Dream It, Build It, Play It:
Local Luthiers Get A Woody For Tone
or...
Dream It, Build It, Play It:
Local Luthiers Talk Guitar
by Dean “Why, Even I Have A Woody Now!” Bonzani
8.9.04
There’s an old guitar builder’s joke that asks: What did the guitar builder do when he won the lottery? The answer? He built guitars until the money ran out.
There are a number of custom instrument builders in Flagstaff, quietly plying their craft. Three of them spoke with me about the joy of creating beautiful guitars that produce even more beautiful sounds.
Ryan Elewaut
Ryan Elewaut owns and operates Custom Sound Instruments, on South San Francisco Street, where he sells thoughtfully selected guitars and basses, with an emphasis on top-shelf acoustic guitars from Taylor, Breedlove, and Collings. He apprenticed under Greg Mirken of Shade Tree String Instruments in Laguna Niguel, California, and has been trained at the Taylor Guitar repair facility in El Cajon, California. He’s also picked up a fair share of tricks of the trade from fellow luthier, Jerry Korkki.
“I was at my brother’s baseball game, the summer after my junior year of high school, and I overheard one of the dads talking about this book that he’d found about building guitars— he was going to try to build a guitar. I was immediately addicted. I hadn’t even cut a piece of wood yet. I asked him some questions, and he showed me the book, “Guitarmaking: Tradition and Technology : A Complete Reference for the Design & Construction of the Steel-String Folk Guitar & the Classical Guitar,” by William R. Cumpiano and Jonathon D. Natelson. It’s been called the “Bible of the craft.” My first guitar was a nylon string that I finished in 1999, during my senior year of high school. It took me 8-9 months. It was very, very fun. Very gratifying. One of the reasons I chose to build a nylon string was that I needed one. I had been studying fingerstyle and classical guitar, but I just had this crappy steel string. I’m building two steel strings right now that are brother and sister. They’re the same design specs, just different wood choices. I’m also working on a baritone electric guitar. I try to make each guitar extremely thematic in terms of the wood choices. One of the steel strings that I’m building has a headstock made with half Rosewood and half Koa, bookmatched down a light strip of wood called the sapwood. That runs along through the tail piece, where there’s a decoration on the tail piece that’s the same. Sound-wise, I’m trying to make the top of the guitar as much like a speaker cone, and as moveable, as possible, while still retaining strength, so that that guitar will last a lifetime. Style-wise, I nod toward James Goodall and Bill Collings. I sell some Collings in my shop, and I’d like to sell Goodalls. I got to do a bridge replacement on a Goodall— it was awesome, because I got to call up and talk to James, and not to blow too much smoke, but I said ‘Hey, you’re my favorite builder of all time, and I need you to send me a bridge, because I want it to be right.’ And they sent me one all the way from Hawaii. You have to play one to really understand, but his guitars have the richest tone and perfect response of any guitar. His philosophy is to make the sides as thick as possible. All solid wood, no laminates. If you make the sides as strong and as rigid as possible, they’ll take the least amount of energy away from the vibrating top. Theoretically, that top is acting on its own, and not having any string energy robbed from it. The back then vibrates sympathetically with the top. I’m obsessed with guitars. To be good at anything, I think you have to be somewhat obsessed with it. I just love to look at them...and every once and a while, when I’m by myself, I’ll kiss my guitar. Just give it a little kiss on the headstock as I’m putting it in its case. Because it’s been so good to me.
Jerry Korkki
Jerry Korkki, onetime owner of JK Guitars, and currently a freelance guitar tech with Arizona Music Pro, is putting the finishing touches on his deluxe home workshop, where he hopes to pass on his considerable knowledge of fine instrument building to his three sons, Joey, 15, Jesse, 18, and Jeremy, 20.
“Not long out of high school, I brought in a guitar to have it fixed, paid a bunch of money, and I didn’t like the job that was done. I figured, ‘I’ve been doing woodworking pretty much through my childhood and through high school— shop class and all that— I can fix this.’ I couldn’t find a guitar on the market like I really wanted. I liked Gibson 335’s, but they were too big. So the first design I came up with was a small 335. I thought, ‘I can do this,’ and built it. I played it, and it was alright. Then, I immediately stripped all the parts off it and started again. The guitar I’m playing today is either the second or third that I ever built. I don’t know if it was beginner’s luck or what. It’s an electric semi-hollow body, neck-through, with a solid carved top. I always try to tune the tops, but volume and tone controls wreck that, so I’m working on a design with no controls on the top. I’m thinking of using a thumbwheel potentiometer on the upper bout. No tone control. I never use ‘em. I never have. When you take them out of the circuit, the pickups are a little brighter. You want full signal coming from the pickups. And pickups only pick up what the guitar’s doing. You can change your sound with different pickups somewhat, but the tonal nature of the instrument comes from the instrument, not the pickup. So if you have a lousy-sounding guitar, it’s not going to sound great, no matter what you put in it. I get mine from Lindy Fralin. Guitar Player Magazine did a ‘shoot out’ with ten different pickups, single coil and humbuckers, and at the end of the whole thing, hands down, everyone picked the Fralins. And they couldn’t say why, but somebody said they were ‘like vintage pickups with magic dust sprinkled on them.’”
“There are a lot of cool woods. I’m trimming my house in Mahogany and Maple because I like them so much. It means something extra to me to know that my house is trimmed in wood that sounds good. I love Mahogany. I love the smell of it. It’s great tone wood, and it’s been used forever. It’s real stable, that’s why for necks, it’s perfect. You can square up a chunk of Mahogany, throw it in a closet for ten years, take it out, and it’s still the same. I was in a hardwoods store in Phoenix about 25 years ago, and they had a big sample board of different chunks of wood, and I had a little rubber timpany mallet with me, to try things out and tap test just for fun. I tapped on some Jelutong, and it just went, ‘Bo-o-o-i-i-i-ng!’ and it weighed nothing. So they had some, and I took it, and I tried it. I made the center part of an electric bass with it, that eventually John Willis bought, and it just had the coolest tone. Many, many years later, I was on the phone talking to somebody from Ernie Ball, and I said, ‘When are you going to re-issue the Stingray bass?’ We got talking, and I mentioned that, one time, I used Jelutong in a bass. He said, ‘Shhhhh! That’s what we used in those Stingray basses!” I found it by banging on a bunch of wood in a lumberyard. The other day at the lumberyard here, I made them take a forklift to get to the bottom of a pile of Mahogany, and Joey and I were tapping on some lumber, and we found one that had pretty good response. The guy there said, ‘What are you looking for, hollow spots? That’s the first time I ever saw that.’
“It’s like fingerprints and snowflakes— there are no two chunks of wood that are alike. Some should be furniture, some should be drawer sides, some should be burned, and some should be made into instruments that last forever. Stradivarius was probably the king of tapping wood, and now his violins are worth millions.”
“People are looking for smaller, custom builders like myself. People who go out in the lumberyard and tap on stuff, and can tune our bridges, and get away with stuff like that, because we’re not making tons of guitars. And we’re probably not making any money on them, either, by the time you add up all the time. Factories can’t do that. They get a bunch of lumber, cut it up, make it into guitars and send it out the door.”
“In my guitars, there’s many hours of thought, and even dreams, of what makes an instrument work, from my perspective. There’s maaaaany hours of hunting through wood, and many, many, many hours of putting the thing together, hopefully with the help of my boys. And it should look real nice. Appearance is kind of the least important thing. I’m hoping that someone who picks one up and plays it, just goes, ‘Yeah!’ And that’s hard to achieve. You have to play a dozen Strats to find one that’s decent. It’s hard to make it in this business. That’s why, for me, it’s going to be a paying hobby, hopefully. Or a ‘break even’ hobby. If it’s a ‘break even’ hobby, I can die and go to heaven. Make money? Sure, that would be great.”
Tom “Tomcat” Henry
For almost 20 years, Tom Henry has been customizing guitars, airbrushing his trademark artwork across literally thousands of guitar faces, and turning out some of the most distinctive and memorable designs to ever grace a stage. Carving, sculpting, gluing, polishing, and painting his pieces to a level of precision few can achieve, Henry has been so prolific over the years that it’s easier to ask him who he hasn’t done a custom guitar for. And when a rare or cherished instrument, beaten by the road or abused by bumbling road techs, is in need of expert refinishing, Henry’s the man that the pros call first.
“My story on guitars is completely different than anybody else’s. I’m an artist first. I went to Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, to learn illustration. I worked for Topps Chewing Gum as an illustrator and airbrush retoucher. And I used to do a lot of hotrods and motorcycles. One day, this guy, Charles Stringer, who’s a pretty famous guy, called me from B.C. Rich guitars, and he wanted me to paint guitars for them. I had done a few guitars for friends, but I wasn’t really into musical instruments very much. (The year was 1987.) So I say, ‘Uh, I don’t know.’ And I hung up. And he calls back. And he calls back. And he calls back. And I said, ‘Okay, I’ll come see you.’ I brought him my portfolio of motorcycles and hotrods, and he said, ‘I want to hire you right now. I want you to be the creative director. I want you to do all the advertising and do all the hot airbrushing stuff on the guitars.’ They were doing all the glam stuff: Poison, Motley Crüe— all those guys. And they all had airbrushed, wild guitars. So, he made an offer like I couldn’t refuse. I quit my job and started with them— they were just moving their company from California to New Jersey. I got in on the ground floor. I had a lot of wood background, doing carved signs and all that. I started in September, and the first NAMM show (a gargantuan annual musical products trade show) was in January. We took 100 custom guitars, so I had to do 100 guitars in less than three months. By the time the next show came, we took 300. Full blown custom airbrushed guitars. I did them all in a three month period. Up to now, I’ve done about 3,000 guitars. I did ESP’s custom shop guitars and Roger Sadowsky‘s stuff. Roger’s stuff is all tone-perfect. They’re like, perfect guitars. The finishes are perfect, and they play perfectly. He’s a real stickler, man. He sells a lot of instruments in Japan, and they’re fanatics on the pieces being absolutely correct. So, if anyone in the industry asks me who I’ve done work for, Roger’s always the first one I tell them about. I’ve done ZZ Top’s guitars, the Allman Brothers, Kiss, Lita Ford, Blackie Lawless. I did the Muppets’ guitars for Disney— they have a band that walks in the parade. Those are my guitars. I just love watching MTV, because it’s so fun to see my stuff being played. Personally, I’ve got about 100 guitars. They come and they go— I used to have, like, hundreds of them. And parts— I’ve got stacks of bodies and necks. You can never have enough women, guitars, and motorcycles.”
“Being in the industry for so long, you have these great stories. Like: one day, Bernie Chavez, the founder of B.C. Rich guitars, was sitting around with nothing to do, and I had this crap guitar— everybody hated this thing. A gut string acoustic guitar. And he picked that thing up and played for, like, four hours, singing Mexican folk songs. It was the coolest thing, man! Everyone thought it was a piece of crap, and he loved it!”
©2004 by Dean Bonzani. All Rights Reserved.