OK, we admit it. We’ve been acquiring instruments at an alarming rate. In the world of guitars, this problem has become known as GAS (Guitar Acquisition Syndrome). We’ve got it bad! The newest member of our guitar family will be a tenor guitar custom made by Tom Fay. We’re calling it the Silver Dot, because the fret markers will be silver. Dots. Here is the new baby in progress:
Tom Fay Silver Dot Guitar
And from the back:
Air guitar indeed!
And a more recent shot:
Getting close! Needs frets, varnish, hardware...
And still more recent:
Look at that beautiful grain!
Here’s the front:
Fretted, varnished. Needs buffing, tuners and strings!
It’s our first blonde! But not our first cutaway, which is this gorgeous 1954 Guild x-150:
For those of you who live for the details, both the Silver Dot and the Guild are actually guitar-scale instruments (the Silver Dot will be 25 inches; the Guild is 25.5). Since we use the DGBE tuning, having the slightly longer scale (tenor scale is usually around 23 inches) just adds a nice quality to the intonation in that tuning. There’s one more guitar-scale (25.5 inches) instrument in our stable, this cool Epiphone which was completely re-habbed by the one and only Joel Eckhaus. It started off looking like this:
Body of a 1954 Epiphone Century
What you probably can’t tell is that it was a 6-string instrument. Joel somehow carved the neck down to a 4-string width while the neck was still attached! And did an amazing job! He installed two pick-ups, had it re-bound and finished…..and:
1954 Epiphone Century rehabbed into a 4-string by Joel Eckhaus
Now we come to the actual tenor guitars. My very first tenor guitar was this 1940s Gibson ETG-150, which I bought from Lowell Levinger, erstwhile Youngbloods bandmember (when he was known as Banana). Hanna. Banana. Has a certain ring to it! This guitar has been my rock. It’s a joy to play, and has a sweet tone:
Isn’t she a beauty? Of course, if you’re seriously into swing music, you know that the Charlie Christian pick-ups from the 1930s had that indefinable something: muscular, you might call it. A nice one appeared on eBay, and we snagged it:
This has become Phil’s main guitar. Being all into Christian and all. Watch here for soon-to-come photos and romantic gushings about our two acoustic Epiphone tenor guitars from the 1930s. (Sigh)
