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Email santh@pacbell.net Guitar Links

About 3 years ago, having played Plectrum Banjo for 40+ years, I decided to learn to play guitar. Naturally, after becoming accustomed to playing really good banjos, I wanted an equally fine quality guitar to play, and got very discouraged by the prices of really good archtop "jazz" guitars, either vintage or new.

Sometime during the first 5 or 6 months of guitar playing I discovered the wonderful book "How To Build an Archtop Guitar" by Bob Benedetto, one of the foremost contemporary builders of fine guitars. Besides revealing what an incredibly generous person he must be to be willing to reveal so many details and tricks of the trade, the book opened my eyes to the possibility of satisfying my desire to own an exceptional instrument at a reasonable cost. It also perked my seemingly genetic tendency to "do it myself."

One thing led to another, and last year at the 2003 Sacramento Jazz Jubilee over the Memorial Day weekend I revealed and played "number 1", a non-cutaway archtop. I was eager to loan it to other actual guitar players at the festival to get feedback from them on playability and sound, and I was monumentally encouraged by their enthusiastic responses.

In the year since then I built three 6-string archtops, five 4-string Plectrum archtops, and three archtop Baritone Ukuleles (although these are becoming more and more like very small 4-string "soprano guitars" than Baritone Ukes). Almost all have been sold or were custom ordered.

I'll be putting pictures of new instruments up here as they become available and hope to take orders - as many as possible! If you are interested in one of the guitars pictured or would like to talk about ordering one custom built just for you, please email me a santh@pacbell.net.