Santa Cruz Guitar Company
The Gryphon repair guys visit Richard Hoover's Santa Cruz Guitar Company
From the left, it's Tim Chambers, Richard Hoover, Steve Swan, me, Mike Gold.
Besides wearing a T-shirt that happens to match the turquoise Santa Cruz guitar, Steve Swan is almost a fixture around SCGC.
Steve operates his own store, Steve Swan Guitars in El Cerrito, California, and spends part of a day every week at SCGC overseeing the construction of the numerous custom Santa Cruz guitars he offers in his shop, many made with his own special woods. Clearly, Steve is the man to see for a custom Santa Cruz guitar. You can find him on the web: SteveSwanGuitars.com
Richard has his hands full running the operation:
Well, OK, he has his arms folded, but you know what I mean.
Richard is gracious as always, ready to take time to answer any questions and personally guide us through the workshop. Here he's discussing wood drying techniques with Tim:
The workroom is a busy place with interesting stuff happening all the time:
Top and back braces are been glued on at this station:
The "go-bar" deck is a natural photo op.
Here's some typical SCGC ingenuity:
Have you ever noticed that metal binder clips are exactly the right thing for clamping linings?
The sides of these bodies have been marked with yellow pencil as "witness marks" to make it easy to tell if they've been completely sanded in the next operation:
With an easy and steady hand, Ken sands the sides on the bodies to prepare them for binding:
This spaceman is Erin, who's detailing some bridges:
In the setup room, Carter deftly trims the end of the fingerboard before fitting the nut:
What do you do if the fret wire doesn't quite fit the slots the way you want?
Darren passes fret wire through a tiny grinder that is easily adjusted to cut just a bit off the little studs on the side of the fret tang:
Let's have a close-up of that grinder:
It's really very simple and it gets the job done!
Richard steps in to show us a quick trick:
He says that if you give the string a twist to tighten the windings, you'll ensure brighter bass response. Mostly, he's interested in avoiding loose windings, so it couldn't hurt. See this setup tip in the Quick Trick section.
Back in the shop, he demonstrated how he uses the reflection in the chisel to cut those perfect Santa Cruz miters:
Well, it's time to leave, but I can't resist snapping a shot of an old friend:
In semi-retirement cutting soundholes, this drill press was my grandfather's retirement present to himself a long time ago! I sold it to the SCGC guys just as their business was starting up. Seems I heard my grandfather mention something about storing the chuck key that way. . .