A couple of months ago, I reviewed a nice S-style guitar made by Landric Custom Guitars, LLC. Since then I’ve had the chance to ask Rick Land, the luthier behind Landric Custom Guitars, some questions about his guitars and how he builds them. Check out the interview below:

How did you get into building guitars?

I started building electric guitars to keep out of the “dog house” with my wife. When I really got into the more vintage style guitars, I knew there was no way I could afford the real good re-issues let alone the authentic relics, so I thought I’d try build one. Well, one turned into two, and two turned into three. When I got up to five or so, my wife lovingly suggested that I sell my builds to help pay for future ones.

How do you choose the components that go into a guitar?

There are a lot of factors that go into each guitar I build. There might be a certain look I am trying to achieve, or a sound(s) I am looking for. Most of the time, the guitar’s cost is a big factor. I really try to get the most “bang” for the buck. I always strive for quality without spending top-dollar. There are a lot of nice parts, pieces, and pickups out there that need to be tried in a guitar.

How did you develop your relicing technique?

Lots of trial and error unfortunately. I am always studying the real thing. Whether I’m studying books and photos of vintage guitars, or I get a chance to hold an authentic relic, I try to replicate what I see. There is something new I learn from every old, worn, and played-out guitar. It always amazes me how different one vintage guitar looks from the next. Every player plays a little different. They hold their guitars differently. They store them differently. Some guitars are played in a studio all their life while some have been played in nothing but smokey bars and outdoor stages. They all age, just very differently. I am always trying to recreate these effects. It’s an art I’m learning with each relic job I do.

It seems like even though you might use a few off-the-shelf components, you work them into something unique that fits the particular instrument you’re working on. What process do you use to do that?

I actually use many off-the-shelf components. Because I build a lot of very popular-styled guitars, there are many, many parts available. Sometimes you just go with what works. I get a lot of feedback from players on each of my builds. They tell me if something works or doesn’t work for them. I like to visualize each guitar in my head before I build it. Unless it’s a requested custom guitar, I will mix and match paint colors, fingerboard woods, bridges/tremolos, tuners, …etc. until I have a combination that seems to work for me. Then once the guitar is built, I get it into a players hands to give it a “test run”. Not every player likes the same feel or sound from an electric guitar, so I try to do something a little different any time I can. It’s a fun, but time consuming, process.

I noticed the S-style models I played had a unique electronics set up. Could you explain that a little?

Most of my guitars will get the same electronics. I try to use good quality components and a few tricks I pick up on from some real talented builders over the years. The Retromaster (S-type) guitars will generally come with 5-way switching, vintage pots, cloth wire, “orange-drop” capacitors, and most have a treble-filter on the volume pot. This filter or by-pass, will let you “roll” your volume down without the guitar’s tone getting “muddy” sounding. A lot of the good builders out there will add this feature because it works so well. My Trebleshooter (T-type) guitars use all those same components, but come with 3-way or 4-way switching. I have even experimented with a Trebleshooter that has a 5-way switch. With a added tone capacitor and some different wiring, this guitar gives you all three original T-style tones plus an “out of phase” tone and a neck pickup setting with treble by-pass. Just something you don’t always see, but may be a tone players are looking for…

Any plans to introduce other body styles in the future?

This is a definite plan. Right now, I am just finishing up a custom-ordered 5-string bass guitar. I have done a few bass guitars over the last few yeas, but I hope to get some out in the store soon. I am also working on finishing up a Trebleshooter Baritone and a Thin-line Retromaster. A few other guitar ideas are not far behind either.

For as much as I love the classic styles that we are all grew up with and are accustom to, I can’t wait for the time when I can put a more custom designed Landric guitar out there for players to try. I don’t know when exactly this will happen, but God-willing, it’s a definite plan.

Please feel free to expand on any other part of the guitar-building process that you’d like to talk about.

I will have a few more demos out on Youtube soon. I’ve been very blessed to have the talents and skill of Jared James Nichols playing my Landric guitars out and on video. He really puts my guitars through the extreme playing styles and methods on a daily/nightly basis. Jared and I are working on some new videos to get out there soon.

I also am very close to getting my website up and running. It should give a lot more detail and information on my guitars and what I have to offer. Until it is finished though, you can always go to Cream City Music’s website at: www.creamcitymusic.com to see what I have in stock at their store in Brookfield, WI. Cream City Music is one of the “go-to” guitar stores in the Midwest. They do a lot of business on-line and their showroom is an excellent place to show my guitars. I can also be reached at rick@landricguitars.com.

Gruhn Guitars, which features a large collection of vintage instruments, survived the recent Nashville flooding only to suffer water damage due to a burst pipe on the second floor of their downtown Nashville location. Dozens of instruments sustained damage including some vintage instruments. News station WKRN reporting on the damage:

“Some of these were very good instruments,” [Gruhn] said. “This was not a couple dozen cheap, student model guitars. This was a couple dozen good ones.”

Some of those guitars are irreplaceable, vintage instruments.

“It’s emotionally tough,” said Gruhn. “These instruments are things that I view as though they were alive. They have soul and personality, and they have history.”

Very sad to hear. Gruhn’s has a well-respected staff of instrument repair technicians, so I hope they are able to return these instruments to their prior glory.

Mark McGuigan recently posted the video below of a tour through the Suhr Guitars factory. I’ve said before that I love a good factory tour video and this one doesn’t disappoint. An added bonus is a backing track of Guthrie Govan’s “Sevens”:

The Fender Custom Shop has recently introduced the Jim Campilongo* Signature ‘59 Telecaster. This signature guitar is based on Campilongo’s original ‘59 Telecaster. One of the unique features of the guitar is that the strings are top loaded instead of through-the-body like most modern Telecasters. Another unique feature of the guitar is the Campilongo-designed pickups that are available exclusively with this guitar.

Click here to view an interview with Campilongo talking about the guitar at this year’s Winter NAMM show.

* If you’re not familiar with Jim Campilongo, he is a New York based guitarist who is perhaps best known for playing with Norah Jones in the Little Willies. He has also released a number of solo instrumental albums, the most recent of which is Orange, which is one of my favorite albums of the year so far.

Wildwood Guitars has worked with Gibson to create an extremely limited edition new version of the Joe Bonamassa signature Les Paul called the Joe Bonamassa Ltd VOS Les Paul. As you can see from the picture above, this model differs from the first signature model in that it is a Sunburst model while the first model was a Goldtop. They actually call the finish on this one the “Bonamassa Burst.” Wildwood’s feature list for the guitar includes the following:

Bonamassa Burst, VOS Finish, Carved Maple Top, 2-Piece Mahogany Body, Nickel Hardware, ABR-1 Bridge w/o Retainer Wire, Aluminum Stop-bar Tailpiece, Dunlop Strap Locks, 1-Piece Mahogany Neck, 22 Fret Rosewood Fingerboard, Acrylic Trapezoid Inlays, 24 3/4″ Scale Length, 1 11/16″ Nut Width, Bonamassa Truss Rod Cover, BurstBucker 2 (R) and BurstBucker 3 (T) Pickups, 2 Volume, 2 Tone, 3-way Switch, CTS Pots and Bumble bee Capacitors, Includes Hardshell Case.

At least initially, there will only be 25 of these new Bonamassa models made for sale (numbered 1-25), and Wildwood Guitars will be the exclusive retailer for them. You can pre-order the guitar directly from Wildwood for $3899. I have no affiliation with Wildwood and I’ve never purchased anything from them, but I recently spoke with one of their salespeople about another guitar they had in stock. They were extremely helpful and, even though I ended up buying a different guitar, I would not hesitate to buy from Wildwood in the future.

My wife and I recently took a trip to Milwaukee, Wisconsin to visit family. While we were up there, I visited Cream City Music, an excellent music store in the area. I played a number of guitars, including a brand of Strat- and Tele-style guitars that I had never heard of: Landric Guitars. They are handmade and assembled by Rick Land in Grafton, Wisconsin. I played several of his Strat-style guitars, and they played as well as any Fender-made Strat I’ve ever played, including my own number one Strat. I’m not really looking to add another Strat to my collection, but if I were a Landric guitar would be at the top of the list. They are reasonably priced, too!

Land uses a mixture of high-quality parts, select hardwoods, custom finished bodies and hand-finished necks. For example, on the models I played, he used Lollar “Blackface” pickups, which sound fantastic. The neck felt extremely comfortable in my hands, and the overall weight of the guitar was very comfortable.

Cream City Music is currently the only retail store that carries Landric Guitars. You can contact them to get more information about Landric Guitars. I’ve only had the one visit with them, but they seemed very friendly and helpful.

You can see a demo of a Strat-style Landric guitar below (in fact, this is likely one of the guitars I played in the store):

I have a confession: I’m a bit of a headstock snob, mainly because I’ve always equated quality with the name on the headstock. Additionally, I’ve had mixed experiences with Squier guitars before. As a result, I haven’t paid much attention to Squier guitars over the past few years. However, over the past year after joining The Gear Page forums and The Telecaster forums, I started hearing a lot of very good reviews about the Squier Classic Vibe ’50s Telecaster. The first few times I heard rave reviews, I didn’t pay much attention to them. However, over time after hearing more and more rave reviews, I decided to take a closer look at the Squier Classic Vibe ’50s Telecaster.

The Classic Vibe Telecaster is not meant to be an exact replica of a ’50s Telecaster; it’s meant to evoke the vibe of those guitars, and I think it does a good job of that. This Telecaster features a white polyester finish, a maple neck, a one-ply black pickguard, Alnico III neck and bridge pickups, and one volume and one tone control with a three-way switch. The most intriguing part of this guitar to me is the pine body. I’ve never played a guitar with a pine body, so I was curious to see how the guitar played and sounded.

From what I can tell, the pine body takes a little bit of the “spank” away from what I normally think of when I think of Telecasters. The guitar sounds a little bit darker and maybe a little edgier than some of the other Telecasters I’ve played. I was thinking that I might need to swap out the pickups due to the fact that this is such an inexpensive guitar and I didn’t think they’d sound very good. I may still swap them out at some point in the future, but I actually like the way the pickups sound. Many people think they sound just as good as the pickups in the Made in Mexico Telecasters, and I’d have to agree.

One of the few complaints some people have about this guitar is that the neck is a little too small. I have to disagree, though. I’m used to playing thicker necks, but I find the thin neck of the Classic Vibe ’50s Telecaster to feel great. In fact, after playing my Jimmie Vaughan Strat for a while, my fretting hand often hurts. Not so with the Telecaster. I can play for a long time and experience no pain.

For a relatively inexpensive guitar, the fit and finish of the Classic Vibe ’50s Telecaster exceeds my expectations. The frets are well fitted, and I couldn’t find any flaws in the finish. The guitar feels solid and well-made. I wouldn’t say that the Classic Vibe ’50s Telecaster is as good as USA-made Telecasters (although they can hold their own pretty well), I would say that the Classic Vibe ’50s Telecaster is as good as any Made In Mexico Telecaster I’ve ever played.

If you’re in the market for a well-made, yet inexpensive Telecaster, I highly recommend checking out the Squier Classic Vibe ’50s Telecaster. The street price for the guitar is $350. If you want the same value in a slightly different package, Fender has recently announced two more Classic Vibe Telecasters, the Classic Vibe Custom and the Classic Vibe Thinline.

Gibson recently introduced the Keb’ Mo’ signature Bluesmaster acoustic guitar. The guitar is loosely based on Keb’s Epiphone Bluesmaster, which was a popular parlor-sized guitar that Gibson discontinued about 10 years ago. The Keb Mo’ Bluesmaster features a spruce top, mahogany back and sides, and a bound, rosewood fingerboard. It is available in a natural or sunburst finish. Gibson has recently posted a video of Keb’ Mo’ discussing the guitar.

As a fan of both parlor-sized guitars and Keb’ Mo’, I’m glad to see Gibson come out with this model. However, I’d also like to see them reintroduce the Epiphone Bluesmaster.

Signature series guitars. All major guitar manufacturers make them. Some people love them, and some people hate them. Personally, I fall into the “love them” camp. The ironic thing is that many of the people who claim that they hate them would not hesitate to play a Les Paul, which is perhaps the prototype for signature series guitars.

What I like about signature series guitars is that they either take inspiration or direct feedback from the artists that inspired the guitars, resulting in a guitar that is different from the standard fare. Additionally, most signature guitars have unique features not available on the standard production guitars. For example, taking cues from his famous “Number One” guitar, the Stevie Ray Vaughan Stratocaster has the vibrato arm on the top of the bridge rather than the bottom. The newly released Rosewood Eric Johnson Stratocaster has unique colors and a bound fretboard, which no other current product model Stratocaster has.

One trend I’ve noticed in some signature series guitars is that the identifying marks, such as the artist’s signature, have been moved from obvious spots on the guitar to the back of the guitar or other hidden areas. For example, the Stevie Ray Vaughan model has the signature on the front of the instrument, whereas the recent John Mayer and Kenny Wayne Shepherd Stratocasters have the signature on the back of the headstock. I think this is likely in response to the resistance that some players have to playing an instrument with another player’s name on it.

Even though I’m a fan of signature guitars, some guitar manufacturers have taken the signature guitar concept a little too far. For example, Dean Guitars have over 30 guitars inspired by or attributed to Dimebag Darrell. Fortunately, other manufacturer’s have taken a less is more approach to signature guitars.

That being said, I think signature series guitars provide a great way for fans to pay tribute to their guitar heroes. Additionally, I think signature series guitars provide an opportunity for guitar manufacturers to work directly with artists to create unique and innovative instruments. Gibson’s Les Paul is an example of a manufacturer working directly with an artist to create a unique instrument that has stood the test of time. And, it’s provided a platform for other artists to create their own unique guitar.

What do you think about signature series guitars?

Guitar World magazine recently posted a video of their exclusive tour of the Paul Reed Smith factory. I found it interesting that, although machines are used to do the cutting of the body and neck, there is still a lot of manual labor involved in assembling a PRS guitar.