I am a longtime consumer, fan, and student of the Custom Shop. There are some fantastic guitarmakers and members here, and I would like to start this thread with a big thank you to everyone for their willingness to share and contribute. I will continue to be an avid consumer of information on this forum, but my goal with this thread is to begin contributing.
A condensed background. I was raised in a small rural town in northwest Missouri. My mother spurred my passion for music, woodworking, art, and crafts. She was and remains a renaissance woman. A fantastic musician, singer, painter, artist, woodworker, designer and all around great person. Growing up, we were always making or restoring something. Music was also an integral part of life.
I've been learning/playing the guitar since age 13. I was lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist in various bands throughout high school and college. At some point during undergrad, it dawned on me I should have a backup plan in case the rock star thing didn't pan out. One thing led to another, and I eventually graduated law school with honors and secured a prestigious job clerking with a federal district court judge in the Western District of Missouri. Unfortunately, long haired rocker and judicial law clerk don't mix well, so I decided to direct my musical and creative juices in a new direction.
I began to soak up all information I could find about guitarmaking. To that point, I think my lutherie experience was limited to building a lap dulcimer in high school. Like many builders here, my initial goal wasn't to become a long-term maker. Rather, I was a poor law school grad with a mountain of debt who knew he couldn't afford a nice solid wood guitar from a big factory (coupled with a long time frustration of going to big box music stores and being disappointed with the sound of the "high end" new guitars hanging from the high pegs on the wall). My initial thought process was probably similar to many builders here: raw wood is cheaper than a finished guitar; I have a few tools and know how to use a table saw, band saw, chisel and handplane; I can read and follow directions/instructions/plans; thus I can build myself a nice guitar
for less money than buying something similar. Maybe the statement in bold above is true for someone, but that someone wasn't me. That first, supposedly one-off project, turned into the most expensive hobby/passion/time suck/masochistic endeavor ever (alright, law school wins the most masochistic endeavor category, but lutherie is a close second).
I essentially conducted a year of guitarmaking self-study while scraping up enough free cash to buy the requisite wood and minimal tooling. In early 2011, I began building my first guitar, primarily using Natelson & Cumpiano's excellent book,
Guitarmaking: Tradition and Technology. That guitar took about five months' worth of long nights to complete. I made lots of mistakes (e.g., I inadvertently learned that the position of the lower tone bars don't make as much difference in final tone as you might expect . . . a word to new builders: be mindful that bracing plans are often printed as a reverse image and, regardless of where they seem to appear on the plan, lower tone bars for traditional x-braced guitars abut the treble-side x-brace leg). I also learned the hard way that being a generally good woodworker does not translate into being a generally good guitar finisher. Fine guitar finishing is a new category of beast, one that I have struggled mightily to tame. That first guitar sounded fantastic. It easily exceeded my expectations in that regard. Finish and fit, on the other hand, left plenty to be desired. So, of course, I had to build another, better one. And then another, and another, and so on and so forth. It's a never ending, maddening march towards an unachievable perfection. But a very fun and rewarding march nonetheless.
Wow, that was a long introduction. For what it's worth, I promise more pictures and fewer words in future posts.
Onward to the present. After the two-year judicial clerkship, I continued to build guitars in my spare time. But, with the addition of our first son and a new job in Big Law, spare time was limited. Still, I managed to knock out a couple guitars a year, each one slowly improving on the last in one way or another.
This spring, it dawned on me that I wasn't happy continuing down the Big Law path. So I quit. What a glorious, and simultaneously scary, feeling.
Since, I've been traveling with the family (we are hitting the Greek islands next month - super excited about that one), renovating the home shop, knocking off tasks from a "honey do" list that has been accumulating action items for the past 7 years, tending to the kids, building guitars, and planing my next legal venture (not necessarily in that order). At least while I have time, I thought I would document my guitarmaking endeavors here. That's it for now. Stay tuned for more.
Regards,
J. Aaron Craig
Jameslee Guitars (because I know some may be wondering where this name came from, here's a brief explanation . . . it is an amalgamation of my first name (James) and my wife's middle name (Lee) - at some point in time, we thought "Jameslee" sounded cool and agreed it would be the name of our first business . . . I also think it sounds better than "Craig Guitars" and a stylized "J" looks better on a headstock . . . so there you have it).
If you have Instagram, you can also follow me @jameslee.guitars.
You can also check out my website at
http://www.jamesleeguitars.com There are some sound clips of a few guitars in the listening room that were recorded by a country music guitarist/singer/songwriter and friend, Phil Vandel
http://www.philvandel.com/, as well as additional photos in the gallery.