Signature Guitars
Hand signed headstocks, organic natural vibe, and their own tones. Unlike the basses, I don’t usually take orders for my guitars; they’re born from inspiration, built, and then offered. This series began with my first build in 1997 and continued all along on the side of founding and building the Birdsong Guitars company.
I’m working on a few of my favorite models for continuing the Signature series based off the first three pictures. The Harmony Hill, Juniper Ridge (a fancier-bodied Harmony Hill), and Sundance - a revisiting of one of my first designs from this side of my decades in the workshop. I can’t wait, this will be fun - stay tuned!
The rest is a gallery of some from the best of the past, including a few I snuck in as Birdsongs (we mostly build short scale basses), and
D’AQUILA - which has its own page.
(( I’ll link here to my Reverb store for what’s available ))
I’ve made two and three pickup guitars, but I have an ongoing fascination with single pickup instruments. The Garcia tone of one in the middle; the electric jazz voice of the right one up by the neck; the sizzle of one at the bridge. Yeah I know, you can have all three in one guitar. I love Swiss Army knives too, but sometimes the most satisfying carry is the pocketknife with the one blade you use most. In a guitar, everything else can be leaned in that direction too - to serve that sound, that vibe, that aesthetic. I love that.
Some of the most amazingly beautiful playing I’ve ever seen has been on one pickup guitars. LOTS of amazing jazz, and - at a street fair I was playing in the early 1990s - Mary Cutrefello absolutely smoking country rock leads on a beat-up Fender Esquire. I like ornate things, artistic embellishment, carvings… but functionally I like things very simple.
This explains a lot about what I do. ~S.