Mason Bernard guitars are primarily stratocaster-style solid body electric guitar and electric acoustics made from 1990 to 1992 by Bernie Rico, the founder of B.C. Rich, and feature the "M Bernard" branding on the headstock. It is believed that about 225 guitars were made, [1] 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.
The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that usually has six strings. It is typically played with both hands by strumming or plucking the strings with either a guitar pick or the finger(s)/fingernails of one hand, while simultaneously fretting with the fingers of the other hand. The sound of the vibrating strings is projected either acoustically, by means of the hollow chamber of the guitar, or through an electrical amplifier and a speaker.
An electric guitar is a guitar that uses one or more pickups to convert the vibration of its strings into electrical signals. The vibration occurs when a guitar player strums, plucks, fingerpicks, slaps or taps the strings. The pickup generally uses electromagnetic induction to create this signal, which being relatively weak is fed into a guitar amplifier before being sent to the speaker(s), which converts it into audible sound.
Bernardo Chavez Rico was an American luthier specializing in guitars. Known as Bernie Rico Sr. or simply B.C., Rico was born in East Los Angeles, California. Working with his father, Rico began his career building Flamenco, Classical guitars, banjos, and ukuleles in the 1950s. Rico's original instruments were acoustic guitars made under the name B.C. Rico, Not to be confused with the line of import guitars made in the late 1970s and early 1980s. These acoustic guitars are very rare, with about 300 surviving.
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 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.
A humbucking pickup, humbucker, or double coil, is a type of electric guitar pickup that uses two coils to "buck the hum" picked up by coil pickups caused by electromagnetic interference, particularly mains hum. Most pickups use magnets to produce a magnetic field around the strings, and induce an electrical current in the surrounding coils as the strings vibrate. Humbuckers work by pairing a coil with the north poles of its magnets oriented "up", with another coil right next to it, which has the south pole of its magnets oriented up. By connecting the coils together out of phase, the interference is significantly reduced via phase cancellation: the string signals from both coils add up instead of canceling, because the magnets are placed in opposite polarity. The coils can be connected in series or in parallel in order to achieve this hum-cancellation effect, although it's much more common for the coils of a humbucker pickup to be connected in series. In addition to electric guitar pickups, humbucking coils are sometimes used in dynamic microphones to cancel electromagnetic hum.
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 tremolos.
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 Rose gained popularity in the 1980s through guitarists like Eddie Van Halen, Neal Schon, Brad Gillis, Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, and Alex Lifeson, who used its ability to stay in tune even with extreme changes in pitch. Its tuning stability comes through the double-locking design that has been widely regarded as revolutionary; the design has been listed on Guitar World's "10 Most Earth Shaking Guitar Innovations" and Guitar Player's "101 Greatest Moments in Guitar History 1979–1983."
