Every guitar I make is custom built for you.

For my custom work, I work with you to get the sound you have in your head into your perfect guitar, taking the time to first really understand exactly what sound and aesthetic you are searching for. I hand-select every piece of wood, tweak design elements, and voice the instrument from hardware to electronics to ergonomics so the envelope of attack, note response, and physical feel is to your liking. This means finding the perfect combination of body, neck, fretboard, scale, frets, radius, layouts, switching, hardware, finishes, neck shape, and much more.

The following options simply catalogue what I have done for customers in the past. Nothing is impossible.

Wood

Alder – a smooth, midrange tone. Balanced, clear, and articulate. It can be percussive but smoothes out with drive.
Swamp Ash – open, airy, with snap. It tends to not smooth out as much when driven.
Mahogany – warm balance, defined, with a bit more punch in the lower-mid area.
Korina – sort of a mahogany meets swamp ash affair. It has bite, articulation, and is snappy but sings.
Western Red Cedar – big open acoustic ring, percussive, defined.

Shape

Any body shape can be customized with belly cuts, contours, and/or a specific thickness and back radius to suit your ergonomic needs.

T-Bird – traditional t-style outline and size.
Fatline – slightly oversized traditional t-style that is Chambered or “Hybrid Hollow” braced.
Hawk – T-style but slightly downsized and combined with more Kalamazoo elements.
Houla – Traditional S-style double cut.

Tops

Tops can drastically augment the sound
Maple – quilted (softer, rounder) or flamed eastern (snap and definition).
Myrtle – very clear and open with similar attack to Eastern maple but different focus
Rosewood
Spruce – particularly suitable for hollow bodies. A great balance of crispness, breath, and openness.
Redwood – warm and clear, great balance of smoothness and openness.
Cedar – big, open, and ringing yet warm.

CHAMBERING

Chambering is available in multiple variants of the below
Fatline Standard – our chambering system for a semi-hollow sound
Hybrid Hollow – our U-braced system that bridges a gap between trestle bracing attack and semihollow-like sustain.
Fatline TV Bracing – a special system that couples chambered sections in the top and back.

finish

Finish – Your guitar's finish will always be thin and resonant and can be in almost any color imaginable
Binding – White or black, double or single binding.

Wood

Maple (Eastern, light birdseye, flamed, torrified) – traditional snap and clarity.
Rosewood (Cocobolo, Indian, Madagascar) – ranges tonally by oil content and density. Balanced, clear, smooth.
Mahogany – full, balanced, earthy growl.
Korina – snap with sing. Clear, slight upward peak shift from mahogany.

SCale Length

I love experimenting with scale lengths, as they drastically alter the sound and playability of a guitar. Here some common ones I’ve used:

25.5” – A clear, defined, precise response and sound.
25” – has a signature midrange which is precise and focused.
24.625” – shift in mids from 25.5”. Easier bends and low-end has a bit more growl and less spank.
24” - way less tension. Has a fatness and vocal quality to the sound. It sings.

shapes

I hand shape every neck to meet your preferences. Some customers give me exact measurements, others give me a desired "feel" or vintage example.

C Shape – round with gradual to little shoulder.
U Shape – more pronounced shoulder with a rounded back.
V Shape – soft or harder V back with almost no shoulder.
V to C Shape – a V shape that rounds out higher up the neck.
Offset – tapers to thinner treble side. Fits well into the hand.

Fretboards

Many woods are available but here are my favorites. Fretboard edges can be rolled to your specifications.

Maple
Indian Rosewood
Brazilian Rosewood
African Blackwood

FRETS

Dunlop, Jescar or Stew mac sizes available

Nickel-Silver – traditional frets, traditional tone.
Stainless Steel – smooth bending, wear well, a bit more shallow sounding, with a harder attack.

Radius

7.5” – easier chording, higher action needed for large bends without fretting out.
10” – comfortable for chording, allows lower action for bends without choking out.
12” – smooth bends, comfortable chording, traditional feel for 24 ¾” scale instruments.
Compound  10” to 12” – gradually flattens for rounder low register chording and smooth bends.
Compound 12” to 14” – allows comfortable chording, and very low action with clean bends.

NUT Width

1 .65" – easier to play thumb-over style and double stops. Requires more precise technique to avoid finger crowding.
1.6875" – traditional G width, more finger space, easier to fingerpick.
1.75" – extra wide, good for fingerpickers, transitioning classical players, or those with big hands.

FINISH

Any neck or headstock can be bound along with the body. The headstock can also be painted to match the body color.

Zero Drag – My custom and proprietary satin finish. Super fast, silky, and natural feeling.
Lacquer – for a more traditional look and feel.

BRIDGES

Vintage-style Ashtray
6-point vintage-style Tremolo
Hipshot hardtail
Bigsby
Mastery
Glendale
Hipshot Baby Grand
Tonepros
Custom made wood and bone

TUNERS

Vintage Kluson-style
Vintage locking
Modern locking
Steinberger gearless

COLORS

Black
Gold
Chrome
Nickel

PICKUPS

It is extremely important that the pickups be integrated into the design. Pickups translate and shape your tone. The perfect pickup for one guitar might be horrible on another. Besides winding my own line of Black Dog pickups, I use a wide variety of other maker's pickups including Lollar, Ron Ellis, Klein, Duncan Custom shop, Wolftone, Biltoff, Curtis Novak, Mojo, Fralin, and many others. I find the exact combo of pickups to pull out the soul of the instrument and get the perfect representation of YOUR tone.

WIRING

Each guitar is custom wired to best fit the tonal goals and ergonomic stage use. Great care is taken to make even normally electronically complicated switching functions extremely easy for the player.

Switches – 3 or 5 way traditional, 5 way super switch, 3 way bat toggle
Voiced volume and tone pots
Voiced tone caps
Push pulls – for coil splitting, series/parallel, in/out of phase, and many other options.
Mini switches for various functions
Ilitch noise cancelling system – available for single coil noise reduction maintaining true single tone