James Hetfield’s Kenneth Lawrence Explorer “Carl”

This custom-built guitar by Kenneth Lawrence holds a special piece of Metallica’s history, as it was crafted from wood salvaged from the garage where the band wrote their first two albums. In Metallica’s early days, they spent countless hours rehearsing and writing in that garage at a house where they were staying.

Years later, the band had the idea to buy that same garage and rebuild it in their rehearsal space. However, before they could make it happen, the new owners tore down the garage, putting an end to their plans.

Then, when Metallica began working on “Garage Days Re-Revisited,” James Hetfield thought of creating a guitar using some of that garage’s material. As it turned out, Andy Andersen, Hetfield’s old friend had kept some of the old boards, and he passed them along to James.

James reached out to Kenneth Lawrence, a luthier who had built guitars for him before, to see if they could transform the wood into a new instrument. The result was a guitar named “Carl,” after the address of the old house, 3132 Carlson Blvd, El Cerrito, CA.

Specs, Features

The guitar was built in the style of a Gibson Explorer. The body was built from mahogany, topped off with the wood from the Carlson garage, which had some nails in it as decoration. Ken also inlayed some rosewood pieces into this old wood, in order to have a good piece of wood to attach the bridge and the stop-tail piece to.

Also, “Carl” had a glued-on neck, also from mahogany, with an African Blackwood fretboard and a custom inlay designed by Serbian artist Petar Milivojević.

Here’s the three of us. And this is Cliff, so Kirk ‘the Ripper’ Hammett, who has the obvious sickle. That’s Lars with his lightning drumsticks, and that’s me, just being ominous, I guess. Then, there’s Cliff, portrayed as Orion, with the Sun across the bay and the bridge, us coming to join him in San Francisco, writing ‘Master of Puppets.’ Cliff passing and still watching over us in the sky as the Orion constellation.

But not only that, there’s the number 313 and then the two posts for the entrance—31 32 Carlson Boulevard—which adds another level of significance. I was like, ‘Oh, okay, that’s pretty deep.

James Hetfield – Metallica: James’ New Guitar from the “Garage Days”

According to Petar, he drew each of Metallica’s members based on their own personalities

Cliff was like James, he liked shooting from guns and you know, the constellation of Orion, he’s also an archer constellation so it was like a pretty good match I think to maybe describe his personality. James is like the silent figure, that’s something he always said he felt when he was younger. So he presents like a silent figure. Then we have Lars and lightning drum sticks, and I put the lightning there as well because he brought some ideas for Ride the Lightning.

Petar Milivojevic

Petar also designed the coins that were attached to a wood plate on the back of the guitar, each showing custom “skull” portairs of the band members.

As far as the hardware, the gutiar has the usual stop-tail piece and Tune-o-Matic setup, Sprizel locking tuners – but, there’s not a lot of info on the exact set of pickups used. Most likely, they are either the EMG 81/60 set, or the EMG “Het” set.

Usage

As far as usage, James said that he likes to use the guitar mainly for the songs that have clean parts in them, such as Nothing Else Matters, and One. As far as studio recordings, the guitar was featured on the song “Moth into Flame”.