(uplifting music) (wood grinding) (wood sanding) (hand slapping) - I love everything about guitars, the way they make music and the way they look.

And, when I was younger, I got into building things out of wood.

(wood sanding) (light music) One day I was looking at the guitar that I had and I was playing it, and I realized this thing is made out of wood.

Every piece of this thing is made out of wood, and I think I can make one of these.

(light music) So time went by and that stuck in my head and I kept thinking one day I would like to build guitars.

And finally I got to a place in my life where I could build guitars because I had a place to do it and I had the right tools to do it.

And so, I just decided, now's the time.

I'm gonna do it.

I'm just gonna start building guitars.

I told my wife, I'm going to build custom guitars.

(upbeat music) The magic of working with wood is you have to imagine that this piece of wood that you have in front of you, you've chosen this piece of wood for one reason or another because of the ease of its, the ability, the ease that it lends toward making things or the beauty of it.

You were just fascinated by the beauty of this piece of wood.

And then you look further into it and you see that this piece of wood, you have to know that this thing was growing in a forest one day.

And so you've taken something that was alive, growing in a forest, and you've created something that's very functional and can, and is art and makes music.

Wood to me is just a fascinating media that art can be created with.

What I think sets our guitars apart from other guitars in the marketplace is the one-on-one personal touch that we give to each guitar.

You can buy a number of guitars that are all great guitars, hanging on shelves and hanging on hooks in music stores.

But those guitars have been decided, this is what that guitar will be for you.

But as you progress as a guitarist and as a person who wants something a little more, you're gonna want something that has your own personal touch on it.

Something that plays the way you think it should play, not the neck that some other guitar company wanted you to have.

So we sit down with each player and we talk to 'em about what it is that they want, and we listen to what they say, and that may be something that they want to have on their custom build.

Custom inlay is something that speaks their voice out apart from the music, the color, the touch of the guitar, and most importantly, the way it feels in their hands.

We make sure that that comes across in each one of our guitars.

(Tony hammering) Most of the challenges come in guitar builds from the wood that we choose to use.

Not all pieces of wood lend themselves well to just being shaped any way you would like for it to be.

You have to wrestle it into submission, so to speak.

Cross grain structure in the material that won't file right, or it won't sand right and it won't cut right.

Or it'll warp out of shape as soon as you cut it and you have to start over.

So generally it's the wood itself and the materials itself that create the tension in building.

- My experience, playing a Worth Guitar, you know, Tony's got a great attention to detail.

He does, he picks up, he's got his own thing going on but there's also some things that are kind of a nod back to other manufacturers and just other luthier and other things that people have done making guitars.

You know, like I like the, it's got a little volute back here.

I like that.

You know, some guys hate that, some guys hate that, but I like that on the back of the guitar, you know.

(guitar music) Yeah.

It's a great instrument.

I mean, the thing that he did for me, I kind of wanted something a little more bare bones than what he normally does.

He builds some guitars with some beautiful tops and beautiful figuring of the wood.

I just went with a gold top thing to keep it a little understated but it's definitely, it's a workhorse guitar.

I mean, it sounds great and like I said, it sustains, Kelly's got an amazing sustain, I'm not gonna do the spinal tap thing 'cause I'm sure every guitar player you're talking to is gonna say, it's a sustain.

- When I was a child, I had a little bit of a rough childhood, much like a lot of other people did.

And I was a pretty lonely kid and I spent a lot of time by, you know, by myself just trying to figure out what to do and how to be and what to be.

I was in a situation where I didn't know what to do, just like a lot of kids.

But because I discovered a guitar because my cousin had a guitar leaning against the wall in a corner, covered in dirt, covered in dust, and he allowed me to take it home with me and pluck on it and figure out what to do with it.

You know, I had something now to focus on because the guitar was there, all of a sudden I wasn't lonely anymore and all of a sudden I had music now, and I could share that music with other people and people would come and share their music with me.

Music saved my life.

The guitar saved my life as far as I'm concerned.

Mark Dunn's guitar is gonna be a beautiful guitar.

It has a quilted maple top, that I had that piece of wood sitting around for a long time, man.

And I knew one day I'd use it on a cool guitar and as soon as Mark saw it, he was like, "Oh, that's mine.

That's the one I want.

I don't wanna even look anymore.

That's my, that was my piece of wood."

(guitar buffing) So I was like, "Okay, well there you go."

So that was, that worked out well.

And we came up with a cool inlay design for him.

Stellar.

First time we've done that and did a great Pau Ferro fretboard with some binding on it, and it's gonna have a very, very nice guitar when it's done.

It's gonna be pretty special looking and of course, you know, he'll play the heck out of it, I'm sure.

(upbeat guitar music) - What is up with that?

Dude, that's sick.

- The Mark Dunn model.

- [Mark] It's the Mark Dunn model.

(laughing) - Yep.

- [Mark] Wow.

- The MD One.

- The MD One.

That's light.

- It's the very first Stellar inlay.

- You nailed the neck shape.

- Sure.

Put a lot of work into that.

The guitar is a quilted maple cap.

- That I picked out.

- That you picked out.

Yes, when you first came to the shop.

(both laughing) The neck is Pau Ferro with ebony binding that we spoke about.

- The ebony binding was your idea.

- Yeah.

- The Pau Ferro was my idea because I like it that it's not super porous and I thought it would aesthetically be cool against the purple.

- Yes.

- The binding is just killer.

- The way that I choose the materials in the design elements in a build is obviously there's the one-on-one first with the artists playing the guitar, what is it that he wants?

What are his aesthetics?

What type of wood does he like?

And we go from there.

There are certain formulas that we use, you know, that are the old tried and true mahogany backs and maple tops, ebony fretboards and that type of thing that just create this great tone.

For some reason, it's the ingredients and the soup that just, man, you just don't leave 'em out, you know.

It's the trinity, you know, it's the, when you're cooking, you know what I mean?

It's the carrots, the celery, the onion, you know, the garlic, you know, you have to put those things in there and so we try to make sure that we go in the right direction as far as using the correct woods to make good tones and things like that.

But ultimately we have to listen to what the artist wants, you know, and what they're looking for, so we go that way.

(upbeat music) I've thought about what I do and how it touches people's lives.

You know, when you talk about it, it sounds a little arrogant, but, you know, it is something that you have to think about.

You have to think that when someone is playing an instrument that you produced, like, you know, we already said that I'm part of that music, although all I did was create a guitar, and obviously their artistry makes the music, but I'm still a piece of that.

And so that's a big thing, you know, and I look down the road at that and I look at the amount of music that people make playing the guitars that I make.

And I love being a part of that.

(upbeat music)