I’ve learned a lot in the past 25 years of building basses under my own name, acoustic guitars for Dana Bourgeois, violins & cellos for Jon Cooper and electric guitars under my own name. I think the most important thing I’ve learned is that a person’s music, or the instrument a person chooses to express their music on, is personal. You could hand the same instrument to twenty different players and the music you’d hear would be expressed twenty different ways. I think this is what makes music so special. It’s as individual as each one of us.
And because our music is as individual as we are, so is our individual taste in instruments. For someone to say this guitar is better than that guitar, I think, is us as humans trying to impose our will or desires onto another person. The fact is the best guitar is the one that inspires each guitarist to allow the music that they feel and hear to flow out of them and through their gear. Dosn’t it make you wonder what Hendrix’s music might have sounded like if he would have fallen in love with a Les Paul instead of a Strat?
So, as a Luthier, I’ve come to realize that each component in the makeup of someone’s guitar is as personal to them as the guitar itself. For me to say this radius fingerboard is better than that radius, or this scale length is better, or these pickups are better is just my opinion. What really matters is, will this guitar I, or any other Luthier, builds for you, not only inspires the music you feel but allows it to flow from you, because the radius of the board feels right or the scale length is what you like or the sound coming from your gear is exactly what you wanted to hear.
Which brings me to this point: I love guitars. I love playing them, listening to them and I especially love designing and building them with the hope that whoever buys one will fall madly in love with it. So to try to make sure that everyone who owns one of my guitars falls in love with it, Richard and I are now offering any of the models we build with your choice of scale length or fingerboard radius along with all our other options.
All I want to do is build the finest guitar I can build that will allow each individual musician to let their music flow.
For those of you who own my guitars I thank you and love you for allowing me to do what I love so much.
I hope to make more friends like you.
Respectfully.
Chuck Thornton
