R.I.P.

In the process of putting up a real site, this blog is officially abandoned. www.hdcustomguitars.com is partially up and running- check out the gallery pages- click on any guitar for more info.
cheers.

Big Steve

On the subject of local color....... Behold Big Steve. Master banjoist, classical guitarist, rockabilly fiend, and the only man I've ever seen drink four pitchers of beer without taking a leak. Steve's a retires Coast Guard quartermanster chief, acquired most of his instrumental chops while spending winters stuck in the arctic ice communing with the polar bears. He also has two of my guitars and just ordered a third. The first was sort of a communal gift for his fiftieth birthday. I did the work and forty or so regulars at our beloved microbrewery pitched in for the hardware. It was presented at about two in the morning by a scantily clad beauty who snuck up on him wearing the guitar. That's Steve in the picture, not the scantily clad beauty.

Sorry for the picture quality- shots of Steve just seem to naturally come out bleary. It's a maple/mahogany thinline, bound front & back in pearloid, with a Bigsby and P-100s. The shiny trucker girl (who, unlike Steve, isn't that indistinct in real life) is the soundhole. The silver is the flash refecting off the chrome tape lining the cavity, which needs to be there because of the flashing LEDs mounted inside. He's had this guitar for about four years- it came in for a checkup last month- filthy. Steve plays a lot, but mostly up in his room, mostly with beer & fried chicken. I felt like a shower after polishing it.

Guitar two is an eight string lap steel, which I unwisely volunteered to make after a Merrill steel he ordered from my shop got backordered.

Solid Koa (there's the unwise part- when I think about the tops I could have cut out of that chunk....) Birdseye board with purpleheart fretlines and binding. Hipshot bridge, grover tuners, aluminum nut. Tone control & pickup selector only, Steve uses a volume pedal for swells & such. The pickups were a pain- I wanted to use Lollars, but they put the project over budget. I then ordered pickups from Bill Lawrence (I think- there seem to be three different companies all claiming to be Bill Lawrence). After waiting nine months to get the pickups I was promised in two weeks, Lawrence sent me pickups with incorrect pole spacing. Meantime, of course, I had routed the pickup cavities to the specs Lawrence gave me and lacquered the guitar. After a few months of searching for a solution, I got saved when a luthier from Madison named Ellie Erickson randomly wandered into my shop. She was up in my neck of the woods on vacation, and wonder of wonders- winds pickups. She whipped up a pair and saved me from a savage beatdown at the hands of Big Steve.

Now Steve has commisioned a neck thru, which he insists on calling his "surf guitar". Walnut, Maple & mahogany, rosewood board, hipshot trem, hardware tba. I expect to string it up the second week of july. He's already talking about an electric banjo- I love this guy.

Been a while....

Almost two months since my last post- oops. Much to report, guitars for Redneck Jim, Jack Shock, Lawyer Fred, and others. I'll eventually write those up, first some catching up. The Rev has been playing his hot rod for two weeks now, and won't shut up about it. It sounds & looks great- he's even managed to refrain from hitting any cymbals with it. See previous post for details, here's some pics:

Progress

Be careful what you wish for- three new orders this week, ten guitars in the works in all. If I had faith that orders would keep coming in at this rate, I'd shut the store in a heartbeat and go full time. As it is, I won't see daylight anytime soon.

The Reverends Guitar is ready for spraying, although I'm rethinking my entire spray setup/finishing schedule. Here it is next to the Gretch that inspired it:

As mentioned in an earlier post, I had to modify the Bigsby to make it functional.:

The uprights will be replaced with stainless, cut to length, and capped with acorn nuts. They're countersunk into the bottom to protect the guitar top. Everything will get a good polishing, as well. I still don't understand how this piece of hardware is supposed to be used as manufactured. Oh well.

Rocket Man

Sometimes, one has to build an instrument around a piece of hardware., even against one's better judgment. I found this buried in a box that hasn't been opened for many, many, years. It's an oddball Bigsby model B16, which is by all accounts a terrible design. I really think it looks interesting, and the Reverend, a repeat customer and consistent finder of pawnshop crap (I'll try & find a pic of the guitar we put together from spare parts lying around the shop. In fifteen minutes. That he plays more than his stable of obscenely expensive vintage gear. I think its the light up green switches that did it.) just has to have it. The problem is that, unlike every other model of Bigsby, the unit lacks a second bar to provide downward tension on the strings before they pass over the bridge. I grabbed Beatle Larry's neck & a scrap 2x8 & mocked up the assembly. With a 4 degree neck angle and the tune o matic raised as far as it will go, there is nowhere near enough angle over the bridge. I don't quite get the point of this piece- Bigsby obviously knows they need a tension bar, it's on all their other models, sooo.......? I'll need to heavily modify this thing, what fun! The Reverend is selling off his flying V ("pitching it overboard" as he says) , and will now be without a funny shaped guitar. He brought me this picture:

It's a gretch Jupiter Thunderbird "Billy Bo", some sort of collaboration between Bo Diddley and Billy Gibbons. Other than the stack of tele bodies I still need to string up, I think I'm pretty much done with copying other folk's designs, excuse me- building replicas is what I meant to say. We'll tweak this a little, shortening the body to accommodate the Bigsby, and play around with the curves and angles. With the Airline inspired headstock the reverend insists on, I think we're coming dangerously close to building a guitar that looks like Gumby. Here's the wood:

5pc Birdseye & Walnut Neck, Maple over Black Limba body (edit- changed to flamey birch over limba. We're shooting for a gretch orange finish, wider curl looked better.) Bolt on w 2 degree angle, electronics to be determined. More pic's later in the week, I'm hoping to crank out the woodworking by wed.

The Reverend is truly a savior of lost children. He saw a nearly completed neck sticking out of the trash bin & demanded to know why it was there. I wasn't at all happy with the way it came out, so I tossed it (this was quite some time ago). The transition between neck & headstock didn't flow as well as I would have liked. " This is not trash" proclaimed the rev, "this goes on my guitar". At the time, I didn't know I was building him a guitar. He pulled down a body blank that a former employee had started and then abandoned (said employee wanted to learn to build. He screwed up thicknessing the top laminate, so I did that for him. Then he buggered up the center joint, as well as the thicknessing & joining of the mahogany body blank. I redid these things for him. The only thing that went well was joining the top laminate to the body blank, largely because I stood over his shoulder and yelled at-make that gently guided him through the process. " That kid ain't never coming back" predicted the rev. "Here's the rest of my guitar".

I'm still not real fond of the thing, but it plays & sounds great. Just don't look to close at the volute, hmmmkay?

Beatles Larrys' new guitar

I worked in this shop for years before discovering that I was two blocks away from the biggest collection of Beatles memorabilia (including instruments) in the Midwest. Now, I'm a child of the MTV generation- my first albums were Quiet Riot, Def Leppard, and Twisted Sister. My introduction to the Beatles was hearing Motley Crue cover "helter skelter". Sad, I know. I've slowly begun to digest the Beatles catalog, often not really getting a tune until I learn to play it. Case in point- "I want to tell you". Give it a listen- pay attention to the bassline. Easy, right? Sure is, took me two listens to learn it. The thing is, it's perfect. McCartney is incapable of playing a wrong note. That line is bone simple, but miss one note or let the timing slip just the tiniest bit and the whole song falls apart. Trust me, I've botched it live.

So anyway, Larry. I was looking through the credits in the back of a book chronicling the instruments that the Beatles used at the various stages in their career when I recognized a name. Turns out that a sizeable number of the instruments photographed for the book are in an apartment down the street, owned by one of my customers, who somehow neglected to mention this to me. We've become good friends, and I feel privileged to play his instruments. ("Hey Larry- this old Kingston bass plays like shit. Want me to set it up for you?" "No....I haven't changed a thing since Paul owned it".....Josh slowly backs away from the bass....). He's not just a collector, he plays a vital part in keeping the instruments used by the band in the right hands. He spent the better part of a year (and quite a few of his shiny dollars) tracking down a guitar that George Harrison owned and played in a pre-Beatles band. Then, instead of hanging it on his wall, he mailed it to Harrison's widow. Didn't sell it to her, although I think we can assume she's pretty well off, but gave it to her, because he thought the family should have it. Nice guy, that Larry.

Larry teaches guitar at my shop on weekends, and is interested in buying into the retail side of the business. I cannot express how happy this makes me. I'm no good at retail, I'll be the first to admit. This place could make money hand over fist, but I stay in back & make sawdust instead of riding herd on the store. If Larry buys in, It'll free me up to go back to school and get my education degree (my fourth degree. you'd think I'd be good at something by now). Public school teaching will give me weekends and summers to build guitars, which will produce more guitars (two hours on a sunday afternoon are more productive than a whole day with the shop open), and feed my family, which I'm sure they'd appreciate.

Larry already has one of my guitars: Local Maple & Mahogany, done in a vintage amber.






































For my next trick........My Beatles history is fuzzy at best, so forgive any factual errors. apparantly, you could't get a strat in Great Britan in the late 50s, so George Harrison made do with a cheap Czechoslovakian copy called a futurama. Here's a few pics of surviving examples:

Larry used to have a real one, and now he wants one updated into playability. He brought me a vintage body to work from, here's where we are so far:

Body & neck are about the same, bridge is replaced with a hipshot tremolo, and the three switch assembly will be replaced with a Fender Jaguar-type switchplate. Transparent red finish with gold pearl pickguard. More pics as it progresses.

Burl top out the door

Third time I've tried to post this- Blogger keeps eating it.

Delivered the burl top on sat- I love delivery day. I know some builders who have a hard time parting with their creations- not me. My interest is in building them, not playing them. I went through a phase where I owned way too many instruments- I currently own one bass, one electric guitar, and my grandfather's harmony archtop. Not being much of a player, I like to get my kids into the hands of people who will create great music on them. I play bass well enough to get paid on the weekends, and I fingerpick well enough to keep the homeless dog entertained, but I haven't got that fire that drives people to be great. If I'm not at a rehearsal or a gig, (or playing cheesy blues licks after stringing up a repair) I don't touch a finished guitar.

So I like delivery day. I like the way that the customers eyes light up when they see their new custom, the way they cock their heads to the side to hear the first unplugged chords, and the glazed over look they get about a half-hour into giving the guitar a serious workout. Then I like to get paid & kick them out so I can build the next one.

more pics:

Another Lost Child

This one ended up in Detroit, I believe.Odd coincidence, but I've lost track almost exclusively of walnut topped teles. This one is alder bodied, fully hollow, and extremely lightweight & resonant. Hope she's doing well.

New neck, hold the frets

Sorry for the lack of posting- keeping this place afloat is taking most of my time, not to mention my sanity.

Every year, springtime brings a new crop of broken necks into the shop. I don't know if it's spring cleaning avalanching bowling balls and boxes of '70s clothing out of closets onto guitars or what, but it happens every year. Summer is for regluing bridges left in hot cars, and fall is for "Can you make this piece of crap I bought on ebay play well enough to give as a Christmas gift?"

Mostly it's headstock breaks- spline 'em, glue 'em & send them out the door. Every now and again the neck is too far gone to repair, & I get to charge fat cash to make a new one (usually 250-300 bucks, still cheaper than getting an allparts neck or some such retrofit)

This one was fun, mostly because the customer really loved his bass & was happy with the new neck. (he also brought his cool dog in to play with homeless(shop mutt), which I always appreciate. Lying in sawdust & getting your sensitive ears assaulted by power tools as a day to day routine has to suck.) Here's the original neck- broken in three places & home-repaired with epoxy. I most likely could have saved the original neck if I'd had a crack at it before the epoxy.

The customer had done the jaco thing & pulled his frets with pliers, leaving many nice chips in the lacquer- he filled the slots with some sort of marine epoxy & played it for years. Ugly, but hey- it worked. To this day he refuses to tell me how he managed to shatter the neck.

here's the new neck side by side with the old.

A few differences from the original, of course. Ebony board with padouk fret markers instead of maple- I try and convince every fretless client to go ebony. Personal bias maybe, but I really like the sound of the stuff. No position markers on the board, side dots placed directly on the fret lines, rather than in the middle of the fret. Truss rod installed under the board, so no "skunk stripe", and a clear lacquer rather than tinted. here's the assembled bass:

Happy customer, he's talking about a custom five now, which is much more up my alley. Repairs keep the lights on, but I'd rather build.

Evolution

Just had a conversation with a local artist about building a guitar incorporating stained glass panels- guess I'll be lying awake tonight working that one out. I think the basic construction will be straightforward, but getting some illumination into the cavities without generating a lot of heat will be an issue, as will locating and accessing the controls. Of course, being an ADD space cadet, all I want to do is get going on that project, regardless of the instruments I'm already committed to building. Karen & the kids are headed out of town to see her folks in Florida, maybe some all nighters are in order. Power tools, lacquer fumes & sleep deprivation- what could go wrong?

Evolution of a design- I've been lucky enough to get enough commissions to keep me more than occupied for the last few years, the downside being that I rarely get to build whatever I feel like. I don't have anything resembling a "standard model", and don't expect to anytime soon. However, when I think about future guitars, they all have the same soundhole, a refinement of the design on my first guitar, lo those many years ago. I'm partial to thinline electrics, but not so much to f-holes. Here's the first guitar:



Figured Birch over alder, hollow on just the one side. A good little player, still the only six string I own. She's a patient creature, putting up with not only my ham handed soloing (hey, I'm a bass player) but also the fairly regular refinishing I put her through whenever I get a new idea. (sorry about the green, honey)



I like the leaf idea, but it isn't fully realized- and its in the wrong place. It should be lower and to the left, angled to follow the curve of the body.









A few years later came this fellow, a very early commission. Two inches deep, walnut over ribbon stripe mahogany. The leaf grew, which I like, but still should follow the curve of the body better.

I think this guitar is in Arkansas now.








Which brings us here, to what I think is the final design. Of course, I glued & cut this top (of mystery wood- no idea what it is) two years ago, and just found it looking on the shelves for the perfect piece of maple for Beatles Larry's next guitar. Don't anticipate using this anytime soon, particularly if I can't get this damn stained glass idea out of my head.










Hopefully a new commission this week, still need to work out the details. The retail shop did pretty good business last week, so the wolves are away from the door for a little while. Much as I hate to do so, I'm going to have to scare up some install work this spring- I got into this store to build guitars- unfortunately that's the lowest rung on the moneymaking ladder. Seems like the more orders for guitars I get, the less money the place makes.

Live Shots

More shameless self promotion (trying to make sense out of the hundreds of pictures scattered in random files on my computer)

Maple & mahogany bass:

Rosewood over mahogany electric: (photo by Justus Bader-Grunow)

Oh where have you gone?

Just ran accross this pic cleaning out my files- A lost child. I finished this guitar a few years ago & went on vacation. An employee on the retail side of the business sold it to someone passing through town & didn't get a name or location. Hope she's doing well.

Done Pumpkin, Burl Progress

Finished the Pumpkincaster this week, delivered yesterday. I rambled on about the finish in a previous post- the rest of the deets: fully chambered honduran mahogany body core w/ locally harvested maple back & top laminates. The back is a little prettier than the front, but the client provided the top wood- a gift from his guitar teacher. Turns out it came from the same guy I buy maple from. Local maple neck- second to the last neck out of a huge chunk of birdseye I bought last year. Rosewood board, hipshot trem, grover minis, GFS pickups, WD electronic parts. Some pics:

Seb (the client) wanted a body style based on an old Rickenbacker- he brought in a tracing of his instructors late-50's example, and we went from there. Had to add a neck pocket area to make it a bolt-on, and we ended up trimming down the horns considerably. The headstock was originally designed for a flying-V-meets-57 Chevy-tailfin looking guitar that never got built. Seb saw the template on the shop wall & snapped it up.











Here's the happy recipient (really, I've seen him smile) and his old man.

Hanging in the back of the pic there is the burl guitar, which ought to be ready for lacquer in a few days. Front & back shots:

The neck is a five piece maple and ebony laminate with an ebony board. Another hour or so of finish carving & it's ready to sand & spray.

I particularly like the way the neck laminates meet the three pieces of the peghead veneer:

I finally learned that life gets easier if one lays on a solid ebony face & routs out the cavity for the maple wedge- I can't tell you how many hours I've spent gluing up 3 piece veneers and messing around trying to index them perfectly for gluing

That puts the burl guitar, eight string bass, sitar guitar, and the cedar OM all ready to sand & finish- so much for posting interesting pics here. New commission from Beatles Larry starting next week though, post to follow when the details are worked out.

Dale's mando & random shop notes

Not a whole lot of progress in the shop today, although I seem to have acquired a new student. People seem to drift in & hang around for a while, eventually they start building something. This new guy is a friend of Lyken's- I really should ask his name. He's drawing up what looks to be a neck through Flying V, should be an interesting build. I'm never sure that "student" is the right word to use, but it'll have to do. This isn't guitar building school, and I'm not far enough in my career that I think I ought to present myself as a teacher, but I do build nice guitars, and I do have a degree in education. I'm more than happy to share whatever knowledge I have, as long as folks realize that running my business comes first.

What they get: use of the power tools, unlimited (and occasionally unwanted) advice, access to my library, and the opportunity to learn in a functioning guitar shop. They can learn from my mistakes, and explaining things to other people forces me to organize my thoughts in a clear and concise manner. They also get to sort through my lumber stash, sometimes cherry-picking pieces I didn't even know that I had.

What I get: Company ( I work better with people around), a few bucks (I sell wood and hardware as part of the retail business, so most of what they need is already on the shelves)
and a whole lot of coffee.

It's a good arrangement, I think. Lyken & his buddy show up nearly every day, Karl is here once or twice a week, and Jeremy and Orion are on the once a month plan. Lyken in particular is going to be great at this. Once his execution catches up with his design abilities, we're all in
trouble.

Mostly puttered today- too much time spent on the property tax mess. Carved the neck on the eight string bass, and decided to switch designs to use the Schaller 471 bridge in favor of the ABM unit. Final sanding and that project hits the spray booth, where there is the usual logjam. I love carving multi-laminate necks- all those parallel lines keep you honest- no guesswork about barely perceptible irregularities.

Hmm....Photography isn't my thing- it's my brother's. That really is a nice transition between the neck and the headstock, not the lumpy asymmetrical nightmare the pic makes it look like.

Screwed up the other day on the burl topped guitar- forgot to use a backing plate when drilling the string through body holes. Hey. I'm grieving here. Cut me some slack. The emotional state I find myself in these days, I;m amazed I can even find the on switch. Routed out the splintered area and inlaid a scrap of ebony- matches the "black on blonde" theme of the instrument nicely.

Finally, added a wedge of maple to the headstock of the sitar-guitar to put my logo onto. Still fooling around with metallic inks that will show up on a dark background- not there yet.

An old customer came in today to see about some modifications to his instrument- seems like the perfect time for some shameless self-promotion.

Neck through 5-string electric mandolin of Ebony, Maple, Walnut, Padouk, Purpleheart, Mahogany, and Birch. Here's the happy customer:

Dale is primarily a violinist- given that he owns a $76,000 fiddle, I'm awfully proud that he bought one of my mandos.