Second Life for an old Kay
I just finished making a neck, pickguard, pickups and installing hardware on this really clean Kay arch-top. The body has the original finish with barely a scratch on it. I’ll bet it will get more use this time around.
We still have a few Vintage Ad T’s in the shop. Get em here!
Guitar Aficionado
We’re honored to be featured in the current issue of Guitar Aficionado magazine. Big thanks to Damian Fanelli for making the journey out to the desert to visit the shop and to Massimo Gammacurta for the great photos of the Smith Special. See the full story here.
App’s Guitar Arpeggios and Chord Encyclopedia
I’ve had these two books in a drawer for about 15 years. My wife, Jill, brought them home with a bunch of records that she found from at estate sale in El Monte, CA while I was out of town. I’d glance through them from time to time and wondered about this App person who put together these nicely done, educational guitar books.
Recently I’ve been looking through the arpeggio book so I did a quick google search which turned up nothing. Then I posted a picture of the books on Instagram and within a few minutes, Deke Dickerson responded with a link to a website for O.W. Appleton who is quite possibly the guy who should be credited with being the first to build a solid body electric guitar. Check out his
amazing story here.
Deke also said that he had a handwritten letter, from Appleton to RC Allen describing in detail about how Gibson’s salesman came through Iowa, saw his guitar and based the Les Paul on it!
On the inside cover of each book, there is a note from App to his friends “Hub and Evelyn”. With RC living in El Monte, this is most likely how the books ended up at the estate sale there. Maybe they were all friends? I’m glad to know more about App and what he contributed to the history of the electric guitar. The copyright on the books is from 1970. If you ever see them, they’re worth picking up.
Motherlode Of Obscure George Barnes Recordings
A few days ago I was searching the internet to see if I could find any Western Swing podcasts or radio shows to listen to in the shop. Don’t ask me how but I stumbled upon a bunch of great George Barnes recordings on Mixcloud posted by Atsushi Yoshida. There’s so much great music in his Mixcloud profile that I’ve never heard before including some amazing 1957 recordings by Joe Venuti and The Blue Five with GB on guitar!
I didn’t even know Mixcloud existed a few weeks ago so I’m feeling a bit out of touch, it seems a lot of this stuff was posted a few years ago. I thought I’d share the link to Atsushi’s Mixcloud profile here:
Vintage Advertisement T-Shirt
I’ve always loved the old black and white classified ads in the back of vintage magazines. So when we decided to make a new t-shirt design for spring/summer, that was the inspiration. Available in the Store now. This one comes in Black or Navy and includes XXL for the first time.
