A: Red Hand Custom Guitars is a one-man luthier shop in the Perdido Key / Pensacola, Florida area. Every instrument is built by hand—no production line, no factory shortcuts.
A: Everything is hand-built. No CNC. We build with the use of a bandsaw, routers, sanders, and custom spec templates.
A: It depends on the queue and how involved the spec is. Simple T- or S-style builds are faster; heavy relic work, certain finishes, or special hardware/electronics can take a lil longer. Ask for the current wait when you inquire. On average though 60-120 days. Though I won’t promise a date I can’t keep.
A: In order to keep our custom guitars affordable, we have necks built for us by Warmoth. For more vintage spec builds we will source unfinished necks from WD or Allparts.
A: Our core body shapes are T-Series, S-Series, Monolith Series, and Epoch Series. We've made basses before, primarily P-Series basses. We've also done a couple offsets. Our most popular build are T-Series relics.
A: Our finishing process is nearly identical to what Novo Guitars does in Nashville.
That means ultra thin nitrocellulose, not a thick plastic coat. We spray light so the wood still reads through the color... grain, texture, and all. A lot of colors get an amber top coat so they look like they’ve already lived a little, the way an old instrument does.
Checking is started before the guitar leaves the shop, then wear is added by hand. There is no cookie-cutter relic pattern. Edges, buckle wear, and play wear follow the guitar in front of us, not a stencil.
If you want it cleaner, we can do that too (with some caveats) same thin nitro, less distress. Regardless, the finish is meant to feel like wood under your hands and to keep aging after you take it home, not sit there like a sealed showroom guitar.
A: As we stated above, our nitrocellulose finishes are ultra thin. Because of this and lack of use of grain filler, there will be a tactile feel of the grain, and you may see and feel waviness on the sides of the end grain of the wood. Normally thick coats of finish along with grain filler would mask all this. All this means a much better vibration of the wood leading to better tone and sustain. What some think are "tooling marks" are actually grain character in the wood.
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