Bertram Nova Guitar with EverTune Bridge

About the Bertram Nova Guitar

The Bertram Nova guitar is a custom-made guitar that utilized the EverTune Bridge. Designed by Brett W. Bertram and built in Las Vegas, NV, USA, the Nova guitar boasts a beautiful bookmatched Koa top on a White Korina back and the fantastic new EverTune Bridge. It is laboriously finished with our hand-buffed Oil and Wax finish. Bertram Guitars oil and wax finish protects the wood while our buffings bring out the natural shine.

Push-pull volume pot splits either or both pickups to enable both single coil and double coil tones on the Directly Coupled Seymour Duncan SH4 (JB) and SH2 (Jazz) Pickups. A 3-way switch enables both or either pickups. A 24 fret Ebony fretboard on a Directly Coupled, 3 piece quartersawn Maple neck covers 2 full octaves while Black Sperzel locking tuners match the black volume knob. Finishing touches include an Ebony headstock overlay with bookmatched Koa truss rod cover cut from the same pieces as the top.

About the EverTune Bridge

The EverTune bridge corrects the age old tuning problems that have plagued steel string guitars since their inception. The bridge doesn't just keep the guitar in tune, it makes the instrument closer to correct pitch everywhere on the neck. I've been playing this EverTune equipped guitar every single day for over a year, and this amazing piece of mechanical engineering is still operating as advertised. The EverTune bridge makes playing even more of a joy. People who play and sing at the same time and people with especially sensitive ears will appreaciate this bridge all the more.

Everyone knows practicing can be chore when you're working toward mastering an art like playing a musical instrument. I learned long ago to keep my instruments out of their cases and on stands, where they're always within reach should the mood to play come over me. Even with this easy access there were many times when an out-of-tune guitar would kill the mood. Now there are no more excuses for skipping practice because the EverTune bridge keeps the guitar forever in tune!

What is Coil Tapping?

There are basically two types of guitar pickups: the Single Coil and the Double Coil a.k.a. the Humbucker. One could argue that the Single Coil pickup is best represented by the Fender Stratocaster and the Humbucker pickup by the Gibson Les Paul.

Traditionally, Single Coil pickups produce a hum (electronic noise) when plugged into an amplifier. Their tone is (generally speaking) thinner than a Humbucker. Humbuckers have a full, fat tone and produce no hum when plugged into an amp. Humbuckers are well suited to heavy, distorted sound because of their superior output and hum canceling characteristics. The Humbucker (Double Coil) pickup was created when someone, somewhere, sometime, discovered that when you place two Single Coil pickups next to each other, the hum cancels out, hence the name Hum-bucker. Each of these two styles of pickup has distinct tonal qualities that make it attractive, and each is available in wide output ranges.

Coil Tapping allows you to separate the two coils of a Humbucker pickup so that only a single coil is active. We use push-pull Volume potentiometers to change the pickup from Humbucker to Single Coil. This means that the Nova Guitar produces a tremendously wide range of tones, from "Sultans of Swing" to "System of a Down."