Who Needs A Double Neck? SLASH

Lore has it that Slash doodled the design on a napkin in 1993.  

Guild accomplished the mission with a custom Crossroads Double Neck a year later.

A few may have hit the streets prior to 1997, but that was the first year it appeared in Guild’s catalog.  It’s a 12-string chambered acoustic above a solid body electric 6-string.  

Slash called his original green prototype “Godzilla”.

Specs: Mahogany body, Maple top, Maple necks, Rosewood fretboards (unbound on acoustic neck), Seymour Duncan humbuckers, Fishman UST for acoustic, Mini-toggle to switch between guitars, 2 volume and tone controls plus 3-way switch for electric

Five years before Slash doodled his vision for a 12-string acoustic and electric double-neck guitar there was Gary Shockley of Atco, NJ dreaming up the same thing.  

Shockley did more than doodle. He applied for a U.S. patent in 1988 and it was granted in 1991. Patent # 4987815 

Shockley’s design is intuitive and rather basic in many ways. A few key features:

Separate amp jacks for each guitar mounted on base of acoustic

Volume/tone controls for electric are on top of acoustic

No pickup selector switch 

The acoustic has an internal microphone

The electric solid-body is more or less grafted onto a dreadnought shoulder then both are covered with the top.