McSwain met Ryk Maverick of Starlingear through our mutual friend and client, Ben Moody of Evanescence and We are The Fallen. Ryk is an insanely talented designer and "took a shine" to McSwain's work. They immediately began working together on several guitars to showcase in Japan. From the mouth of McSwain himself - "It is an honor to collaborate with Ryk and more importantly... to call him one of my best friends!" The Starlingear Machine - features Ryk's sterling silver "Slickster" skull rivets, as well as a "fish bowl" with a sterling silver fish blowing S-Gear bubbles. The ebony fretboard is bound by aircraft aluminum and a pin line of copper with silver S-Gear fret markers. Kamikaze - This guitar was the 2nd in the Starlingear series. Ryk literally sketched his idea out on a bar napkin and we ran with it!! Ryk took his Kamikaze mask ring design and soldered it to a sterling silver gear that I enclosed in an old aircraft domed glass gauge housing. We then back lit the fixture with red LEDs. The Rising sun flag is made from aircraft aluminum and copper with miniature Kamikaze mask silver rivets. The neck is literally about 15 pieces of different woods and metals all carefully laminated together. The body is tone chambered mahogany. Pinstripe Racer - This is the 3rd in the Starlingear series. Again... Ryk came up with the brilliant idea of using fret wire as pin striping. McSwain used fret wire (normally for the frets on the neck) to seam the metal top guitars in the Machine series, but this was something new!! We inlaid Ryk's design into the guitar top and then stained the wood a blackish blue and polished it with wax. It is almost entirely hollow and SCREAMS!! More to come... stay tuned!!!