What makes this guitar worth your attention?
I've owned, played and delivered a lot of Knaggs guitars over the years, but this one appealed to me for a different reason. The Apollo 11 Kenai wasn't simply another limited color or special wood package. There was a very personal story behind the guitar for Joe.
Joe grew up in Bowie, Maryland, where his father and other fathers in the area were involved in the Apollo engineering effort. He has talked about remembering the Apollo 11 launch and the celebration when the astronauts first walked on the Moon. When Peter Wolf and Bob Bohmer came up with the idea of depicting Apollo 11 on a fingerboard, it clearly meant something to Joe.
Pearlworks did a wonderful job turning that idea into the artwork on the guitar. The Saturn V launches up the ebony fingerboard, the scene progresses toward the Moon, and the Apollo theme continues onto the headstock and engraved astronaut truss-rod cover. It's one of those inlays where you really need to look closely to appreciate all the detail.
The guitar itself is a beautiful Tier 2 Kenai, with a flamed maple top over mahogany, a highly figured Rock maple neck, ebony fingerboard and Seymour Duncan Seth Lover humbuckers. I particularly like the understated Faded Winter Solstice finish because it doesn't compete with the fingerboard artwork.
This is Apollo 11 #7, Kenai #816. I've kept it NOS and have never played it, so I won't pretend to give a tonal review of this individual guitar. For me, its importance is as an exceptionally well-preserved example of a very unusual Knaggs limited run—complete with its original Knaggs case, case candy and special Apollo 11 50th-anniversary certificate.
It's a guitar that combines two stories: the early history of Knaggs Guitars and one of the defining achievements of the twentieth century.
— Gary Thomas