Smokehouse Guitars

I get lots of questions from people all the time, most of them repeats.  This is a collection of the most common ones I can think of.

Q: Why cigar boxes?

A: Why not?  Seriously, if you’re asking this question then you’re probably one of those that doesn’t get it.  It has to do with American folk history and a general disgust with big name, CNC’d guitars.

Q: Do you only make cigar box guitars?

A: I make whatever I feel like.  I don’t limit myself to an instrument type or medium.

Q: What about the prices on your guitars?

A: Prices are all over the place depending on the guitar I build.  An average six string cigar box guitar will start at $500 to $600.  Something with big name pickups and such will start climbing in price quickly from there.  Solid body electrics start at $1000.

Q: Do you have any [insert name] guitars available?

A: I don’t keep an inventory of guitars.  Each one is custom made on request.

Q: How do you rate your guitars compared to all the other ones out there?

A: Well, since I don’t have access to all the others out there, that’s pretty hard to do.  Look, there are a bunch of guys out there who claim to build the best guitar in the world.  I don’t care who they are, how long they’ve been doing it, etc, etc.  Making such a claim about a thing as personal as a guitar is simply ludicrous.  The definition of the world’s best guitar is purely subjective.  I could spend months (or even years) laboring over what I thought was the finest guitar in all creation but the plain fact is that I’ll never get 10 people to all agree on how it stacks up against any other guitar out there.  Attempting to make a guitar for the sake of making one better than everyone else is just stupid.  Claiming that your work is the best is equally silly.

For a musician a guitar is a deeply personal thing.  This is why I’m always confused when they run out to a store and buy a machine generated piece of plastic.  There is no substitute for the experience of dreaming up your ideal guitar with a skilled craftsman.

What I can tell you about factory guitars is that they almost never come free of problems.  Noise problems due to improper grounding or poor shielding, bad fret jobs, and lousy action are all common issues that I hear about again and again from professional musicians.  The reasons for this are pretty simple: it’s a factory.  The primary concern at a factory is to crank out widgets and grow revenue.  It takes hours of fussing and tinkering to properly set up and intonate a new guitar after it is supposedly finished.  Do you think they’re doing that in a factory where they’re churning out hundreds of guitars per week (or maybe even  per day depending on who it is)?

Custom guitar makers like myself are very sensitive to this.  We don’t have giant brand names, marketing departments, or a team of lawyers behind us to make us desirable to the public.  We live or die by our reputation so you can count on the fact that each guitar that leaves the shop plays the way it should.  Since I’m in the small time, I basically can’t afford to do anything but wow you.

So, yeah.  I’ll gladly stand one of my guitars up against any Fender or Gibson or whatever other chunk of plastic got turned out by a robot cutter.  Other craftsmen like myself, though, is a different story.  We all have our own take on what a guitar should be (those of us who aren’t just turning out Strat and Tele copies, anyway).  Just pick the guy who’s ideas match your own.

Q: Why don’t you add a shopping cart and purchase buttons to your site?

A: For the little items that I can turn out fairly quickly, I do.  I’ll never have a buy it now button or add to cart button for my guitars though.  I am not a manufacturer.  I don’t keep an inventory of guitars that I just churn out one after the other.  If you want a cookie-cutter guitar that was spit out after a couple of weeks’ work you should go look somewhere else.  If you want a deeply personal instrument that has been agonized over with single minded focus then this is a good place for you.

Q: These are kind of cool, but they’re not really serious instruments, right?

A: You’re right.  You should probably go buy a Fender.

Q: Do you put truss rods in your guitar necks?

Alternate versions of this are “What do you use for fret wire?” or “Can you use a certain kind of hardware?”

A: The only functional difference between one of my cigar box guitars and the typical solid bodies that you might be used to is the body.  Everything else meets or exceeds.

Q: What kind of finishes do you use?

A: I stick with finishes that keep the wood alive.  I mostly stick with oils or shellac (French polish) and will sometimes do a spray on laquer, however I never build the laquer up very thick.  I do enough to seal the wood and protect it from moisture or wetting.  I do not build up disgustingly thick layers of nitro or poly to a degree that you can smack the guitar with a hammer.  There are two reasons for this.  First, I’m a lover of wood and treating it such that it resembles plastic or fiberglass is a hideous concept to me.  It doesn’t even feel right anymore.   It stops feeling like a work of art that was carved from a living, breathing organism (remember, these things used to be alive) and feels a lot more like a booth table at an Islands restaurant.  Unacceptable.

Second, and this is really more important, IT MURDERS THE SOUND OF THE GUITAR.  Contrary to what anyone may tell you, the sound of the guitar does not come just from the pickups.  The wood that is used plays a major role in determining the final voice of the instrument, something that is completely dampened and nullfied when encased in a thick plastic shell.

You’ve got to be careful with my guitars.  They will scratch easily.  It is unfortunate but necessary to preserve the feel and sound of the guitar.

Q: How long does it take for you to make a guitar?

A: It takes as long as it needs to.  This is typically around a month if I don’t have anything else on my plate but I reserve the right to take longer in order to make sure that the instrument is correct.  Don’t ask me to make you something if you’re in a rush.  Go to the store and get a Fender.  I don’t think it has ever taken me longer than three months.  That’s not bad considering that I’ve heard of some people waiting as long as two years to get their guitar.

The big issue these days is the wait for me to start a guitar.  I always have a good sized list of orders that I’m working on so it could take up to six months before I could start yours depending on what I’ve got going at the time.

Q: It seems like you hate Fender brand guitars?

A: I don’t hate Fender or any of the other big names out there (seems silly to me to hate a business).  I just don’t think that they’re all as fantastic as everyone in the industry is always trying to claim.  Take any big name guitar manufacturer (Fender, Gibson, PRS, or any of the other biggies).  These guys aren’t about making instruments.  They’re about making a profit.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that, you understand!  But let’s just call it like we see it, right on?  They are corporations out to satisfy a bottom line with a product.  There is a heavy demand (for whatever reason) for these products, so they have to meet it with CNC machines and production line practices and solutions.

The problem is that a guitar, a real guitar for a real guitar player, needs to be personal.  It’s the difference between marrying your high school sweetheart or picking up a hooker on the street; the difference between convincing Hatori Hanzo to make you a sword and ordering a shitty stamped metal replica off of QVC.  The relationship between a musician and his/her instrument has nothing to do with profit or revenue or bottom lines.  It has nothing to do with logic.  It’s all about feeling and soul.  You don’t go to places like Guitar Center for that kind of thing, you come to guys like me.

If you’re just learning how to play the guitar, by all means buy something cheap to begin with.  Something with training wheels (like a Fender).  At some point in your progression as a musician, however, a plastic guitar just isn’t going to take you where you need to go.

Q: Can you make a guitar using a box that I provide?

A: Send me some pictures of the box you want to use and some idea of its size and we’ll see. In most cases, though, my answer is yes.

Q: What forms of payment do you accept?

A: I only accept PayPal or cash.

Q: Can I have my own courier come out to your location and collect the guitar?

A: No.  I use either UPS or USPS to ship guitars and I take care of all the shipping.

Q: How do you handle payment?

A: On a case by case basis, but it’s usually in the form of an initial payment, followed by the remaining blanace upon completion.