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Inspiration

#23 071199

In 1999 I built a guitar from Knotty Pine. I found this wood in a Home Depot dumpster. This infamous guitar is called the Zachary Home Depot dumpster guitar. I don't know of its whereabouts. I sold it a short time after it was completed, at a time when I still thought that artistic talent and achievement was defined and determined by units sold, like a McDonald's hamburger.

At the time I went on dial-up internet and found what was the predecessor of social media and what we now know as guitar forums - called the Usenet. Here there were all kinds of anonymous smartass characters who were chatting about guitars and pretending to be experts about guitars. Most of them were actually detestable in their ignorance but made up for it through internet bravado and insolence, under the cover of anonymity. I discovered instantly how depraved the internet can be, fostered by anonymity and thinking that in the real world I would never even acknowledge these individuals if I ran into them at a guitar shop. Thanks to the internet, they all had an equally loud voice and a newly-found sense of importance, while hiding their faces and identities. The internet gave them safety and immunity from being held accountable for what they said and how they behaved.

I wanted to tell them about my Home Depot dumpster build but to my surprise I received a volcano eruption of insults, derision, mocking and ridicule, unleashed on me by these unsavory characters. They considered me and my new guitar, a total joke. How dare I go against the mainstream narrative, corporate approved thinking and behaviour and build a guitar of my own, wile having no "credentials" as a commercially accepted and promoted brand. Also, how dare I make something out of the antitheses of what they were told are the "finest tone woods". This was no different from the mentality of today. Although, now interestingly, Knotty pine has been placed into the consciousness of the toddler by promoted companies, who have made Knotty Pine somewhat fashionable and acceptable, especially for Telecaster bodies.

However, I did it FIRST 22 years ago. I was the first to feature and display Knotty pine as legitimate and advantageous for guitar building by taking pride in. That was never the case prior to my Home Depot Dumpster guitar.

To put it in perspective, the late 90s were the heyday of PRS and their grotesquely figured and color dyed 10A, Private-Stock tops. I always wondered who would buy those sterile synthetic atrocities, covered by a thick plastic coating. Surely not real guitar players. I was always right in thinking this, since serious guitar players cannot play such atrocities unless they paid to do it. A hand made Knotty Pine guitar is much more inspiring and gratifying organically to a sentient being.

OK, I did deliberately provoke these toddlers on Usenet. I proceeded to shove the concept of Knotty pine into their consciousness, at a time when they were not ready to even comprehend the idea and could not get enough of extreme figured wood. I wanted to counter their corporate indoctrination as they were conditioned to have an immediate aversion to anything, which went against the promoted narrative. You may recall how heavy the propaganda was by PRS and other excessively advertised companies at the time. However, the toddlers really exposed their low intellect, lack of guitar knowledge, and aversion to individualism and creativity. To them I was a laughingstock for being original and claiming that this Knotty Pine guitar I had just built in my basement, from dumpster wood, was possibly the best guitar ever made. This was a real threat to their coded belief system.

I don't think I was exaggerating or using hyperbole. The guitar was very loud acoustically and resonated like no other. I did not even know at the time that all the Fender Telecaster prototypes were also made of Pine. A knotty pine guitar is possibly superior in tone than a guitar made of any other wood. After-all its a very similar wood to Spruce and Cedar, which are universally used for instrument sound boards.

I have been making Pine guitars periodically since that time and here I am still making guitars but where are all those mental toddlers from Usenet who laughed in 1999. Those who all banded together to ridicule a young unknown guitar builder, who would dare threaten their notion of what they were told a great guitar has to be? Not to even mention what they thought of my unique headstock design. It was just too much for them to handle. Individualism was not something one would be accepted to exhibit.
If you are still out there and remember being so agitated by my Knotty Pine guitar, then come forward and reveal yourself. What are you up to these days? What became of you. I am curious. I am still building my guitars.

Pine is very hard to work with because its a soft wood and often filled with pitch. It is hard on tools because sanding belts get gummed up in minutes. It is also very hard to drill accurate holes in something that is soft. I am experienced working with Pine and other soft woods and know how to do things like drill it accurately and also to fortify the screw holes, so that once drilled they can hold a screw securely. These are all details lost on the toddler or the tinkerer. Working with pine is not for the novice or the dabbler.

For this build, I had boards of White Pine, which is not knotty but clear Pine. I wanted to use this for the body but it was too thick and wide. I did not want to cut it down to make it thinner. So I realized that I can make a 1 piece body out of it and also make it a thicker body than a standard Les Paul. I would do this as a semi-hollow body but then I also needed matching top. What top would best match a Pine body? Certainly not what a tinkerer would use, he might even put a fancy top on it and emulate a PRS. Disgusting. If you have no aesthetic sensibility and no historical standards of propriety when building guitars, you should stick to guitar repair instead.
Of course, the appropriate top would have to be Knotty Pine. Clear Pine for the body and Knotty Pine for the top. Perfect!

I have a few Ikea (RAST) bedside tables around the house and I had also saved one unassembled, to be used for a future guitar build. I came across this unassembled Ikea furniture on my shelf and inspiration struck me. I imagined using the wide and thick White Pine for the body with this Ikea Knotty Pine for the top. However, this combination would be too thick and too heavy as a solid body. The solution would be to hollow it out. I made it into a semi-hollow 13" Les Paul model. This is the exact size and shape of the traditional Les Paul but only thicker and semi-hollow.

The theme was thought out, with a lightweight Mahogany neck, Pau Ferro fingerboard, vintage Gibson scale-length, vintage-style aluminum wraparound bridge, vintage Kluson-style tuners with lightweight black plastic buttons and very appropriate vintage replica radio knobs. I used my usual 24 tall and wide Stainless Steel frets. The matching pickups would be my own hand fabricated Zachary Hand Wound GF90 neck pickup and Zachary - Charlie Christian bridge pickup. Everything is very appropriate to compliment this theme. We don't put off-road tires on a Ferrari, or disc brakes on Ford Model A truck, right. I never violate nature or historical legacy. It all results in a very organic, oil-finished, 6 lb responsive, resonant instrument.

I don't think I will get as much ridicule now as I did in the late 90s, since Knotty pine has now become acceptable and fashionable, at least for Custom-Shop Telecaster type guitars. However, it is still a total freak show in a Les Paul, which the way I like it.
It may just violate toddler psychology once again, I hope.

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