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.

I’ve been getting a few request to do pickguard inlay lately. It’s kind of nice to get a job that I can do while sitting down listening to music. I’m currently on a Bill DeArango kick, great stuff, his rolled off tone and rapid fire guitar solos make me crazy! Anyhow, as for the pickguards, each letter is hand drawn and cut out using an old Delta scroll saw. They’re then carefully traced on to the pickguard and the negative area is cut out for a nice tight fit. The letters are then glued in place, sanded flush, covered with 4 to 5 coats of nitrocellulose lacquer, and rubbed out to a high gloss finish. If you need any inlay work done, contact us for a quote.

Since I wrote about The Stratosphere Twin Guitar, I’ve been getting numerous emails regarding the tuning Jimmy Bryant used on Stratosphere Boogie. So here it is along with string gauges and the note in relation to the standard six string tuning. I use flat wound strings so you might have to go a little heavier if your going to use round wounds but this should get you in the ballpark.  If you have any questions, feel free to contact me.

Go Crazy!

If they gave an award for the best looking amp, I think this one would win, or if not, it would at least be in the top few. Also called the “Country Western”,  Gibson officially introduced this amp in 1956 and continued making them until “58″. Approximately 332 were produced. The GA-70 sounds similar to the “55″ Fender Pro.

I found mine in a music store in San Diego in the late 80′s and had to have it. I had never seen one before, and have only seen one other in person since. Obviously this has nothing to do with my work, just a design that I appreciate. Read more interesting facts about the “Country Western” here.

For years I thought about, read about, dreamt about this strange looking guitar made famous by the late great Jimmy Bryant. I listened to “Stratosphere Boogie” over and over which he wrote specifically for playing on this guitar. I never thought I would own one, mostly because I had never seen one in person until one day in 1997. I was walking through the Long Beach swap meet, late in the day and saw it laying on the ground in it’s opened case. The owner had found this Stratosphere Guitar at an estate sale two days earlier. Not knowing anything about it, he took it to the swap meet. When I walked up, there were about four guys standing around it, none knowing what it was. (the name tags were missing) One comment was that it was probably made in Japan. Meanwhile, I was hyperventilating while telling the guy I wanted it. (I didn’t care that I needed to figure out how to come up the $$ that I didn’t have)

The Stratosphere Guitar was made for a short period between 1954-1958 by two brothers, Russ and Claude Deaver in Springfield, MO. I’m not sure how many  guitars the guys made. I’ve heard different numbers but I think fewer than 200.  The twelve string neck is tuned in major and minor thirds, rather than octaves which requires basically re-learning the guitar. The idea was that one person could play twin guitar licks. For a more complete history, click here. Being a small business owner myself, and a guitar player, I’ve always had a soft spot for creative small business ventures.

It took me a while to figure out the tuning. I put in a lot of hours to work it out. Then, I found the catalog with the tuning in it. Figures. The hardest part was dialing in the string gauges to make it playable.

To hear Jimmy Bryant’s completely insane Stratosphere Boogie, click here.