Ready to Rock: Stonetone Music and Floyd Rose Offer New Granite
Stacy B. Williams
Special Contributor
Robert DiSanto of Stonetone ® Music is at it again, and this time he has made a granite accessory for electric guitars. When discussing society’s trending obsession with vintage, he notes musicians will always value vintage guitars. He makes a connection with the element of his trade and the tagline “music of the earth.”
“What’s more vintage than the age of the earth?” asks DiSanto.
Last November, he partnered with one of the biggest names in rock guitar equipment to share Stonetone ® with the world. DiSanto’s patented Stonetone ® Rock Block is now available exclusively through renowned guitar innovator and products distributor Floyd Rose. To understand the gravity of this new product hitting the musical market, it’s important to know a little about electric guitars and tremolo arms.
Apart from picking and strumming, hard rockers also use palm mutes, tapping and sweeps to produce different sounds on an electric guitar. Ultimately every musician may seek a different sound from their instrument just as every listener approaches music with a different ear. The tremolo arm, which is often called a whammy bar, is a controlling lever used to add vibrato to the sound by changing the tension of the strings, typically at the bridge or tailpiece of an electric guitar.
The tremolo arm allows musicians to lower or raise the pitch of a note or chord.
In the late 1970s, jewelry maker and amateur rocker, Floyd Rose, found that using the tremolo arm often caused his strings to go out of tune. After a couple years of tinkering with different materials, Rose designed and effectively constructed what is known today as the Floyd Rose Tremolo Locking System. Rose’s double-lock design stabilizes the tension in the strings even through extreme changes in pitch. Over the years, Floyd Rose has grown as a distributor and now offers guitars, tremolos, accessories and sound upgrades. DiSanto’s Stonetone ® Rock Block is one such upgrade known as a sustain block.
A sustain block is an additional accessory installed at the base of the fret board or at the end of the bridge to enhance and sustain the sound of the guitar. Most sustain blocks are made of metal, such as tungsten, brass or titanium.
In March 2013, DiSanto contacted his friend and professional guitarist, Ronny North, about his newest granite sound enhancer. North, who is also a fully endorsed musician for Floyd Rose, agreed to test out the new sustain block. He could not believe the difference. But after a few days, something seemed a little off.
“I just suggested to move the holes a little and then we were right out the gate,” said North, “I think we were both surprised how quickly we dialed it in after that.”
North had been searching to improve the sound of his main-stage guitar, a Roman guitar made for him, and the Stonetone ® Rock Block was the missing link. His newly released album was recorded with the Stonetone ® block.
DiSanto uses Volcano Black granite sourced from India. The pieces have already been through an initial milling and polishing process by the time they arrive at DiSanto’s workshop in Naples, Florida.
DiSanto guarantees that all of the production will stay in the U.S. There are four people assisting him with the sustain block production, but with an inaugural order of 10,000 blocks in the first year (or 500 to 800 per month), DiSanto seems to have his hands full.
According to Floyd Rose Marketing, signal loss from the guitar to the amplifier will be decreased by at least 30 percent with the Stonetone ® Rock Block. For DiSanto, he sees this new product release as the tip of the iceberg, in that it will open the door to bigger possibilities for the use of stone in musical instruments and North agrees.
“This is a whole new jumping point,” says North, “to show that stone is a viable option for guitars.”
In January DiSanto will be attending the 5th Annual NAMM Show, the largest conference of the National Association of Music Merchants, with Floyd Rose to promote the Stonetone ® Rock Block. DiSanto and North originally met at NAMM almost ten years ago, so this will certainly be an exciting event for them.
Visit www.stonetoneguitars.com and www.ronnynorth.com. for more information, and visit www.floydrose.com for pricing and locations to find the revolutionary Stonetone® Rock Block.