Instruments Railboard®
Through-neck beam: frets and structure from a single piece of aluminum
The integral Rails are .060" high off the deck and are exceptionally smooth to the fingers for trills and slides. Their tips are collectively machine cut to form an evenly planed playing surface, then a subtle depression of gradated relief is cut into this flat plane of Rail tips at the low pitched half of the fretboard, dipping deeper under the lowest bass strings. This mechanized fret "dressing" operation accommodates all familiar Stick type tunings with no further fret work needed, just the hard anodizing process to provide an oxide surface extremely resistant to wear.
Colored hard-anodized coatings
The beams have a transverse pattern of finely cut lines running from nut to bridge. This machine cut surface texture has a slight glow in the way it diffuses light, contrasting nicely with the darker Rails and affording a better view of the frets under various lighting conditions. The surface pattern looks a lot like thin round wound guitar strings running across the board at right angles to the real strings. The anodized color is uniform over all surfaces of the neck beam, but the textured fingerboard surface makes the Rails stand out.Another option is a very hard metal-plasma coating with a brushed texture between the frets to diffuse the reflected light.
5 anodized colors
The Five hard-anodized colors: plum, bronze, blue, black and deep red
3 metal plasma colors
Gold, nickel and "gunmetal" colored very hard vapor depost metal plasma coatings (this option not currently available). n
Metal plasma beam closeup
Gold metal plasma Railboard closup, with black glitter dot inlays. (this option not currently available)
Railboard parts.
All of the parts that make up the Railboard.
Black anodized beam closeup
Black hard anodized surface shows the traverse lines pattern between the frets, and the exposed fret ends.
Gold metal plasma rear view
The belt hook pedestal mounts on the beam, and the R-Block module wraps around it.
Optional very hard metal plasma vapor deposit coatings (this option is not currently available)
Whereas our regular Railboard productions are hard-anodized to build up the thickest possible layer of rock-hard aluminum oxide on all aluminum surfaces, this zirconium-based plasma coating is even harder and is commonly used on drill bit tips to prolong work life. The front fretboard surface is brushed before vapor coating to diffuse the shine and create more of a glow. The Rails themselves are mirror finished and contrast nicely with the brushed spaces between them. The feel is very smooth for string bending and vibratos. Rear and side surfaces and fretboard marker cavities are also mirror finished. This metallized finish adds $300. to the price of the Railboard. It's a costly four-step process of building layers onto the machine cut aluminum neck beam, starting with copper, then nickel, then chrome and lastly the very hard plasma coating.Inlays
A variety of linear or dot inlays are excavated and then filled with colorful materials or left as exposed aluminum, and are spaced in our familiar trademark pattern of five frets apart, indicating major 2nd, perfect 5th, octave and upper 4th positions along the fretboard. The 45-degree beveled Rail edges are also exposed and act as small, silvery triangular markers at every fret position. mora about Railboard inlays...
Gold metal plasma Railbaord
Gold metal plasma Railboard with black and gold tuners and black glitter inlays.
Tail section of plum anodized Railboard
The channel for adding a MIDI pickup is already machined by the bridge.
Plum anodized rear view
The rear of the beam holds the truss rod in its "keel".