Designed to deliver sounds that Townsend favors, which basically means ultra-heavy to Telecaster bright, the Stormbender is a beautifully made double-cutaway instrument with a high-gloss black finish that’s offset by an eye-shaped section of exposed flamed-maple on the top. The body contours make it very comfortable to hold seated or standing, and the way the neck flows seamlessly into the body makes it super easy to reach the entire span of the ebony fretboard, where the only marker (aside from white side dots) is Townsend’s “O” motif inlaid in pearl at the 12th position.
To enhance playability, the Stormbender features a Plek treatment, which is a computer-guided process that scans, levels and dresses the frets to a high level of accuracy. The extra-tall jumbo frets are highly polished and the ends trimmed so perfectly that you can barely feel them. The factory setup yielded low action with minimal fret buzz, and the Graph Tech nut was accurately notched and the corners rounded off. The Stormbender sounds in tune along the neck, and the Evertune bridge is a big factor on this guitar, as it basically self-adjusts to keep the strings solidly in tune. There are a few steps involved in getting an Evertune adjusted, and some of it can seem a little counterintuitive — like when setting it to allow bends, or, conversely, adjusting it so that the strings simply can’t be bent or squeezed out of tune, which can be handy when tracking rhythm parts.
Once you get comfortable with how this clever mechanism operates, it’s very easy to be seduced by how well it keeps the strings in tune no matter how hard you play or the temperature or humidity level of the performing environment. I left this gloss-black guitar in the hot sun for more