WHY HAVE WE MADE THE CELESTOR?
Hello there. I’m Morten Bau, founder of Baum Guitars®, and I’d like to put some words on our new model: Celestor™.
This is Baum’s take on a design, a sound, and a way of playing that has influenced me throughout my whole life. The first guitar I ever built was an S-type in 1990. Not a pretty one, but it played and sounded great.
But the Celestor is more than just a homage to a classic. The Celestor is full of classic Baum elements that are our DNA in every guitar.
The Celestor is more than the sound we grew up with. It is the sound we want to take with us into the future.
WHY MAKE ANOTHER S-TYPE?
Simply because I had to. But it had to be our own, and not just another one.
This guitar design may be the most important – not just in my guitar life but in many other people’s too. It has revolutionized the guitar world several times – while never really changing itself. As a designer too, I have much respect for such a timeless design.
As I started, this sound was a very important part of my upbringing. I listened to a lot of Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, David Gilmour, and Stevie Ray Vaughan in my teens – those guitar players are the soundtrack to my early life.
I have therefore always known that I should make my own one day. The difficult task has been to find our way of doing it, so we didn’t just make another one…, but bring something new to the stage like we intend to do with all our instruments.
The Celestor has taken more than 5 years – and many, many iterations – to complete. Some may remember our version 1.0 called the Cooper from 2018. A solid mahogany body with a Bigsby system and our prototype Goldsound Single coils. It was a great guitar and I hand-built 2 Cooper guitars before the design was paused and put back into my drawer. Except, I never stopped thinking about completing this design.
The most difficult thing in a design process is to find the right balance between the familiar and the new. There is no doubt that this is a design that evokes feelings within most guitarists, and we have approached this design with our utmost respect to strike the balance of making it our own now.
From a distance, the Celestor may look familiar to you. But once you get closer to it, you’ll start noticing why it is its own. Once you get it in your hands, you’ll understand how familiarity meets something new and exciting.
That’s why we’re really proud to present the Celestor to you.
CELESTOR SPECS
WOOD
The Celestor has a solid mahogany body, a roasted maple neck, and a solid rosewood fretboard.
The mahogany body has been a constant in the Baum sound and design since day one. I have always been a fan of this wood for its tone and workability. Mahogany makes amazing bodies and gives the guitar profound sustain with a focused and articulate note.
With a body thickness of just 42 mm, the Celestor is thinner than the average S-type. A slimmer body is also something we know will improve the resonance, which is why all our guitars are between 36-42 mm thick.
Roasted maple has 3 main strengths:
- First, by roasting the maple you artificially ‘age’ the wood and thus create some of that distinct character that vintage guitars have. This happens as roasting speeds of the process by which the moisture, oils, and sugar are removed leaving the wood more stable and less affected by changes in climate. In other words, it will not contract/swell, nor warp or be damaged over time due to changes in temperature and humidity. Likewise, it will also maintain its setup more consistently thus requiring less work and adjustment throughout time.
- The second benefit is that the tonal character changes and gets better. By removing moisture and more, you get a neck that is much more resonant.
- Lastly, it looks amazing. The maple changes color to a dark-ish brown when the sugar and oils content start to crystalize inside the wood.
GOLDSOUND VERVE™ PICKUPS
Our custom-made Goldsound® pickups have been the backbone of the Baum sound since I started Baum almost 10 years ago. So we designed and developed a new set called Verve™ for the Celestor.
To get the sound we had in our heads: a clear, punchy, and yet dynamic sound that gives you all the expression needed for your performance, we designed a set with endless possibilities.
The core is Alnico V magnets giving a broad frequency response and solid output. The neck and middle pickups read 7.3K and 7.5K while the bridge pickup is boosted to 8.5K to fatten the tone and compensate for the lesser string vibration in this area.
Furthermore, we have added a brass plate underneath the bridge pickup to tweak the frequencies with extra bass and mid tone which overall makes this pickup more versatile and pleasant.
CUSTOM-MADE HARDWARE
We’ve gone all-in on our own hardware. We are constantly shaping the Baum experience to be even more our own, and the Celestor is full of our own custom-made hardware.
We have then opted for the modern block saddles to give you a comfortable and sleek-looking bridge made of steel to boost the top-end in your tone. On the back, you’ll find the heart of the TrueTone tremolo: a solid brass block that introduces a warmer, richer bottom end and gives you great sustain.
Together, this combination gives you an almost 3-dimensional sound.
TREMOLO FOR TRUE TONE
The TrueTone™ tremolo system is new and developed specifically for this project. We always reach out to our dear Baum artists for feedback on what their needs are. The result is a tremolo that combines the charms of vintage with the functionality that today’s players need.
Starting with a 6-point tremolo for increased connection between the tremolo and body to provide as much vibration to transfer from the strings to the body as possible. More contact simply means more resonance and sustain.
PRECISION TUNERS
Our Precision Tuners™ are also new to the Baum line-up and are available on all our models from 2024. These high-ratio (21:1 gear) tuners also feature a solid brass shaft as we believe that all contact points with the string and body are crucial to the overall tone and resonance.
THANK YOU
Finally, I just wanted to say thank you again for how the Celestor has been received.
We have designed this model with much respect for the legacy surrounding this kind of guitar, and we believe that we bring our take to it.
Now we just need to get the Celestor on stages, and this is where you enter the picture.
We cannot wait to see these in your hands.
– Morten Bau
Founder of Baum Guitars
OTHER NEWS AND UPDATES
