We all love to see, hold and (most importantly) PLAY beautiful guitars. That’s what lutherie is all about, to us at least. There’s nothing better than creating an instrument that looks spectacular and sounds just as good. How many times have you heard “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder”? Well, I think we can extrapolate that out to “Beauty is in the ear of the beholder!”.

Unfortunately, guitars don’t start out life looking as great as the luthier envisions them to be. Take this freshly glued up blank for instance. It doesn’t look too exciting. It doesn’t play real well either.

The challenge is to craft a visually appealing and sonically appealing instrument from this ordinary wood blank. This particular blank is destined to be a Category 1 Hurricane. That’s the work horse of our custom designed line. A guitar that turns head and ears alike. A guitar that you play night in, night out, gig after gig.

We’ll chronicle the progress on this particular Hurricane all the way from start to finish. Hopefully, you’ll enjoy the process as much as we do.

Our quality control man and playability expert, Justin, is moving on from Central Pennsylvania to attend Full Sail University in Winter Park, Florida. He will remain on in a consulting role, but won’t be involved in day to day operations. Justin will be pursuing a Bachelor’s Degree in Recording Arts in order to pursue his long time dream of recording and producing music.

Justin, of course, was the original inspiration for STORM Custom Guitars and a key founding member of the organization. It’s safe to say that we would have never built a single guitar without his love of music and drive. After all, Planky is where it all started.

Best wishes to Justin and all of his band mates from Pink Yard Flamingos as they embark on new chapters in their lives!

This particular guitar doesn’t look all that exciting right now. And, truthfully, it’s not too exciting; it’s just a slab of wood. That’s the humble beginning for them all. That’s where the excitement starts. We never get tired of selecting wood and envisioning the guitar that’s going to emerge.

This hefty chunk of maple will become a semi-hollow body Cyclone. Yes, maple is a heavy, dense wood and isn’t necessarily the first choice for guitar bodies. In this case we’re building a semi-hollow body, so much of the weight will be eliminated. The maple will retain a strong frame.

Someone asked me via email if we are using a Computer Numerical Control (CNC) machine at STORM Custom Guitars to cut guitar bodies and necks. Well, as these photographs show, we’ve got the numerical and the control parts down. We just don’t have a computer to control the numbers. For us, its not about how fast we can crank out parts and finished products, its about how much we can put into the product. True, it takes us days to complete what a machine can do in hours. We love hand building guitars and that includes using our hands to do the work.

There’s nothing wrong with applying technology to solve problems. In fact, if it weren’t for technologies like CNC, guitars would not be as generally affordable as they are. You wouldn’t be able to walk into Guitar Center and pick up a very playable axe for $200 to $300. 

That’s the difference between a small custom builder like STORM and mass production factories. They can produce more guitars in a day than we do in a decade. We know you; you know us. We work together to build the perfect guitar for YOU.

So for now, we’re happy to measure, cut, sand and finish your guitar entirely by hand. You’ll be happy we did. 

In this photo, Bill is applying a layer of clear coat to the bass guitar in STORM’s specially built paint room. On this particular guitar, we used Sherwin-Williams Ultra 7000 automotive paint and a matching clear coat. We selected this specific paint to achieve the look that the customer wanted. It’s a pearl white metalic paint with a nice depth to it. This paint is applied in an primmer, base coat, mid coat and clear coat format. Yes, it’s a complicated finish and that’s how we like to work. 

This finish material is not like your off-the-shelf spay can paint. It’s rather difficult to mix and handle. It also requires the use a NIOSH approved respirator. It’s nasty stuff to sniff, but its worth the effort.

For a while we’ve been promising to bring you some STORM Gear and it’s finally available. Since we are a guitar building company and not a retailer, we do not sell this merchandise directly. We are using Zazzle.com as a store front. We’ve found that they offer the greatest range of merchandise along with secure processing and prompt shipping.

Choose the “STUFF” button on our menu bar to see the goodies. 

Happy Shopping!

We proposed four possible styles of stripes for this custom bass. The customer chose the single thick stripe, single thin stripe design. It creates a good, balanced look for the guitar. Here’s the final product hanging in the paint room drying.

The next step will be to apply a tough, durable clear coat finish to protect the pearl paint. We’re anxious to see this instrument assembled with all of it’s gold hardware on. The pearl, maroon, gold combination should make this a very classy bass guitar.

Welcome to STORM’s blog. As we get started with a new addition to our web site, here’s what we’ll be bringing you via this tool:

• News about STORM. This is a great way to have an opt-in newsletter for our friends. You can decide if you want to hear from us and when you get the news. Please subscribe via RSS to receive automatic updates.
• Updates on projects. As we build new custom guitars, we’ll post updates and photographs on this blog so you can see what’s happening.
• Guitar Discussions. From time to time we’ll ask questions and provide opinions on guitars, building and playing. Join in the discussion and let us (and everyone else) know what you’re thinking.

We hope this will be a great way for us all to stay in-touch. We’re looking forward to the dialog.