Black Mesa Guitars
Nearly since they first left the Fender factory in Fullerton, California, the Stratocaster and Telecaster have
inspired luthiers and machinists to attempt to recreate and improve on what made them two of the most
revered instruments in existence. The philosophies of these luthiers range from a purist, nothing-but-the-original-spec approach to swearing by mysterious components and tonewoods whose characteristics are
so unquantifiably hallowed that you’d think they came from Tolkien’s Forest of Fangorn. Black Mesa Guitars
luthier Clint Dougherty falls somewhere in the middle. However, he says he bases all his tweaks and innovations on logic rather than any mystical tone juju.
TorsionLogic
Dougherty developed the TorsionLogic in
2005 because he’s always been attracted
to the idea of providing as much range and
upper-fret access as possible. He initially dab-
bled with neck-through designs but “didn’t
like the bright, sometimes brittle tone and
the inability to dismount the neck for repairs.”
So he moved on to set necks, but found
that “those styles have some of those same
issues plus some others, like the loss of
strength when routing pickup cavities.”
The son of a physicist who also played classical guitar, Dougherty always enjoyed both music and science. As a musician, his first love was drums, but he later fooled around with bass and then ended up
bonding with the guitar last. He’s been building Black Mesa Signature models—which feature a range
of customizable options and wood choices on unique body styles—for more than 10 years. But
perhaps his most distinguishing work is the player-friendly, science-based adjustments he came up
with to try to bring Leo Fender’s ideas into the 21st century.
“I wanted to find new and better ways to build things within the parameters and restraints imposed by the
physics of lightweight, hand-held tension structures, rather than simply replicating familiar instruments,”
Dougherty says. And then his wife ignited an “Aha!” moment for him that inspired implementation of his
TorsionLogic neck—a proprietary, rear-mounted bolt-on design that provides extreme access to upper
frets—on familiar body styles such as Stratocasters and Telecasters.
“After listening to me rant about how so many guitarists never look beyond the Strat, she said, ‘Well,
why not build a Strat with your neck system?’” Dougherty recalls. “So I realized it might be attractive
to players who love their classic styles to have a familiar look and feeling with two full octaves and
improved upper-fret access. It always seemed redundant to me to expend a huge amount of my time
and energy just going over ground that has been so thoroughly plowed over the years.”
After reading a 2007 American Lutherie
magazine article with substantial scientific
evidence that bolt-on designs “offer superior
resonance and sustain around the fundamental and successive harmonics, ” Dougherty’s
idea was solidified by scientific evidence. He
explains the logic behind the system as, “If
you move the neck pocket to the back of the
body, the neck heel can be made a lot longer,
greatly increasing the contact patch between
the neck and body without losing any of the
neck meat to pickup cavities. Additionally,
the torsional load produced by string tension
pulls the neck into the body, which further
improves the strength of the structure. There
is no honking slab of wood sticking out of the
body to screw the neck to, so there is plenty
of room to sculpt the joint and make the cutaways a lot deeper, as well. It’s really a way to
incorporate the best features of all three neck-mount styles—without the disadvantages.”
Since then, Dougherty has been building batches of Logicaster TL-T and TL-S models with the
TorsionLogic neck-mounting system, all while maintaining production on Black Mesa Signatures that
also use the TorsionLogic system.
The Logicaster Body
Standard TL-T models come with a quilted
maple top and sapele body, but the TL-T
shown here has a custom chambered body
that reduced the guitar’s weight to 6 lbs. 14
oz., a more manageable weight that still maintains good resonance and a solidbody tone.
