Working towards NAMM... (teasers)

Wrapped up this guy
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and it might be the best sounding Argo... EVER. Holy smokes.

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Arcturi waiting for necks

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and there is this guy. A customer order getting picked up at NAMM. It's. STUNNING.
 
Hey Doug, lemme ask you a question or five. Mostly to satisfy my own curiosity. How did you get into the guitar building game? What is your background? Did you come at it from a player's perspective, or that of a guitar tech, or a woodworker, or more from a designer's path? I guess it could be a combination of all of them. I always wondered how builders wind up running a company making amazing guitars, but I don't know any to ask...well, until now.
 
Tiltsta said:
Hey Doug, lemme ask you a question or five. Mostly to satisfy my own curiosity. How did you get into the guitar building game? What is your background? Did you come at it from a player's perspective, or that of a guitar tech, or a woodworker, or more from a designer's path? I guess it could be a combination of all of them. I always wondered how builders wind up running a company making amazing guitars, but I don't know any to ask...well, until now.
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I've played guitar since I was a teenager (the joke was, if I got good grades my parents would get me guitar lessons.... I taught myself guitar) and grew up woodworking in my dad's cabinet shop since I was a wee lad (5-6 probably).

Honestly, I never really considered combining the two until a really nice piece of maple came in the shop years ago. I made some remark off hand to my wife (gf at the time) that I should build a guitar from it. Her dad did repair work to pay the bills in college and I think he was waiting for my brain to realize I could build guitars. So for my birthday that year a bunch of hardware happened to show up. That became this guitar

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(I accidently hit the chambers when doing the bellycut so I plugged them in maple. That became our 3 line logo that has been on every guitar since)
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It was actually a pretty damn good sounding guitar, I just never really finished it. It had enough learner mistakes that I got distracted and moved onto the next thing. So I built S and T types for myself for a while then my first full scratch builds were what became the Banshee. Then I designed the Daylighter, the economy dumped and there wasn't much cabinet work to do so I started building a few. People liked them and like an idiot I decided I should build guitars!

Was part time till I went to my first Montreal Guitar Show. That was probably in my first 50 guitars or so. Sold one, had such an amazing time and was so welcomed into the "club" I came home, quit my job the next day (workin for the pop's) and been full time ever since. I've had incredibly supportive wife, parents and inlaws to help me along the way but generally, it's been just hard work, long hours and a lot of sanding. LOTS of sanding.
 
Cool. I figured it would take some serious wood working skills, plus the understanding of the instrument, to make a go of something like that. It is kind of funny that a nice piece of maple in a cabinet shop led you to being a premium guitar builder. I guess it is hard to see life's path sometimes. This is kind of like how I was a fine arts student (painting/art) and wound up being a scientist. In my case it was a picture of a virus particle structure showing the cool symmetry that made my artist brain connect to science. If I hadn't seen that picture, I would probably be a graphic designer or something.

Also, the fact that your logo is based on a router mistake is seriously cool.
 
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