The Covid Guitars
I stopped making custom guitars for a while, but staying home during the pandemic gave me a reason to keep busy. I wondered what kind of guitar might exist if Les Paul and Leo Fender had collaborated. What if Les went to Leo instead of the Gibson company back in the early 50s? Would they develop a guitar like this?
The Goldtop Build– To explore that idea, I built a goldtop using a mahogany body and neck with a maple cap. I covered it in the exact Cres-Lite gold tone powder Gibson used in the 50s. I mixed this powder into nitrocellulose lacquer and sprayed both the body and the headstock. For the fretboard, I selected nicely grained Gaboon ebony, and I finished the body with a Bakelite pickguard.
The Sunburst Model- I also crafted an ice tea sunburst model using mahogany with a curly maple cap. For this fretboard, I used Brazilian rosewood repurposed from flooring in a Washington state house. Both of these custom guitars feature my own hand-wound pickups. I even potted these pickups using wax straight from our backyard beehives. To finish them off, I made custom decals and hand-painted the sunburst decal using gold tone paint.
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