Unlimited Tone At Your Command
Why a Somnium guitar? Because it lets you change the guitar voice without changing the guitar feel. Here is what we mean:
Imagine a premium quality hand-finished USA-built guitar with a great-feeling neck and killer body style that you just love to play, but now you want to try a different set of pickups to get different tones. Maybe you want to go from twangy single coils to meaty humbuckers. You might have to carve up the body to make the new pickups fit, and for sure you'll have to take it apart and re-wire it. That's a lot of work, and then you've lost the sound of the original pickups you just removed. Or you could buy another guitar with the pickups you want but that could mean losing the great feel of your current guitar. Every time you want to experiment with pickups, are you going to go buy another guitar, or re-wire the ones you have? That's what players have been doing for more than 80 years, but now there is another option.
Somnium guitars are engineered with a patented pickup cartridge system that lets you snap in any new pickup any time you want. You can install your own pickups into our cartridges with just a screwdriver (no soldering) and you can plug one, two or three pickups into your guitar. They can be active or passive, single coil or humbucker, even vintage shapes like a soapbar or lipstick tube. You can mix and match any combinations you want, and that's where the magic lies. You will have the ability to discover your favorite pickup combinations, tones you may have never experienced before. For example, snap a slanted T-style bridge pickup into the neck position and a filter tron humbucker into the bridge. You will be surprised at what a combination like that can do, and that grin on your face will be a dead giveaway that you have just discovered something amazing! The versatility you will have with unlimited pickup combinations is hard to describe until you try it for yourself.
You may have seen other guitars that have pickup-swapping ability but they are all limited in major ways. A Somnium is not limited to two pickup holes, nor only humbucker-sized pickups. You don't have to ship your pickups across the country for some specialist to solder them into a module before you can use them. Our cartridges are truly solderless and can hold any shape or size pickup including soapbar, lipstick tube and slanted configurations. When we say "unlimited" pickup combinations, we actually mean it!
Somnium guitars are premium USA quality built out of solid woods just like many other high-end guitars, and you can get the neck in any wood, profile or thickness that you like with whatever fretboard and radius feels best. Get awesome playability and feel with no limits to the tones at your command. Best of all, every Somnium guitar is completely made in the USA from scratch and hand-fitted and finished to the highest quality standards. We build real guitars for real musicians, and music has no limits, so why should your guitar? Somnium, the most versatile electric guitar ever made.
Why is this guitar different from others?
You may have seen other guitars with pickup swapping capabilities that claim to be "perfected" or "unlimited". Not even close. Here is why we are so much more:
- No restriction on pickup size or shape. We don't have only two fixed-size holes as your only options. Use any 2 or 3 pickup combinations, humbuckers or single coils. We don't just claim to be unlimited, we really are.
- Mechanical latching system. We don't put magnets near your pickups which are magnetic in the first place. Our cartridges will not color your tone.
- Passive circuit that also runs active pickups. Together. Yes, mind blown.
- Install pickups yourself. You don't have to ship pickups to our factory for installation; do it yourself in just minutes and without soldering.
- Hot swap on-the-fly. Our direct-access modules snap in and out so smoothly, securely, quickly and quietly that you can change them out in the middle of a song if you wanted to, in 2 seconds flat. Really.
- Top quality USA materials and craftsmanship. We don't outsource our manufacturing or quality control to cheap-labor countries. We use hand-selected woods and metal, machined and hand-finished here in the USA for a professional guitar you will be proud to own and use for many years.
- But wait . . . there is more. Somnium has additional designs and capabilities that we will be revealing in 2020. If you think you're amazed now . . . just hold on!