I trade around musical gear a lot. I love researching specs, reading reviews, and perusing used gear online. On my gear page, you can see a list of some of the electronics and guitars I’ve owned.
The silly thing is, I spend more time doing this than actually playing guitar. I do play almost every day though. It helps to be in a band with a couple of side projects going. It forces me to practice!
So anyway, my latest object of guitar lust has been created. Last May I started looking for someone to build me a custom headless guitar. The ones from Steinberger (owned by Gibson) have bad quality control and aren’t really that nice to play. There aren’t too many other brands available because the demand is small. I also wanted to customize lots of things and not just buy a stock model.
The problem with custom guitars in general is that they are very expensive. They’re not made in a factory in China, but by an actual skilled laborer who designs every part. Most makers here in the US charge around $3,000 just for a basic model.
I did find a guy in Canada. Bill Wilkat has been building custom guitars for many years – especially headless ones! He was friendly and we had a bunch of email discussions before I decided to commission him to build a guitar. He is close to retirement and isn’t accepting new orders much longer (if at all), but I was fortunate to hire him with all his knowledge and experience on guitar building. In addition he was very inexpensive compared to other custom builders.
Bill designed my guitar from the ground up. I bought most of the materials and had them shipped to Canada. A graphite neck, pickups, switches, knobs. Bill supplied the walnut and ash for the body. He made a highly detailed technical blueprint and modified it to suit my tastes. This was hard for me! When given the opportunity to create something completely from scratch it’s actually hard to imagine the “perfect” guitar! Therefore I took a lot of input from Bill, because he’s been doing this a long time.
All along the build process, Bill sent me pictures of his progress. I created an album of them here. The guitar is ready to ship and I’ll have it soon – can’t wait! It’s called the “Headless Holt”, and Bill liked the design so much he might make another!
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