Electric guitars; eclectic guitars

Here are a few more electrics, from the vault, for you. In 2003, as a bit of fun, I built two matching electric guitars; a bass and a 12-string, both loosely based on Rickenbackers.  The bass, which is a monster, was for me and I still have it.  Being a bit of a Deadhead, I decided to inlay the Grateful Dead’s Steal Your Face logo into the body.

The 12 string was far too heavy so I re-built it in 2007 with a black walnut SG style body which worked so much better- it was sold on in 2011.

Here’s an odd one that I put together in 2004. We were browsing the West-End guitar shops and I came across a semi-acoustic body, obviously from a factory and unfinished- 25 quid? Who could resist?  Judging from the newspaper that I extracted from its insides, it was a Hofner body from the 1960s.

So I built it into this---.

This too was sold on 2011

Another completed in 2004 was this Les Paul style solid with a carved bird’s eye maple top and neck.

 And then there are these two ergonomic electrics which I greatly enjoyed building. The 7-string was commissioned in 2009 by Latin-Jazz guitarist Stefano Kalonaris; it has a wide fingerboard as he wanted a classical guitar style fingerboard.

And the 6-string in 2011 by a local player, Phil, who suffers with back pain. This guitar was specifically designed to allow him to play with a greater degree of comfort.

Remember the bass at the top of page? Well, in 2023 I decided to re-model it and here’s the result.

Early Classical Guitars

When I started at the London College of Furniture in the 1970s, I was quite surprised that we all had to start off by making a classical guitar. At that point in my life, I very much doubt that I had even heard any classical guitar music; my intention was to build solid bodies! However, in the first year I made a couple of Torres style classicals.

Then I made a couple of these ugly brutes- one I sold via The London Guitar Gallery.

The shape was used, pretty much, by all of the students at the LCF and we rather pretentiously referred to it as a “concert guitar”. The one above was knocking around in my workshop for years, Phil Hare took a shine to it so I gave to him; much better for it to be used than gather dust.

And here’s what Phil did with it!

Once I started doing repair work for a Spanish guitar shop in Fulham, I had the opportunity to see what a decent classical guitar was really like. So my classical shape changed to this:

My rosette design also became much more refined from this; using 1mm square mosaics…..

……to this; using 0.6mm mosaics.

 I built a number of these in my third year at the LCF and at least two were sold again via the London Guitar Gallery. The one above is made from Brazilian tulipwood and the photos were sent to me a couple for years ago by its current owner.

After leaving the London College of Furniture, I spent some time at the London Guitar Gallery, I made many more classical guitars. The original owner of this one sent me this photo a couple of years back too.

Whilst at LGG, classical guitarist Duncan James bought one of my guitars and a real high-light of this early part of my career was to see/hear my guitar played in concert at the Wigmore Hall.

Also somewhere around this time I built a couple of Flamenco guitars; one cypress with tuners and one rosewood with pegs- where are they? Your guess is as good as mine!

As you can see this early period hasn't been well documented by me, so it would be great to get hold of some more photos.