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Axel Hagen and his Blue Deco guitar

The Blue Deco is a four (4) pickup archtop jazz guitar, custom made for Axel Hagen. Axel wants to be prepared for any recording or session situation with one guitar that can do almost anything.

Here's Axel's comment on receiving and playing the guitar:

With finishing the "Blue Deco" Daniel Slaman has proven again his supreme craftmanship and dedication to meet a players demand. From the first moment we discussed the outline and details of my "Blue Deco" he has, as always, shown an open mind to convert a couple of my "crazy" ideas into in incredible beautiful and playable guitar.

Daniel built me a blond ES-250 two years ago and this instrument instantly became my first choice in perfoming and recording.(it let my other Guitars like my Guild Artist Award catch dust as a result).
I was totally satified with this instrument but still had some ideas about a new guitar in the back of my head. I wanted to have an 18 inch, D'Angelico inspired instrument with cutaway, and for a jazzguitar a bit unusual pickup setup: a P90 and Humbucker from Wizzardpickups in England (http://www.wizardpickupsltd.com/ ), together with an old OBL pickup I had lying around for years and a RMC hexaphonic piezo pickup in the bridge to be able to add an acoustic touch and midi option during recording or live performance.
The RMC I bought from Frank Krocker (http://frameworks-guitars.com/), who provided me with a great service in solving some technical details. I wanted an instrument with the focus on a strong amplified sound without it being that loud acoustically.

With playing Bebop I feel that a floating pickup on a mainly acoustic guitar is difficult to cut through a rhythm section and works better for instance in an invironment without or with very soft drums. For these occasions I have my Guild AA anyway and I was really looking for an addition to my existing instrument collection and not a copy of an existing one.

Daniel listened to all my ideas very well. I am fortunate that he knows my other instruments and my playing very well. He came up with the design for the "Blue Deco" a couple of weeks later in october 2005. The instrument was finished on May 12th 2006.
To describe the result I can only use superlatives. Allthough the guitar is only a couple of weeks old, it has become my first choice on the gigs I played since then.
Daniel created an instument with a soft, very balanced deep acoustic sound which amplifies really well and funny enough, sounds really acoustic when amplified.
The action and feel of the instrument is like its looks: marvelous and very inspiring. It is so easy to tune and stays in tune also incredibly, every note comes out perfectly all over the fretboard.
The guitar is a "Players Dream" and I am so thankful for knowing Daniel and being able to design an instrument like this. I had a lot of guitars in the past, including a couple of Gibsons and I was so fortunate to be able to play Jim Halls "D'Aquisto" on one occasion. I can only summarize that Daniel Slaman is a true artist and ranks in my opinion among the very best Archtop makers.

Axel Hagen, May 2006

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