, effects-loaded guitar that started it all...

"That is number one, numero uno! I think it was 2001. It was the first [custom] guitar. He and his family had been customers for years before that. Matt's dad is well known, and his uncles play, and most of the family is local [to Devon]. Matt used to buy amps from us, he bought a Soldano, a Matchless, a Marshall - he had quite a complicated rig, even in those days!

"I think the shape was pretty much left to me. He wanted a visual statement that nobody else would have. It was drawn by me, on the kitchen table as usual! I showed the drawing to Matt, and we changed a few things, nothing dramatic, and then made it.

"The Delorean was also the first guitar that I had clad with aluminium"

"The Delorean was also the first guitar that I had clad with aluminium. The trouble with working on your own in a workshop is that you don't get any third-party input. Once in a while, you need other people's opinions. So I took it into the shop, and at that point it was really rough - covered in file marks - and it looked really rough.

"By pure fluke, Matt was in the shop that day, so I showed it to him: 'Here you go, it's a work in progress.' At the time, I was thinking, 'How am I going to polish this? It's going to be an absolute nightmare to bring it up to a mirror finish,' which is what I'd assumed he wanted. He looked at it and said, 'That looks great, just like it is!' And I went, 'Ah, fantastic!' That saved me a lot of time!

"So it remained with its industrial finish, and as it had no coating, just bare aluminium, over time, it's corroded quite nicely and has become quite industrial-y old-looking, with that kind of steampunk vibe to it.

"It's not too bad [for noise]. In the last few years, we've discovered that Sustainers don't appear to work as successfully with metal-clad guitars. If anyone can explain that to me, then that'd be something, but there you go! Apart from that, no real problems. You've got your own screening there already - the whole guitar is effectively one whole piece of negative current!"