The Guitar Designer's Workshop

Skulls and Angels: Headstones to Headstocks

Here cease thy tears, suppress thy fruitless mourn
his soul—the immortal part—has upward flown
On wings he soars his rapid way
to you bright regions of eternal day
—Headstone inscription, Massachusetts c. 1800

It's always surprising from where and when inspiration comes. Creativity has its own ebb and flow, without regard to schedules put in place by man. Over the years I've become more attuned to that moment when something I'm working with beckons to be turned or twisted slightly in order to realize a direction to be taken. I've learned that when I'm trying too hard, I'll usually miss it. Such was the case with my headstock design. I'd already created a monogram in a Gothic font motif, but I wasn't sure how I wanted to use it, so I just put it in the drawer for another day.

Separate from that exercise, I'd been thinking about winged skulls and day of the dead imagery. As an old-school motorcycle guy, I've been surrounded by that stuff since I started out working at Frank's Maintenance & Engineering (Forking by Frank) making chopper parts in the late 1960s.

Most of the machinists that I worked with were members of the Devil's Disciples, a Chicago motorcycle club. Their toolboxes were stocked with weapons and their garb was adorned with wings and skull symbols. Not that this is a new idea; it's a visual statement that rock and roll has appropriated over the years, but it seemed like a good jumping off point. I recalled seeing headstones in some New England cemeteries that seemed to morph skulls with angels, and I liked that idea and made some sketches, but nothing really came of it.

Some time later as I was reading In Small Things Forgotten, The Archelogy of Early American Life by James Deetz, a professor of anthropology at UC Berkeley, I came across an illustration of how New England gravestones had evolved from winged death's-heads to cherubs. 

The imagery had gradually changed from the dark decay of death as a fearsome adversary in the 1700s to the more rewarding view of afterlife offered by the cherub by the 1800s. 

I put pencil to paper, and as I sketched, the wings became less literal and more implied as they stretched out from the face. The wings became the headstock top and the face became the monogram "D" from my surname.

Even though I hadn't set out to design my headstock, once the juices began to flow, it only took a short time for everything to fall into place.

After I'd settled upon the idea, it was a matter of laying out the dimensions of the string alignments and the tuner locations. There's only so much latitude because the limiting factor of the tuner key clearances, so it is a balancing act between string angle and key inset. I made a mock up to check all the clearances and positions using a large selection of possible tuner choices.

I couldn't wait to see it on a guitar—it couldn't have been better if I had planned it.

Crow Guitar Rim Shot

Good progress is being made on The Crow guitar. The top and interior templates have been made from baltic birch based on full scale drawings refined from my sketches—now they're ready to go. Here are the steps below: the drawings, the  templates and the interior of the rim, which in this case was routed from Honduras mahogany.

The center block still has to be routed with the three different size tone chambers that I want to put directly under the bridge and tailpiece. Each chamber is a specific volume which relates to a different frequency range. This breaks up the spectrum and evens out the response when played at high volume. It reduces the tendency of the guitar to howl on a single note.

 

This is the rough rim placed on the spruce top which was being routed in the last post. The next task is to carve the interior of the top, then bond it to the rim. When the top and back are glued up, then the outside can be finalized and the top and back carved. Traditional archtop builders carve the entire top before attaching it to the rim—tapping as they carve to determine the thickness needed from each individual piece. In my case, I like to carve the interior, then carve the outside—tapping the entire assembly as one.

F-Word in the Workshop

The Crow build continues in tandem with other projects in the shop. I like it this way—dividing my time between creative thought, and the zen-like trance induced by laborious, repetitive handwork like sanding. Each of the Signature guitars that I build starts with the journal—a place for ideas and stream-of-conciousness rants. The good, the bad and the indifferent are all there. As the ideas begin to coalesce into a usable and recognizable form, the journal starts to morph into a set of plans.

Here, I'm laying out the f-hole shape and control locations. After this step, a paper template is made so I can evaluate the placement of the controls from the player's perspective. Do they fall to hand easily? Are they blocked by each other, or does the bridge get in the way? These all can be tested before going any further.

Once I'm satisfied, the next step is to make a 1/4" thick router template from the drawing, onto which the spruce top can be pinned. Then it's to the router I go.

You can see the locating pin holes as well as the control locations. The interior volume of this instrument will be a bit larger than some of my other designs and I've reduced the size of the f-holes and moved them inward about 1/8" closer to center. I'm going for a very old-school blues sound with this guitar, and it's going to be interesting.

Tweed Suitcase

As I'm gathering impressions for new guitar builds, I'm reading Kerouac and driving around the NE for inspiration. It's fun to just get in the old car and just drive. No predetermined destination, no schedule. From a store in New Hampshire, I picked up a beat up old tweed suitcase from the forties that struck my fancy. We stopped by a derelict farm and Carla took this image of me, my vintage suitcase and the farm. It's a wonderful shot...

Here's a quote from Kerouac's "On the Road"

"Just ahead, over the rolling wheatfields all golden beneath the distant snows of Estes, I'd be seeing old Denver at last. I pictured myself in a Denver bar that night, with all the gang, and in their eyes I would be strange and ragged like the Prophet who has walked across the land to bring the dark Word, and the only Word I had was "Wow!"

As The Crow Flies

The theme for the Crow guitar has been an organic, growing and living process. Crows are messengers, and they are scavengers. As Jim, Ferdinand and I discuss the background behind the writing of Kerouac's On the Road, we begin to make the connections between the travels of  Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty with being on the road as a musician in a band. The wanderlust of a new generation searching for meaning, flowing from the Beats to Dylan and the Beatles, Hendrix and beyond. Gypsies on the road, their freak flag feathers in the wind of the rock and roll road-show.

OK, too much coffee. Time for Jim to trace and cut out the spruce top from a lexan template I've made and get on with the build.

Meanwhile, the guitar's back needs to be planed to thickness before it can be carved. In this case, the back is a flamed maple, book-matched and planed to .625" before I start the carving.

All of the guitar's parts will be made on conventional woodworking equipment, so the next steps will be to make temporary templates for routing the chambering and center section. I've got an idea for the center-block that involves some tuned cavities, so that's up next.

Freestylin' Peghead Design

As the chill of winter approaches, it's time to start re-stacking the firewood. No, I'm not talking about stalled guitar projects, or am I? Actually it's quite literal, we burn firewood to heat the place. Yesterday Anthony and I spent a few hours unloading the dualie and stacking things up neatly. Then  I got a nice burn going to check all the mechanicals in the small wood stove first.

After Anthony left for the day, I got out the neck for the guitar I'm making for him and traced a headstock shape that I've been toying around with. I always start on paper, but then I like to sketch it on the actual piece to see what it looks like on the real neck. After a few revisions, I took it to the bandsaw and then the spindle sander.

I've left a little bump-out at the tip as a place to put the graphic that I'm going to make in tribute to Anthony's favorite band. Now it's back to work on some sketches I'm doing for a new client who is flying in next week.

Cry of Love

 

"There is no percentage in remembering the past"
— Taj Mahal, Take a Giant Step.

 

For the most part, I view lingering in the past as a cry for help. If you are afraid that your audience will abandon you, the first thing some performers do is dig into the archives for the old hits. I'm not saying that old hits are bad, I've had my share of "glory years" but they're all in the rear-view mirror now.

As time passes, I become more attuned to the different needs and desires of my own motivation. I want to build guitars that have a back-story built in as opposed to building the back story for the second or third time.

 

Here's a look at the hand-made book of sketches, dimensions and ponderings that accompanies each "Signature" guitar that I build. It's a place to draw, doodle and communicate the concept that drives the build. It's a place to record dimensions and ideas. The pages step through the thought process behind my choices—the true back-story that is built into the guitar. This is one that I'm calling "The Crow", and when the instrument is finished, the book is hand-stitched, bound with a beautiful cover of original artwork and goes with the guitar.

 I bring my experience, my taste and my sense of humor to each project. Serving the client is only one side of the coin; just as fitting my designs into a template dictated by a company policy isn't my priority any longer. I'm free to express my own desires and esthetics with my own projects. I love what I'm doing and I hope it will show. It's not such a bad place to be.

  

All of this comes to mind as I am simultaneously designing new instruments and building a classic "replica" for Anthony. In that regard, it certainly feels better to obsess on someone else's past than your own.

 The question that remains is, can guitar designs that owe so much to a vintage esthetic, move ahead without being purely nostalgic?

 

Cult of the 'Tron, Cult of the P90

Down to the scale-model of a city known as Hartford, Connecticut I went. Trading a perfectly good afternoon in the woods for the grit of the 'hood and the concrete bunker of the Webster Theater. It takes a lot to coax me out of the home-20—but seeing my old friend Gavin Menzies and the boys in The Cult is a lot of coaxing.

After a thorough tour of the gear, including a few choice licks on Billy Duffy's new Nash-built "Esquire" we repaired to the tour bus for some catching-up, cold beer and general mischief.

I'd planned to wimp out after a few Cult Classics, but happily, my car was blocked into the staff parking lot. Oh well, I guess I'll have to call in sick tomorrow.

Everything happens for a reason, and I just relaxed and had fun with it. Gav's old buddy Lenny from Huntington Beach was there with a homemade Calzone and the hang was just what the doctor ordered.

I never tire of the sound and fury of a full-blown rock rig pumping out rock rhythms in a small theater. and the pinball rebound of the Cult's chugga-chugga repertoire truly turned the Webster into a Sonic Temple. Instead of feeling trapped there, I felt delivered. This is why I do what I do, and it's good to realize that.

A double-dose of P90 and Filtertron-through-tube-amps-on-ten was still ringing in my ears as I dragged my ass into the shower at 10:00 AM, but hey, I'm the boss. Anyway, I was really working—dreaming of a new guitar I want to build. 

Natural World, Natural Instruments

Wind in the woods brings consequence. On the way up to the shop today the road was littered with leaves and boughs—nature's way of cleaning house. Trees are all around us in life, and in what we do. Trees are the source of great instruments and home for countless animals. We're always aware of the crashing of trees and branches when the weather gets a little rough around here. 

 

In the perfect reflection of my car's hood I saw it fall towards me. I flinched instinctively, but it wasn't a tree branch—it was a red-tailed hawk with a wingspan as wide as my windshield. For about a hundred feet we flew down the road together, the great bird just a few feet above the road a car length ahead of me. It was as though the world was in slow-motion and the space between seconds became like minutes, until the hawk banked off into the trees and disappeared.

 

 Once inside the shop, I mixed up some of the waterborne lacquer I'd been using on Anthony's guitar and got down to business. We'd both decided that a satin finish was the way to go, so it will be interesting to see how the flattening agent works with this paint. After decades of pushing the envelope to create thin, yet glossy finishes, I've decided that I don't care for them any longer.

 I'm the first one to admire a custom-car paint job, but the patina of age on guitars that have been played and loved speaks of  the experience that they have absorbed over time. There's just something about the satiny sheen of an aged guitar that makes it a musical instrument, and not an appliance. Stepping away from my past obsession with ultra-shiny guitars feels good—like taking flight.

The Road From Lowell

Jack Kerouac grew up in Lowell, Massachusetts, on the banks of the Merrimack—not too far from where we are right now. Apparently, he was a pretty good high school football player and went on to Columbia on an athletic scholarship. As much as the young Kerouac wanted to be a football star, what he wanted most was to just get the hell out of Lowell. It was a typical New England mill town that had seen its best days a half-century before Kerouac was born, and to him, New York city seemed like a better place for an aspiring writer to be. Of course, the rest is history, and the genesis of the "Beat Generation" (a term that Kerouac neither coined nor endorsed) began.

I'd been through two "Beat" phases myself. The first was in my late teens, naturally. It was right around the time I'd discovered Ornette, Parker, Miles and Monk. I was devouring Ginsberg, Burroughs and the like; while staying up way too late with my friends; drinking and discussing life, love and the nature of existence. On the Road and The Dharma Bums were required reading. I think every kid with a dream goes through this phase. Well, unless your dream is to be an accountant.

Lately, I'd noticed that my apprentice Jim had been setting the Pandora in the shop to a channel called "On the Road Again" which at first I thought was a Willie Nelson thing. Jim has done his share of changing addresses. He and I have talked about the strange urge to ramble on, that comes from an addiction created by moving households often. But then I noticed that a little library was growing in one of the shop's cubbies.

I'd failed to make the connection between the Kerouac biography on my desk and the subtle musical program in the shop space. Once apparent that the hint wasn't sinking in, the library began to grow. I smiled as I realized that the slow, solitude of a workshop in the woods is a million miles away from the hustle of  NYC. Our space is antithesis of what Kerouac initially wanted for himself. Yet, at the same time it is the lost Americana that he spent his life seeking.

Jim in the shop doorway, with more books.