My field trip to Santa Cruz
Rick Turner Guitars
© Frank Ford, 4/10/98; Photos by FF, 4/10/98


Rick Turner came to visit us at Gryphon yesterday, April 9, 1998

Here he is showing off as he delivers his new guitars to Richard Johnston:
Rick is not just a fine guitar builder and designer; he can play standing up without a strap!

I was impressed.

It's April 10, and now it's our turn to visit Rick.

Representatives of the Gryphon repair crew -- Tim Chambers, Mike Gold, and I dropped in at Rick Turner's shop in Santa Cruz.


I must say, he takes a minimalist approach when it comes to the sign outside his shop:

This is the front door. After all it's an industrial place, and not open for the public.


Inside, Rick and his small crew crank out some mighty fine products!


Let's go in and see what they're up to:




Rick's on the phone right now, so Steve Crisp takes a few minutes away from routing bridge saddle slots on the milling machine. By the way, the saddles are slanted backward away from the fingerboard at an angle to improve the downward pressure on the piezo pickup element. A nifty piece of design. That's the kind of small detail that makes Rick's electric acoustic guitars special.




Here's Steve's special nut slot routing fixture:

It's an acrylic jig that fits on top and just level with the end of the fingerboard. The flat plate allows a router to glide across and cut the nut slot perfectly with no damage to neck, fingerboard or peghead veneer. Pretty slick.




Steve, Rick and the crew also do a bit of repair work.

Steve is showing us a fine router jig he made for truing up the dovetail joint when resetting Martin and other guitar necks. He can set the angle of the acrylic plate to take just a tiny slice off the end of the neck when establishing the new neck angle.

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