Washburn "Brunette" backside. I had to remove the back of the guitar's body to remove and modify the bracing. The strat style backplate was added in case repair work was ever needed on the electronics. The entire cavity of the guitar is coated with a sheilding paint that is no longer available on the market (I think it caused cancer in lab animals or for people to become involved in politics or something horrible like that...) An interesting phenomenon I discovered while working on this guitar was that the top vibrated different notes (frequencies) in different areas of the top. To help defeat feedback I turned the guitar up real loud and let it feedback while tracing my fingers lightly over the top to feel where the vibrations had gone out of control. I then marked this area under the top and added varying amounts of "envirotex", a two-part epoxy mixture to deaden these "hot spots". This guitar sounds like a million bucks! Imagine a guitar that is so clean sounding it hurts your teeth but add a little distortion to it and it will peel your face off. Ah the perfect blend of Hannibal Lectur and Eric Johnson! If I could only keep one guitar from my arsenal of happy mutants this would probably be the one. Affectionately nicknamed "The Beast" by my roadcrew this guitar weighs in at a svelt 15 pounds! This is probably why I am built like Arnold Schwarzenegger (not).