From the guitars sold under his eponymous brand in the 2000s to his current Novo brand, Dennis Fano has presented the guitar world with some of the most distinctive American-made instruments of the past 20 years. The newly revamped Miris J from Novo’s new Nucleus Series is a case in point.
The big-name makers aside, any designer and manufacturer of electric guitars faces a twofold challenge when making inroads into the market: to create designs that look new enough to make their mark, and yet are not so radically unfamiliar as to be unapproachable. Dennis Fano is entering his third decade of threading that needle with stunning ease.
After making his past-meets-future, play-worn Alt de Facto line in his own small shop for several years, Fano joined up for a time with the Premier Builder’s Guild in California before launching Novo Guitars, now based in Nashville. He’s been going from strength to strength with his designs ever since.
The entirely original Novo line has earned more attention – as well as more star endorsements – than anything Fano made previously, while firmly lodging his work among the more enduring boutique shops. Through its relatively short existence, Novo has also evolved through various dealer- and direct-based distribution systems.
Fano currently uses a more efficient direct-only purchasing network that includes both standard models – the Nucleus Series, available with a range of preset options and a one- to two-month delivery window – and a Custom Order option with a much broader range of bespoke features and completion in about 12 months. Our review sample is from the former, yet it looks anything but “standard.”
Although Novo has introduced other body types, including the single-cutaway Solus line (reviewed in December 2020), the large-bodied, dual-cutaway, offset-waist style is the maker’s signature look, as seen in its Serus J model. The Miris J is easily recognizable as its direct descendant, with similar Jazzmaster-meets-Rickenbacker lines and proportions applied to a semihollow design.
“The Serus J has been our most popular model from the beginning,” Fano tells us, “so introducing a semihollow version a few years later seemed like a pretty sound move, and it worked out well. The Miris is now our second most popular model.”
These solid and semisolid siblings have caught on with indie and alternative guitarists in particular, landing in the hands of both Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy and Nels Cline, Soccer Mommy’s Sophie Allison, and Slider’s Maria Schneider, but Fano tells us he had no intentions or predispositions when sketching out the Miris J.
“I don’t have a target player in mind when I set out to design a new guitar, and that approach gives me immense creative freedom,” he explains. “I view my designs as being reverent of tradition without being traditional. The absence of tradition invites players to pick up a Novo without any preconceptions of what the guitar is or what it does, and my hope is that will in turn allow players of all styles of music to be creative and find their unique, individual voice.”
He’s clearly onto something. Cline, who’s known for playing jazz, fusion, and indie rock, is often cited as a Jazzmaster player, but he told me two years ago he was deeply enamored of the Miris J that Dennis Fano built for him in 2019. “That’s my favorite guitar,” he raved, “and I have to say that it’s hard to turn my head with new guitars.”
It’s easy to see how a Novo could do that trick. It has the feel and vibe of a rediscovered make from the golden age of the electric guitar, evidenced in the thin and often pre-aged nitrocellulose finishes, such as our example’s Lake Como Blue, which beautifully shows off the grain of the swamp ash body.
It’s there as well in the tactile feel of the play-worn roasted-maple necks, and other touches. In addition, every Novo I’ve played has benefited from immaculate fret dressing, tight and tidy assembly and setup, and highly functional electronics and hardware.
The newly revamped Miris J is no different, and adds several appealing nuances to the look and feel without presenting any severe departures from the blueprint.
“The 2024 Miris has a few updates that I first incorporated into a run of Signature Miris JG guitars a short while back,” Fano explains. “These include a ‘cat scratch’ soundhole that echoes the shape of the control plate, a Serus pickguard and metal control plate, a tummy contour, and rounded back edges on the body.”
Perhaps the most significant change is the Novo NV vibrato by Mastery. As Fano reveals, he approached Mastery designer/owner John Woodland last fall seeking a proprietary tremolo. They somehow turned it around in time for the January NAMM show.
“I’m always looking for new ways to elevate Novo and set us apart,” Fano states. “I designed a distinctive, oversized baseplate with our tri-plate logo engraved in it and a striking lightning-bolt–shaped vibrato arm with a nickel-plated, machined aluminum tip. The tip has a great feel in the hand, and the new arm keeps the fulcrum point centered over the vibrato, giving it a super-smooth feel.”
The vibrato is accompanied by Mastery’s acclaimed M1 bridge, with a set of vintage-style tuners anchoring the strings at the other end after their trip across a 1.65-inch nut made from unbleached bone.
The bolt-on neck is made to a scale length of 25 ½ inches and carved to a medium-C profile that measures .83 inches deep at the first fret. Its rosewood fingerboard carries 22 medium Jescar nickel-silver frets set into a compound 9.5 to 14–inch radius. A pair of Fralin P90s take it all out to the Switchcraft jack via a three-way switch and single volume and tone controls.
Tested through a tweed Deluxe–style 1x12 combo and a 65amps London head and 2x12 cab, the Miris J easily unveiled that “find your unique, individual voice” instrument that Fano sought to achieve.
The Fralin pickups selected for this guitar display that characteristic P90 grit and girth when pushed, making it a fun, snarly rock and roller when shown a little overdrive, but they also clean up extremely well, eliciting clear, articulate tones that suit more nuanced stylings.
A stream of consciousness–like collage of diverse riffs culled from retro-metal, punk, garage rock, twang, roots-rock, shoegaze-leaning indie, and even some pseudo-jazz found the Miris J leaping every hurdle and racing on for more, and doing so with considerably more playing comfort than the Miris Js I’ve played before.
The vibrato works smoothly, the neck feels sublime in the hand, and the entire guitar plays beautifully from nut to neck joint. In short, it’s another winner from Fano and the Novo stable, and a further bolster to this maker’s stellar reputation.
- Priced at $4,195 direct. Contact Novo Guitars.
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