Pre Owned 48th Street Custom Guitars S Style Partscaster Built by Akira “Aki” Suzuki With HSC

48th Street Custom Guitars was a legendary workshop on a legendary street in New York City, renowned in the 1980s for crafting custom instruments. These guitars frequently incorporated ESP components and showcased distinctive, hand-built designs tailored for session players and touring professionals.  

We just took this one in, and right away, we were super impressed.  It has a beautiful natural ash body with a finely sculpted maple neck that is rock solid.  A unique feature is that it's topped with a ebony fretboard.  It's super comfortable to play with a C profile (.860 - .953"), 1.6875" nut width and a 12" radius on the fretboard for fast playing and easy bending.  Also, it sports a brass nut.  The

A main calling card are the EMG S ceramic single active coil pickups, something you don't see very often.  This set is the ceramic version of the original SA (alnico) pickups.  Designed for those that want bright & clear sounds without the hum, the pickups have a ceramic bar magnet that provides balanced tone that stays even in output, especially during big bends (perfect for a guitar with a 12" radius like this).   EMG's design sets this pickup apart from typical single coils by incorporating internal shielding and a low impedance preamp, resulting in virtually noise-free performance while preserving the true single coil tonal character.These pickups are versatile, and useful for a variety of styles, from jazz to metal.  You get a lot of output, with some serious sizzle on the top end and a good amount of steak on the bottom end.

These are active pickups with a preamp, requiring a 9 volt battery.  You'll notice there is no battery door - it's held in the tremolo cavity.  The circuit on the lower tone control is an old-school EMG SPC. It’s a midrange boost to fatten up single coils into humbucker territory.   The guitar is wired like a traditional Strat where there’s no tone control affecting the bridge pickup, just the neck and middle pickups. The SPC affects all three. 

Check out the additional photos of the inside of the guitar, showing the battery compartment, underside of the pickups, and the preamp.

We were told that this particular guitar was built by Akira “Aki” Suzuki in 1987.  We don't have a way of verifying this, but this came from the previous owner's widow, who brought the guitar to us.

It's in great condition, especially considering it's age.  A gig bag is included.  The techs in our shop have set it up to play perfectly.  48th Street Custom Guitars are sought after, and one like this is rather rare - and quite nice!  It's a great find for those that know.