John Wallace Guitars Shop Blog

How the Helix guitar is made video series Part III This week our third installment of our Helix how it was made video series covers the steps I take to make the matching headstock veneer, cutting and shaping and installation of the twelfth fret mother of pearl inlay and fretting the neck. Some of these [...]

This week were releasing part two of the Helix build series which covers neck construction.

We made a series of build videos for our new Helix model. Last year we started designing a new model based around a super strat that we ultimately named the Helix. Although it has some similarities to other guitars out there it has some subtle differences we wanted to incorporate like a super thin neck [...]

Screw-less Grain Matched Cavity Cover Demo Screw-less electronics cavity covers. There are thin but powerful neodymium magnets imbedded inside the cover plate. We've engineered it so that casual bumps with medal objects like your belt buckle don't accedentally dislodge it. It can only be removed with the specially built cube tool (included with the guitar). The cube is made [...]

Did you know we also repair guitars? Watch us step you through a 1968 Martin D-28 bridge repair. As well as custom build we do repairs.   I thought I'd spotlight a repair we did on a vintage 1968 Martin D-28 acoustic with a cracked bridge. The guitar had had the bridge worked on previously with at [...]

Custom built guitar or off the shelf? So, the question is, custom hand-built or just off-the shelf? This is a veritable debate, and a dilemma every musicians ask themselves at some point. But I’m hoping that this article will provide direction to your thoughts and clear up your doubts. You’ll ask, how? Read on... One [...]

Truss rod cover with no Screws. We wanted something a little more elegant and easier to access than the way a traditional truss cover is mounted to the headstock with a conventional screw.  We started experimenting with designs using rare earth magnets hidden under the truss rod cover. Finding the correct size and strength of magnet took a bit of experimentation in the beginning. [...]

Shielding control cavities. Radio Frequency (RF) can do nasty things to your sound. radio stations, fluorescent lighting, even cell phones can interfere with your signal and create interference.   To combat that we shield the electronics with what's known as a Faraday Cage. There's two common ways to do this.  With foil (copper or aluminum) [...]

Bone is my first choice of nut material because its super dense, long lasting and beautiful.   I think it's an unbeaten part of the recipe for solid resonance and long sustain on an instrument.  That's a fractional part of the formula for great tone. Here is a short step by step pictorial of how I [...]

Thats right, black bone nuts. Bone nuts come standard on most of my builds. On this Spalted Artist build I thought that a white bone nut would disrupt the visual flow between the black ebony fretboard and headstock so we dyed it black.   The picture to the left is what a polished white bone nut looks like [...]

A technique for adding the truss rod recess cavity into the headstock. As of the writing of this post one of my favorite techniques to add a truss recess is to carve it in by hand with a sharp gouge then sand it smooth and dye or spray the inside black. This saves me time from having to set [...]

Followup to the previous post.  Here are some progress pics of three inlaid fretboards I'm working on. From left to right we have an ebony board with MOP block inlays with an ABS pin stipe and ebony binding. Next is a cocobolo board with gold and white crown inlays and some figured maple binding. On the [...]

Some fretboards for the next batch. We have some fretboards that we've been slotting and preparing for some spec builds. From left to right we haven rosewood, a beautiful piece of semi-open grain cocobolo which has tone very similar to rosewood. The two on the left are East Indian black ebony. Ebony has a brighter tone and a [...]

Here are a few progress shots of the cavity covers on my Artist model. Most off-the-shelf guitars you'll see and even a lot of custom builds will have a plain plastic cavity cover on the back with a few wood screws securing it. This is fine, but I offer something a bit above and beyond and much [...]

The fit between the neck and body on a set neck guitar is critical. The neck pocket needs to be nice and snug to properly transfer vibrations between neck and body. Too loose and the and structural integrity and tone will be lost. It seems almost cli·ché in the guitar building community to take pictures of a guitar mid-build [...]

Here is another sneak preview of the current works in progress. All three are set necks. One in Sapele with a beautiful spalted maple top and the other two are Honduran mahogany with flamed maple tops. Tune in again soon to see the progress.  

Taking a build to the next level. I use wood binding on some of my builds and it's available as an option on custom orders.  While plastic ABS is flexible and relatively straight forward to install, wood binding can bring a unique set of challenges during the installation process. Wood binding has to be heated and carefully bent [...]

Heres a shot of two bodies I'm working on today. I just got done gluing up the tops yesterday and today they came out of the clamps and had the sides routed flush. I designed my templates so that in the beginning both my bolt on and set neck bodies start off the same. On my [...]