What’s It Like Building Guitars Full-Time? An Interview with Walsh Guitars

One of the relationships we really value at Stringjoy is our relationships with our builders, our luthiers, large scale, small scale. If you’re making something cool, we’re probably fans, and I’m not just talking. Today we’re going to be looking at Walsh Guitars, of which we are enormous fans.

We sat down to talk with Drew Walsh and just get a little bit of his inspiration, his history, and what life is like now that he is building guitars full time. Check out the video here, or read the transcript below:

Transcription

Ryan:

It’s good to have you here. Drew, you and I haven’t chatted for a while. I have one of your guitars. I have a Yadah that I really, really enjoy. I got to ask, man, how did you start doing this? I know you’re a guitar player, but how did you get into the world of not only making guitars, but making some of the most unique looking guitars on the market?

Drew:

Well, I started back in 2009. And when I started, I was going through grad school at the time. I had a professor who was just saying that everyone needed to find a hobby, something to do with their hands, something that wasn’t tied to their work, but something that could be a creative outlet, and he threw out woodworking. I grew up in a home where my dad didn’t use tools at all. He was not handy. He never even taught me how to use a screwdriver, so the learning curve was crazy steep. But my brother-in-law had this super cheap, I thought it was pretty crappy at the time, but it was a Fender Squire Strat.

Drew:

But this was, now I know, this was one of those early eighties Squires that were actually made in Japan. It wasn’t actually a cheap guitar, but at the time I thought it was. I took it apart, replaced a bunch of electronics and pickups, the whole thing. And then I figured out, I’m like, “Well, this isn’t that hard. I can do this.” It actually reminds me, there’s a meme going around right now that says, “I changed my strings, look who’s the luthier now.” That was basically, it was just taking everything apart, putting it back together. I’m like, “Yeah, I could totally do this.” And obviously that’s not what a luthier is, but I that’s kind of how I got into it.

Drew:

And then from there I took some just general classes. I kind of started accruing tools. It was a process of assembling into actually building. And then from kind of doing a little bit of building with other people, maybe ghost building necks or something like that for me to, I think, it was 2014 is when I started building everything in house. So there was about a five year, six year process of just learning. I still am, for the most part, just self-trained. And the only thing I’m not really self-trained in is painting. I was actually trained by a guy who used to do refinishing for Porsha Mercedes in Florida. That’s where I lived at the time, and so I built him a guitar, and in exchange, he taught me how to paint, so there.

Ryan:

Yeah, I was almost going to interrupt you and ask if you were taught by somebody in the automotive world, because some of your sparkles and stuff like that really have that automotive, boat like, cigarette boat vibe to it. And it’s very cool with some of those sparkly finishes. Let me ask you about where you take your inspiration from, for these designs. Because as I noted earlier, one of the things that drew me to Walsh guitars in general was just, I saw a photo come up on Instagram and went like, “I’ve never seen anything like this before.” And then it was, follow. And then every other time that something popped up from you, it was like, “What is this?” I hope you can take this in a really positive way. It’s so creative that there’s some of it that I see that I’m like, “That’s the most gorgeous thing I’ve ever seen.”

Ryan:

And then there’s some stuff where I’m like, “That’s really weird.” But then the next person over is like, “That thing that you think is weird is the most gorgeous thing I’ve ever seen.” I think that’s a good, where anybody can look at a Les Paul and be like, “Yeah, that’s cool.” I mean, nobody has any strong feelings about the aesthetic of that. But Where are you pulling from? Where are these ideas for shapes coming from? Where are these ideas for binding and paint and inlays and all of the crazy stuff that you do, where is that all coming from, man?

Drew:

Yeah. Body styles, I would say I am most inspired by the weird and wacky Japanese stuff from the early sixties to mid-seventies. The Japanese stuff, Soviet era guitars are super cool. They play horribly, but they got such a cool vibe and aesthetic. I have one in my shop right now that I’m working on, they’re push almost like lever buttons, but they’re glow in the dark. There are so many lost designs out there. So it saddens me to see people just keep making Strats and Tallies. And there’s no shame in that, because I feel like we are now able to play better Strats and Tallies than have ever been made, but it is a very saturated market.

Drew:

So as I was considering how to make a mark, I was really considering, what are some of those lost designs that either people don’t know about period or just people don’t really care about? It’s kind of just been lost by interest. And so even little things like my Bethel model is kind of loosely based off of an Epiphone Crestwood Custom that I had for several years, it’s like a ’63 Crestwood Custom. And so that’s what that model is based off of.

Drew:

And then the Archēgos that I just came out with, that’s kind of a mashing of old Japanese with some Soviet stuff with even vintage Italian. So anything weird and wacky, I’m all about. And especially when you look at Italian stuff, their paint jobs were crazy mother toilet tops and all just wacky stuff. And that stuff really excites me, not for everyone. And that’s why every once in a while I’ll still do drop top kind of stuff. It’s not really as exciting for me personally, but yeah.

Ryan:

Yeah. The Italian stuff is unbelievable. Again, you kind of, they suffer from the same unfortunate thing that some of the Japanese and Soviet guitars do, where they don’t play that great. I’ve never played a vintage Italian guitar that I’ve been like, “Well, forget the Strat, I’m going this.” But they definitely, the looks of those things are so cool. You’re also, I mean, being one who owns one of your guitars, they play wonderfully. So you’re also bringing back that cool aesthetic and then making it playable. One of the things that I was absolutely thrilled with when I got my Yadah, usually when I get guitars, and the first thing I do is I rip out the strings and put in Stringjoy strings. And that was even before I worked here, I just really liked those strings. I was thrilled when you and I were speccing out the guitar and you went, “What size Stringjoy strings or what gauge Stringjoy strings would you like?” And then I discovered that you have a custom Stringjoy set specifically for Walsh guitars. Tell me about that.

Drew:

When I started working with Stringjoy, I mean, man Stringjoy had only just newly started when I started working with them. I asked them, I was like, “Can you guys replicate these sizes?” And at that time they weren’t doing a ton of custom gauge stuff, but it’s a 10 and a half, 13, 17 and a half, 24 and a half, 38, and 48, something like that. And like I said, it’s the perfect amount of tension and projection. And it’s great as a builder because it’s incredibly consistent. And I know that I can offer custom gauges to any and every customer. But yeah, my personal set are the ones that I prefer, and I do put on every guitar unless I’m asked otherwise. They’re awesome.

Ryan:

Yeah. That’s a cool thing. It is cool that they were able to do. I mean, I’ve seen some really bizarre custom string orders come through that, for eight-string guitars and stuff like that. But just even like what would be kind of like your standard six string, and I look at the gauges and I’m like, “Wow, is that even still a guitar? I’m not even sure.”

Drew:

One of the parts I enjoy the most about the building process is just working with customers and updating them with pictures. And it’s this iterative process of them giving feedback, me taking that and then implementing it. And that’s why every guitar is different from the last, because the customers get to be so involved in the process. And that really is my favorite part, because even what’s on the spec sheet, even when I sent you a spec sheet, it was pretty well filled out. And then the spec sheet kind of started to populate itself as the process unfolded. And that’s just, it’s so much fun to see that, see everything take shape.

Ryan:

I think that you’re kind of unique in that area. I think just from my experience with the smaller boutique builders, is that there’s this exciting number of years where everything is really custom and they’re learning new things and they’re pushing themselves and stuff like that. And then they kind of hit this spot where it’s like, “Okay, let’s just do 10 standard colors. Let’s take this world and kind of pare it down too.” Because just kind of the stress of having every… trying to keep track of all these different custom guitars and stuff like that. And you know, because when you ask them for something custom, they’re like… And they’ll be like, “Okay, for you.”

Ryan:

But what I ran into with you was like, I ran into options paralysis, which was a big one, because you were like, “Yeah, the world’s our oyster. Let’s do whatever.” And the other thing, yeah, as we were going along, the guitar was changing. And the guitar was kind of evolving as we were going along. And you were like, “Yeah, this is cool.” It wasn’t like this, “Ah, now I got to do more work.” It’s like, “Oh, this is going to take me 10 more hours, but it’s going to be cool.” And what was cool about it from my perspective was the excitement that you were experiencing in the process, transferred onto me. And so I was just super, super stoked.

Ryan:

I’m not going to say it’s totally unique, but it is something that I noticed when working with you, as opposed to other times that I’ve specced out customs. You’re in grad school, and your professor said this, “You should do something with your hands as a hobby and as a creative outlet.” You graduated. You are working then, you’re working a day job, and you are building guitars at night. And now, Drew, you are building guitars full time, which is-

Drew:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ryan:

I’ve seen your motorcycles. Is the motorcycle thing now, is that the thing that you do with your hands as a hobby?

Drew:

Right. Yeah. I got to have a new hobby because guitars can’t be it. Yeah. Yeah. So I took guitars full time, actually this Tuesday. So I’ve been doing it for what, 13 years. And it kind of, I mean, most people can identify with this I’m sure. But sometimes when things are competing for each other, you kind of, in the words of Ron Swanson, “You can half-ass a lot of things, or you can whole-ass one thing.” And I just felt like, man, not that the quality was half-assed, but I just felt like the time. Whenever you’re piecemealing anything together, you just never feel a hundred percent fully invested. And I just felt like I needed to be fully invested in something.

Drew:

A lot of what led me to that decision was also my health. And for me, building guitars is so enjoyable and life giving that all my health issues are mainly caused by stress. And so a lot of this was like, “Man, I can build guitars, which I love to do. It’s good for my health.” But you’re right, I need a new hobby. And so over the last seven months or so, I was restoring a motorcycle and all painting and all that kind of stuff. And so, yeah, I would say my motorcycle is my new hobby. Like today it’s 77 and sunny, and I’m just, I’m in my shop, but I’m itching to be outside on my bike.