09/09/2026
This custom shipping off to Milton Ruiz tomorrow! Shoulda been today, but FedEx keeps changing hours on me.
I originally made my name doing a bunch of completely one-off instruments for people long before I got smart enough to have some regular models which meant I didn’t have to make templates every single time. Because I build everything from scratch, the router must have at least an outer body outline to follow.
This one was such a pain and I’m ashamed to say how long it took. Lots of unique things on this. Milton gave me this 1:1 body shape he carved in a piece of foam. Which I had to duplicate in wood! I then built an acrylic template for the body shape from it. The Honduran mahogany that makes up the core body was cut from that.
I had done a project quite a while back for the Germantown Community Center here in memphis. It’s over 100 years old, and used to double as a one room schoolhouse during the week, and a church on Sundays. So when they ripped up the pulpit there, I got the floor joists from that and built a couple guitars. Milton was tied to that somehow, and asked me to save a 5/8ths thick 2 piece top, but instead of doing a les Paul style carve, after it was glued to the mahogany back, I used a dragon rasp to do the German carve he showed me in the foam.
There was a lot of messing around with the carve where the neck meets the body to allow access to the top frets, but it feels very smooth. On top of that, he wanted a 26” scale, with 22 frets, which I’ve done once before. This is fabulous for drop tuning and metal. With this scale you can do open C, even open B no problem, and still stay in tune. Strung with 9’s, it feels just like a strat strung with 10’s.
Not only did I need to make the neck entirely new from scratch because of the scale, he also wanted the mother of pearl markers that we designed for our Aviator Guitar and Aviator Bass. This required spacing them differently, plus I did the 3X3 headstock he preferred with my proprietary shape, and added a sandwich piece of hand made veneer of pure cocobolo on the face. There’s no stain on that.
The entire project was an homage to his beloved dog Rory who had passed away. So I had George Charles, my decal guy, make me that large metallic decal of his name for the headstock, as well as below the bridge a digital copy of his paw. These were put over the color but under the clearcoat.
Featuring the same great Grover Tulip tuning machines I use in my Cadet, and the unparalleled ABM wrap around bridge - I think I’m the only one in America using that as a stock bridge, it’s carved out of a solid block of bell brass in Germany, then chromed - and the Lollar DB Humbuckers. Lollar’s highest output Humbuckers, they’re amazing for this style music, and actually use 1 meg pots.
Brother, can’t wait for you to play this! I always seem to get these kinds of orders cuz no one else will touch them. Thanks so much to Jeff at Revolve Music for the vintage reissue case, I never thought I’d find something to fit this!
Any imperfections in photos are simply stuff reflecting in the photos, except for some nail holes from the old wood. No way around those with this finish! This is a set neck guitar with a 1 degree neck tilt and was a complete pain in the ass to buff out. Never again! I always say that, then I do this stuff again…..
