Dalmation Pick guards

[MWB5007]

Ok, there is a really beautiful SCGC listed in the Classifieds and it has a Dalmation pattern pick guard.

I have always liked that pattern and over the years, when I could still get a high quality material (I think John Greven used to make it) I put one on a couple of guitars and was quite satisfied.

But I know nothing of the history of this pattern; when it originated or on what makes? .... I only liked its resemblance to real tortoise.

Does anyone know what guitars, if any, came with this pattern originally. I have seen Gibsons with tiger stripe but never a dalmation and I can't recall seeing even vintage Martins with one.

I'm just curious.

Thanks!

[EatingHumblePie]

Sorry, I can't help, but I'm curious, too.

My wife despises my Dalmatian pickguard on my Eastman E8OM. It would be nice if I could tell her about the glorious history of that pattern.

[guitararmy]

I've always liked the dalmatian pickguard on my Blueridge BR-160. Curious about the history of these as well...

[cmd612]

Interesting. I have one and never knew it was called that. Thanks!

[J Patrick]

The first ones I recall seeing were on Santa Cruz Tony Rice models.. installed no doubt to replicate the genuine tortoise pick guard on his iconic D-28.. don’t know who made them...btw the tortis guards originally made by Greven are still available although they are made by someone else now...you can get them at LMI..

[harryboss1]

I've had a couple of Blueridges in the past and I liked the looks of them.

[lowrider]

This is the first time I've seen the term ''dalmatian pickguard'' but I know exactly what you mean.

I don't like them though.

[Silly Moustache]

Think the random black and white coats of Dalmatian dogs.

I'm pretty sure there is no relationship with the Croatian coastal area (which is remarkably beautiful), apart from the first illustration of the breed being found in a Croatian publication of the 1600s.

[Wade Hampton]

Okay, the mystery of Dalmatian pickguards is something I've always been idly curious about, but this thread finally inspired to try to get some answers. Since Blueridge guitars have Dalmatian pickguards, and I'm longtime friends with the owner of the company, I decided to give Richard Keldsen a call.

Richard Keldsen is the owner and sole proprietor of Saga Musical Instruments, which has Blueridge and Gitane brand guitars, Kentucky and Trinity College mandolins and Regal resonator instruments (as well as several other brands) on its company roster. Richard knows more about vintage instruments than just about anyone else I know, with the exceptions of Jim Baggett and John Bernunzio.

I've always been able to call Richard up and ask him questions about where he's gotten his ideas for the appointments on his instruments - for example, if there's an inlay pattern on the headstock of one of his Kentucky mandolins that I haven't seen before, I'll call him up and ask him if he designed that. Usually Richard will say something like: "No, that was on a Gibson mandolin model that was only made from 1931 to the early part of 1933. They're rare, but I've always liked that inlay pattern, so we decided to use it on this new mandolin we're putting out." And so forth.

When I called to ask him the origin of the Dalmatian pickguards I thought he'd say something like: "During WWII Martin was having trouble getting the darker celluloid pickguards, so there was a period of about 18 months when they had to use these splotchy pickguards instead."

But that's not what happened. It turns out that the history of Dalmatian pickguards is a lot more linear and contemporary than I expected.

In the 1970's, Richard Keldsen owned an acoustic-oriented music store in San Francisco called The Fifth String. If you came up in bluegrass music circles during the 1970's as I did, you'll remember that there was a huge boom in the music's popularity then but there were very few affordable instruments to play it on, especially mandolins and banjos. So starting in the mid-70's Richard started traveling to Japan to get Japanese manufacturers to build replicas of Golden Era banjos and mandolins. This later coalesced into the Saga Musical Instruments company.

It was on one of those trips in 1977 or '78 that Richard came across a pair of genuine tortoiseshell pickguards cut in the Martin teardrop shape. He bought them and brought them back to his shop in San Francisco, where one of the guitar teachers who taught there was immediately smitten by one of them and insisted on buying it.

That guitar teacher's name was Tony Rice.

What Tony Rice looked like then



Tony Rice shortly thereafter, genuine tortoiseshell pickguard in place



Tony Rice with his famous Clarence White Martin

At this point Tony Rice was just a local San Francisco musician, scraping by with a few gigs here and there and teaching guitar lessons at the Fifth String. He already had the guitar previously owned by Clarence White that he would later make famous. Rice was already well-known in bluegrass music circles - I knew who he was, or was at least aware of his name, but his biggest break came later when he was part of the original David Grisman Quintet.

Anyway, Rice insisted that Richard Keldsen sell him the pickguard, Richard sold it to him for what he had in it, and within a day or two Rice had removed the original celluloid pickguard on his Clarence White D-28 and replaced it with the genuine tortoiseshell pickguard Richard had brought back from Japan. It's visible in the second and third photos above.

For decades now Tony Rice has been telling interviewers that a friend had given him the pickguard. Richard told me: "I always wondered why Tony said a friend had given it to him rather than tell the complete story. But then I realized he was probably trying to protect me from the hoosegow!"

Then, as now, it wasn't legal to bring tortoiseshell products through US Customs. But back then, unlike today, there was ZERO enforcement on it. If you were trying to smuggle in a guitar with its back made of the entire shell of a sea turtle, sure, you'd get busted. But there was literally no enforcement when it came to small items like tortoiseshell picks and pickguards, a guitar-playing Customs agent I knew back then told me.

Since I had told Richard at the start of our conversation that I planned to post the story he told me on this forum, at this point he started getting a bit reluctant to continue with the story. But I said: "Look, Richard, there wasn't any enforcement of that law back then, and even if the feds wanted to go after you now, the statute of limitations on this has long since expired." Richard acknowledged that, then told me the rest of the story.

A few years after that trip to Tokyo when he found the pickguards, and with his Kentucky and Gold Star banjo product lines doing well, Richard started planning to introduce the Blueridge guitar line. He was again in Tokyo and in the same music store he came across celluloid picks that closely mimicked the coloration and pattern of the pickguards he'd brought back. He started using it as a pick material for the thick rounded triangle picks that were first sold as David Grisman picks, then (when the endorsement deal ended,) as Golden Gate picks.

When Richard and his R&D guys designed their Blueridge guitars, he wanted something that would set them apart visually from other similar guitars on the market. So they developed the so-called Dalmatian pickguards from the same celluloid stock they were using for the picks:

Blueridge guitar with Dalmatian pickguard

Richard didn't come up with the "Dalmatian pickguard" nickname; that's something that just sort of arose in the marketplace.

Lots of us with a more traditionalist bent (like me) were NOT fond of the look of Dalmatian pickguards, but it's served its purpose in presenting a unique visual appearance and creating a brand identity for Blueridge.

Then Santa Cruz started buying a few of the pickguards from Saga to use on the Tony Rice and Tony Rice Professional models:

Tony Rice with one of his (many) Santa Cruz Tony Rice models

Saga eventually got orders for small quantities of the pickguards from Collings then, eventually, CF Martin & Co.

So that's the story; in the late 1970's Richard Keldsen happened to bring back a couple of splotchy genuine tortoiseshell pickguards from Japan, Tony Rice insisted on buying one, which he put onto his guitar shortly before he became enduringly famous in acoustic guitar circles. Richard decided to use a similar-looking celluloid for pickguards on his Blueridge line of guitars, and from there the pickguards sort of developed a life and (limited) popularity of their own.

If you've made it this far into this post, I both congratulate and thank you, because it's taken me considerable time and effort to research and write it.


Wade Hampton Miller

[learner]

Thank you, Wade!

[Ten]

Very cool story, thank you for sharing.

[Wade Hampton]

Well, it was fun learning the true story. Putting it down in a post was a bit more work, though!


whm

[drive-south]

Cool story Bro

[der Geist]

Really enjoyed reading that story. Thank you for taking the time to share it.

[AgentKooper]

Excellent reportage, man! I’ve always liked the Dalmatian pickguards on my Blueridges, and it was cool to learn more about Saga’s role in developing them.