I decided to turn my custom shop nocaster into the guitar that I use to test my pickups. I routed out the backside and made a bakelite cover for it, similar to Merle Travis’s Bigsby. When I started, the body weighed 4lb. 4 3/4oz. After routing it out, it weighs 2lb. 11oz. I should have done this a long time ago. It feels and sounds great! I can now swap the neck pickup out from the back without taking the strings off. While I was at it, I striped the chipped up old paint, sprayed it with a few coats of white lacquer and added a new pickguard.

On a side note, we just added a few items to our new Store that we continue to get requests for. Will be adding additional guitar related items soon, as well as some things for the home.

Last weekend we headed down to Anaheim, CA to attend Deke Dickerson’s 9th annual Guitar Geek Festival. As usual, he did not disappoint. Besides a top notch group of pickers over two evenings, Deke’s insane collection of rare, valuable and wacky guitars grows more interesting every year. My favorite this year was definitely his Bigsby from 1956 pictured below.

Deke also showed a beautiful collection of relatively unknown “Harvey” guitars made by an incredible craftsman, Jim Harvey.  The Harvey  mandolin pictured below, made in 1952 for Scotty Broyles, features a five pole piece Bigsby pickup. Scotty himself, along with Jim Harvey’s son Howard, were there to play in the “All Harvey Band” where seven guys each played a Harvey made instrument.

Having just made a pick guard for Deke’s tele, we set up a small display to show the guitar geeks in attendance a sampling of what we can do for them as well.

Below are a few various shots of the event and the guitar museum, including an amazing steel guitar collection.

Welcome to the New Year! Through the holiday’s and into the new year, T.K.’s been doing overtime in the shop working on his new guitar pickup. He wants it to sound like a cross between a Stratosphere and a Charlie Christian, his two favorite pickups, and it’s constructed like a Bigsby. He has talked about this for years! T.K. still has a ways to go until he’ll be happy with the final product, but we’re hopeing to have some production units for sale by summer. Stay tuned!

Someone from France put this recording of Big Sandy and The Fly Rite Trio up on YouTube awhile back. It’s one of the few recordings I’ve played on that I can listen to without thinking that I should of played something other than what I actually played. This is probably because I worked out the entire solo note for note the night before and played the same thing on each take. (can’t remember how many takes it took).

Everything the Fly-Rite Trio recorded was done live with a couple of mikes. If one person screws up, or is unhappy with their performance, you have to start over. It can be challenging to say the least, but it’s my favorite way to record. I think live recording is the only way to get an accurate representation of what a band truly sounds like. If you’re a musician and haven’t recorded live, try it. You’ll have greater respect for the way the musicians of the 40’s and 50’s recorded. Think about the recordings with multiple  ‘Hot’ improvised solos and how hard that would be to do live.

Recorded around 1989. We had 500 copies pressed to 78RPM record.  I think we sold most of them in the UK. If I could do it over, I’d like to have another crack at the solo on the flip side, I’m Gonna Leave.

I’ve been moonlighting the past few months doing custom inlayed pickguards and name plaques. If you’re a serious musician I don’t think there’s a better way to get your name out than having it on your guitar or instrument.

It’s also a known fact that my pickguards and name plaques will help promote record sales, and to boost show attendance through brand recognition. Ha Ha!!

My inlay jobs are 100% crafted by hand. So if you’re a serious musician drop me a line and have me build you a custom guard or plaque. You can see some of my recent inlay projects here.

We’re now offering lacquered 5 hole Garolite pickguards for teles. They’re $45 plus shipping.  For those of you that care what the backside looks like, yes, they have the correct over spray ring. If you’re interested in a custom pickguard, you can see some examples here.

If I had to keep just one amp this would be the one. Produced from ’39 to ’42 it was Gibson’s top of the line.  This amp has a single tone control. The earlier ones had a separate bass and treble control.

I got it on E-bay about six years ago. It was completely covered in black spray paint. I figured I would have to recover it. Surprisingly all the black paint wiped off. One quart of lacquer thinner and 20 rags later this is what it looked like. All I had to do was re-stencil the Gibson logo.

Of all the amps I’ve owned, this one comes closest to my “dream guitar tone “ that I hear in my head. Probably because the majority my favorite guitar players most likely used and recorded with a Gibson EH-185 at some point in their early careers.

My friend Pat Capocci sent  me an e-mail today to say his pickguard arrived safely, along with a couple of photos of it on his Tele…..

I haven’t had much time to work on this thing in the last few weeks, but I have made some progress… I found a really nice piece of kiln-dried maple for the neck and I cut out the pickguard and armrest out of .125’’ thick garolite. Since I don’t gig that often anymore, I wasn’t going to put my name on this guitar, but the giant pickguard was just begging for some kind of advertisement. Here are a few pics…

For the last few years I’ve been pretty good about not taking on any new personal  projects as I whittle away at the list I currently have. I’ve been making some progress, but last month while in San Diego a friend said I could have this old Kay if I wanted to do something with it. I took a quick look and said “sure, I’ll take it!”  Its a late 50′s Kay model K-161 with a screwed up neck and no hardware. I’ve always wanted to build a neck from scratch but never really had a good reason to do so. Now I do! I want it to look like a guitar Paul Bigsby would have modified.

Last Sunday it didn’t take much to get the finger board off, and the dovetail joint apart. I also made a couple of pick guard patterns. This proved to be a little tricker, trying to hide the existing  holes and still look Bigsbyish. I plan on using a pair of PA1946′s for pickups, the vibrato I had in my parts stash. I’ll post as I make progress so check back from time to time. Here’s some mock up photos. I’m leaning towards mock up #3.