James Hetfield has a long-standing signature guitar collaboration with ESP, made his bones playing a white Flying V knock-off, and is one of the world’s most high-profile proponents of the Gibson Explorer. But among the Metallica frontman’s arsenal of electric guitars are a handful of custom builds by a Californian luthier by the name of Ken Lawrence.
Lawrence is not your typical guitar builder. In fact, he was not really a guitar builder. At least, that was not his specialty. Bass guitars were his thing. So how did he end up making some of Hetfield’s most-famous six-strings – including an Explorer-style electric named Carl that was put together using the floorboards of Metallica’s old garage?
In a recent interview with Guitar WorldLawrence reveals all, explaining how Doug West, the now director of R&D at Mesa/Boogie, was his Metallica connection. West thought maybe then-Metallica bassist Jason Newsted would be interested in one of his friend’s designs.
“I would leave instruments at Mesa for Doug to show to whoever might be stopping by,” says Lawrence. “He took one of the basses to a Metallica rehearsal when they were working on their guitar rigs, to see if Jason Newsted might be interested. Doug told me that James liked the workmanship on the instrument and he kept flipping it back and forth, studying it. Then he asked if we could meet.”
The answer was yes. But there was a problem. Lawrence only had basses. Luckily, Hetfield could see the potential.
“That was kind of a strange interview because I didn’t have a single guitar to show him,” says Lawrence. “I went for a guitar commission with a carload of basses! I laid them all out on the floor, and he went, ‘Okay, let’s make a guitar.’”
That guitar would be an Explorer-style electric. Lawrence based the shape off one of Hetfield’s ESP and got to work. The headstock design would be radically different to the six-in-line headstock found on the ESP. This one was based on design by one of Lawrence’s friends and was originally intended for a five-string bass.
It looked like it you could hunt wild boar with it, which is probably why the guitar resonated with Hetfield. Lawrence tells Guitar World that the Metallica frontman liked what he saw.
“I brought those patterns to James and it was an instant fit,” he says. “In retrospect, there are elements of that headstock that actually mirror the Metallica logo – it’s funny how things in the cosmos line up.”
It wasn’t just Lawrence’s headstock designs that came out of left field. He had a taste for exotic tone woods and started sourcing some from Central America. The first Explorer-style electric he made for Hetfield – the Hunter – ended up with a mahogany body and a Chechen top. Lawrence has now made seven guitars for Hetfield and says an eighth could be on the cards.
That eighth would do well to have a better back story than Carl, which was made out of the floorboard’s of Metallica’s old garage. Carl is named after Carlson Boulevard in El Cerrito, California, Metallica’s Bay Area home and HQ from 1983 to 1986. They wrote Master Of Puppets in that garage.
When the garage got torn down, Andy Anderson, vocalist from local crossover champs Attitude Adjustment, saved some of the wood and gave it to Hetfield. Hetfield turned it over to Lawrence and he got to work. In a video posted to Metallica’s YouTube channelHetfield said he didn’t need to give Lawrence too much direction.
“I knew he could work with that wood,” said Hetfield. “I wanted it rustic. I wanted it like the garage was. The artists that we work with, if you give them too much direction then it’s not their art, in my opinion. You like an artist because you know what he does. Same with Ken. I know, as far as woods (go), he’ll make this thing playable, smooth, workable, so I wasn’t worried about the finish of this.”
What Hetfield worried about was Lawrence making it too clean. But the finished guitar still has the nails on the top. That top still looks like repurposed flooring. “You feel the wood,” said Hetfield. “You feel the grain. I mean, it’s almost like grooves in vinyl!”
Lawrence told the story of Metallica and their garage through that guitar. The inlays feature Kirk Hammett, Lars Ulrich (with lightning drum sticks), Hetfield, then there is the late Cliff Burton at the 12th fret.
“Ken is very into meaning and drew a story about what he thought would be fitting for this historical piece,” said Hetfield. The inlays are also a code, arranged in 3, 1, 3, 2 groupings to signify Metallica’s old address, 3132 Carlson Boulevard. The details are incredible.
There are four silver half-dollars on the back for each member, and another commemorative Master Of Puppets detail on the inside of the control cover. The design’s practical too – that control cover is magnetic for easy access for Hetfield’s tech to switch out batteries for the active electric guitar pickups. It sounds great, too.
“Most of the clean songs that I do, whether it’s Nothing Else Matters or One, or Sandman, when there’s picking at the beginning or something it is usually done on a Ken Lawrence guitar,” said Hetfield. “Because it’s got such a great sound to it in the clean department especially.”
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