Custom Guitars

Designing and building guitars is a passion that is rewarding in that it combines equal elements art, design, music, and woodworking. The top two examples use black walnut wood sourced from a family farm in Iowa, originally milled during WWII.

“Sunset Special”
This is a custom profile solid body proportioned to a Tele but with Strat style front and back contours, contoured cutaways, and Les Paul sound thanks to dual PAF humbuckers. It is a laminate of maple, birch, cherry, and black walnut, with a CBS neck, hard tail bridge, and standard Tele controls. 

“Twinline”
This is a semi-hollow body based on the Thinline Tele, but has a custom profile with dual cutaways, a Rickenbacker slash-style f-hole, and a hand-rubbed finish. It is made from 100% black walnut, uses Fender wide-range humbuckers, ‘72 reissue Fender hardware, and a CBS neck.

“Blue Dragon”
This is a fully custom partscaster using the body of my first guitar, a cheap Squier Strat, as a base. Rather than throwing it out, I stripped the paint, redesigned and reshaped the body to create shorter horns with cutaway contours, altered body profile, and more organic forearm contour. Because of the new body shape and custom pickup configuration, I designed and crafted a pickguard from curly maple and dropped in Tele style controls. The paint is blue/purple colorshift, and the neck is repurposed from an American Deluxe Strat.