I’m pleased to announce that Ashley Kingman Model #2 is underway! It was ordered by Bruce “Rooster” Lipski who lives in Virginia and is a bonafide vintage guitar devotee and tone aficionado. Here’s some photos of his guitar body in progress.
Ashley is playing through a Tweed Deluxe clone with a 15″ speaker. Amp cabinet hand-built by Ashley. Strings are D’Addario flatwounds.
It’s been quite a while since I’ve posted anything on my blog, so I think it’s time I let everyone know what I’ve been up to for the past year and a half.
Soon after completing Ashley’s guitar, I got a full-time job at Santa Cruz Guitar Company. I work in their set-up department and my specific job is “gluing up” the guitars. What that means is that I attach the necks and bridges to the bodies. It involves checking the final neck angle and fine tuning the dovetail neck joint. Once the fit is perfect, I “glue it up” and it’s one step closer to being a completed guitar.
SCGC makes world-class acoustic guitars and so far I’ve had the privilege to work on some really amazing instruments. Here’s a photo of me at my bench.
Ashley and me celebrating the completion of his guitar. August 3rd, 2012.
Photo by Justin McIvor
I delivered the guitar to Ashley on August 3rd. He was in town for a show, so I got to witness him playing it live for the very first time. Talk about a satisfying moment—it was great to see how excited and happy he was to finally get the guitar!
Here’s a couple of photos of him playing it that night. Cheers.
Photos by Justin McIvor
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Photography by Justin McIvor
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When I had completely finished Ashley’s guitar, it was time to make it official, so the last thing I did was paste this label inside. It turned out to be the finishing touch.
This gallery shows the final assembly of Ashley’s guitar. By this point I had finished buffing the finish, leveling and recrowning the frets, fabricating the pickguard, the jackplate and the pickup surrounds—so all I needed to do was put it together, wire it up and slap some strings on it.
At this stage I wanted to show Ashley the guitar so he could get a feel for how it was coming along. Even though the guitar wasn’t finished, I put some strings on it, so he could try it out.
Here’s Ashley checking out the guitar while Big Sandy looks on. I was very relieved to hear him say it felt just like his guitar, only better!
Since I’m calling Ashley’s guitar the “Ashley Kingman Model” I wanted to put his name on it somewhere. I tried out a few options but they all seemed too obvious—I was looking for something subtle.
That’s when I remembered that Ashley has gotten many famous guitarists to sign the back of his guitar’s headstock. He has autographs from Scotty Moore, Les Paul, Paul Burlison and others on there, so it seemed only natural to put Ash’s signature in the same place on his new headstock. Here’s how it turned out.
