Spruce pickguard follow up

[MartyGrass]

I posted a while ago my musings of putting a spruce pickguard on my Super Kenny Burrell so that the pickguard grain and stain would match the top. Today I brought the guitar to Aaron Cowles, a local and mega experienced Heritage/Gibson luthier and asked him about it.

 

He gave me a peculiar look and kindly explained what a stupid notion I had. To understand Aaron you have to know that he worked at Gibson making custom guitars for very serious players- Roy Clark, Merle Travis, Chet Atkins, Johnny Smith, Kenny Burrell, Barney Kessel and of course Les Paul. Plus Aaron is a picker himself. He builds guitars that are art but also tools, durable tools.

 

He explained that spruce is too soft and would wear through the entire pickguard. He added that even maple is too soft, and the wood stains badly once the lacquer wears. Heritage uses maple PGs for glamor, and a serious guitarist who rests his fingers on the PG will soon disfigure it and will eventually need to replace it.

 

Of course most of us will be long dead before we fully wear out a maple PG since we don't play six hours a day every day.

 

He prefers to use ebony and tortiose shell. There is no finish to wear out.

 

He said he'd build me a maple or spruce pickguard if I wanted. But I would feel way too ashamed to even ask after his explanation.

 

Aaron is very old school and, shall we say, thrifty. I asked him to cut me a new set of saddles for a TOM bridge. He looked around in his shop for some uncut saddles but didn't find any. He seemed upset because he'd have to order some and was worried that they'd be expensive with the way things are going these days. He looked up the price and his suspicions were confirmed- $5 a set. I figured I'd better buy the big ticket items now before we all go over the fiscal cliff in January. So a new set it is.

[eljay]

a great vignette, marty. thank you for sharing!

[bolero]

ha, great story!

[Gitfiddler]

So are you going to have Aaron make you an ebony pickguard?

[TalismanRich]

You could have the spruce covered in an extra thick layer of NC lacquer, or even a hard polyester finish. It shouldn't affect the sound since it's not technically a part of the body.

 

... or you could just get the spruce with a thin coat, and play it until it looks like the front of Willie Nelsons' Trigger.