News
Guitar Bracing
7 Comments
Guitar bracing. I love ladder braced guitars. I had an Gibson LG that really opened my mind to what's going on inside the box. Fraulini guitars... same thing. Dale Fairbanks uses X braces, but they are unscalloped and they...
Read more
Guitar Festivals
Guitar festivals. I want to go. When I was a wee lad of 18 or so I found the Healdsburg Guitar Festival website and would use that as my research. I found links to websites for Jeff Traugott, Judy Threet, Linda Manzer,...
Read more
What is handmade?
A bit of a philosophical tangent now. What is handmade? I think this a conversation I've always heard phrased in more questions than answers. I think that's a great thing and I think it proves it's own point- that...
Read more
Building Resonator Guitars wherever You're Allowed
You have to do what you have to do, and getting going with these resonator guitars was no different. I spent about a year and a half at the first 'Shop", two years in the basement and the last six months at shop...
Read more
What are resonator guitar Cones made from? Resonator Biscuit Cone Material Revealed
What is the boring composition chart you see above? This is the composition of a tricone cone I sent to Metaltest in Washington state to have tested. I'm in the process of getting my lathe set up to start spinning my own...
Read more
Building Resonator Guitars: A Pile Of Work
"Most precise...exacting...perfect....unwavering quality" We hear a lot of words and phrases like that used when being referred to what makers make don't we? Whether those words or true and honest or not is a subject for...
Read more
Never Measure
Never measure.
Sounds funny, right? Especially when making resonator guitars. Isn't it all measuring to 1/32 of an inch? Well, it used to be. Measuring, marking with the sharpest pencil you can find, hoping the ruler...
Read more
Brass Resonators vs Steel Resonators
Charley Hicks' three Mules. Charley is the man, and recorded every one of Charley Patton's songs on youtube. I'll start you off with this one: https://youtu.be/QGvXbSd0Muw
Steel resonator guitars versus brass resonators....
Read more
Making a Guitar Neck
When the motivation to make a steel resonator guitar dropped in from above I had never cut a piece of metal, nor attached one piece of metal to another by means of tapping and threading, soldering, welding or the like....
Read more
How to Choose Strings for Your Resonator Guitar
There are a thousand different strings you could use for your resonator. Everything from cryogenically treated strings to strings shot into space to strings blessed by a shaman in a rainforest in South America. Unfortunately...
Read more
Picking a Slide for Resonator Guitar
I know a lot has been written, lied about, explored and forgotten about guitar slides. It's one of those things that are relatively cheap and you can fit five of them in your guitar case so, why not? My perspective on a lot...
Read more
Challenging Assumptions
I never wanted to be a business person. It still makes me feel awkward just to write it. I just wanted to make things and support myself doing it. I had attached (have attached) a lot of misconceptions about what it means...
Read more
Building the Mule-caster
I think the most exciting part for me as a builder was that moment of "I wonder if I could make that?" leaving the Kelly Joe Phelps show four years ago where he was playing his National. I think about that almost daily as...
Read more
Charlie Parr Reviews his Mule
Charlie Parr on his Mule:
"So in 1927 National made a proto-type guitar that was a tri-cone fit into a single-cone body, it was some kind of test I think and they never made a production model out of it. My Mule is just...
Read more
Spinning lathe acquired
Adventure. After three years of looking for a spinning lathe, an instagram acquaintance, Brian Alfonsi, found a sweet score. A spinning factory is going out of business and unloading their machinery. He's going down to pick...
Read more