Help for Heroes Guitar Flight Case

This guitar was hand crafted by Bob and Terry Young – the father and son team behind The Kids Room company, TKR Guitars, to be donated as a prize in aid of Help for Heroes.

Since Bob Young was diagnosed wit Parkinson’s Disease 7 years ago, his playing ability has become sporadic and unreliable. However, his love for guitar music and guitars has never waned so he turned his talents to creating individual, eye catching hand crafted instruments such as this, The Quocaster, an homage to the instruments played by Rick Parfitt and Francis Rossi of Status Quo.

This Quocaster is still in the construction stage with construction fixings. After being autographed it will go into the TKR Guitars workshop where it will be fully stripped down and the body will receive a further ten coats of clear lacquer. The guitar will then be rebuilt with show quality fixings.

The upper hald of the double neck guitar is very similar in specification to Rick Parfitt’s guitar setup, having standard Fender Telecaster™ pickups and a Gibson™ style bridge. However, the bridge on the Quocaster is of the wrap-around stoptail bridge type with intonation relief built in, as opposed to the through body strung setup on Mr Parfitt’s guitar.

The lower half is very similar in specification to Francis Rossi’s guitar setup, having three Fender Lace Sensor™ pickups in the standard Stratocaster™ configuration. The stoptail bridge is a prototype designed by TKR Guitars and manufactured by BAE Systems 25 hangar at Warton. The part was then sent for decorative chrome plating via BAE’s sub contractor Silverfield Ltd, who in turn passed it to Aqua Plating in Preston to carry out the plating process. Special thanks go to BAE Systems Warton.

The flight case for the Quocaster is a bespoke case manufactured by Trifibre of Leicestershire, embroidery by Example Embroidery Leicestershire, with special thanks going to Sophie Roberts, Trishanth Parari, Steve Daly and Louise White of Trifibre.

The artwork on the back of this Quocaster was airbrushed and hand painted by Bob Young depicting soldiers in close proximity to an exploding I.E.D. in the background and an amputee in civilian clothing on crutches in the foreground. An evocative image I’m you’ll agree.

Finally, very special thanks go to Mr Rick Parfitt and Mr Francis Rossi for agreeing to autograph this guitar and thereby increase its desireability as a piece of Status Quo memorabilia.

Details of how you may win this guitar will be made available on the Facebook group ‘Help for Heroes Charity Guitar’.