Biography | The Story of Tom Anderson

Today's special biography episode was filmed on location at Tom Anderson Guitarworks in Southern California, with a man whose life's work is so interwoven into the modern history of guitar that it becomes difficult to see the forest for the trees. That man, of course, is Tom Anderson. 

Tom's story starts in Southern California. Surf music, the British invasion, a transformative Dick Dale concert at eight years old, then a Jimi Hendrix experience at 15, all of which fueled the passion for guitar that still burns today.

What follows is a story about ethics, loyalty, hard work, great people, and the long pursuit of making the guitars he wished he had had when he was 20. I thoroughly enjoyed getting to know Tom Anderson and hope that you will as much as I did. 

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Learn more about Life With Strings Attached, Boutique Guitar Showcase, and Jamie Gale's work in the guitar industry:
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🔗 Jamie Gale

Thank you for listening and supporting the ongoing conversation between music, makers, history and the future.

Transcript

[01:00:00:03 - 01:00:10:26]
 Something that I don't know if is general knowledge, but the guitar industry, people that make guitars, is a pretty tight-knit group of people.

[01:00:12:14 - 01:00:41:16]
 People from other industries that come into this are shocked that John Sur and I are good friends and that we talk to each other all the time and we text back and forth and Nick Huber and Bob Taylor and everybody out there. There's Sheldon Dingwall and it's just in the guitar business now, unlike when I started 40 plus years ago,

[01:00:44:05 - 01:01:46:24]
 if I'm having a problem with material, say my finish, like what is going on? We're having failures in finish, what's going on? I'll get on the phone and call John or I'll call Bob or somebody else. We all help each other to solve problems. Consequently, I think that's one of the reasons you're seeing. Obviously, Bob, it's like from the grand scale of Bob Taylor to the guy making 20 guitars a year. Everybody can talk. Every guitar player is now reaping the benefits of all of us talking to each other and helping each other make better guitars. I think you could argue that guitars are better than they've ever been. Yes, some of those old guitars are great guitars, but they weren't all great guitars. I had plenty of horrible, pre-CVS fenders before, but they were production cheap guitar.

[01:01:48:09 - 01:01:54:15]
 I think this is a wonderful time to be making guitars.

[01:01:56:14 - 01:03:36:01]
 Welcome to Life with Strings Attached. I'm your host, Jamie Gale. Today's special biography episode was filmed on location at the Tom Anderson Guitar Works in Southern California with a man whose life's work is so interwoven into the modern history of guitar that it becomes difficult to see the forest for the trees. That man, of course, is Tom Anderson. Tom's story starts in Southern California. Surf music, the British invasion, a transformative Dick Dale concert at eight years old, then a Jimi Hendrix experience of 15, all of which fueled the passion for guitar that still burns today. Supported by a loving family home and later a wife that he refers to as an angel, Tom displays an unusually empathetic approach to business and life. That mix of music, mechanics, curiosity, and family support led him to Schechter in its early days to a way of seeing what could be better and eventually to create a business Tom never planned to start. What follows is a story about ethics, loyalty, hard work, great people, and the long pursuit of making the guitars he wished he had had when he was 20. I thoroughly enjoyed getting to know Tom Anderson and hope that you will as much as I did. Tom. Yes. Welcome to Life with Strings Attached. Thanks for being on the show. Thanks for having me. Yeah, thanks for hosting us here in the Tom Anderson Guitar Works. Playroom. The Playroom. Yeah. This is where it has every guitar you've produced and this building comes here and gets played before it leaves, right? Always has been.

[01:03:37:02 - 01:03:43:23]
 By you. And now Marcus is doing first run through. First run through. So he will go through,

[01:03:45:04 - 01:04:03:13]
 play them all, full inspection, intonation, I mean just blasting, checking for microphonics, you know, just all the, do any fine fine tuning that needs to be done. And then I play him after he does and I seldom have to turn a screw because he is meticulous, which is great. Good.

[01:04:05:10 - 01:04:31:06]
 Great to hear. Well, so today we want to capture your story. Okay. We've been building a catalog, a website where all the unique world class guitar makers living. We've been documenting the stories of and building out a page for each one of them.

[01:04:32:13 - 01:05:40:06]
 See how the internet becomes a confusing place these days where advertising often dominates over what your actual search is. And so we're trying to communicate, we're trying to curate a space where if someone looks up a boutique guitar and wants to find something of quality, they don't just get sold, whoever happened to use those keywords. Right. And so those people are there yesterday was James Tressart, we were James, and then we're going up to see Michi Matsuda, Steve Klein and Irvin Smocchi and yeah, Rob Turner, EMG and such along the way. And so we've always delved into the deeper side of things, meaning I don't just care about the how, I want to know why, why you, why did you do this? You know, as opposed to someone else, what is it that makes you who you are? And I find that often learning about where someone comes from, who their parents were, their siblings, you know, a little bit of all this kind of stuff and the journey that gets you to this point with those moments that if you took that moment away,

[01:05:41:20 - 01:07:34:09]
 you might not be who you are today. I give an example that people ask me how I can travel so much and don't I miss home? I moved 20 times by the time I was 20. I've lived in 43 different residences now in 49. Okay. You get it, right? The point is, once you understand that you realize, well, Jamie doesn't have the same sense of home that many people have. And so he's okay with just being out there traveling. My wife is the same way. She's moved just as many times. And so we found each other, you know, who were these nomadic, but we connect to family, not a geography. And so that tells you something about me. So I'm looking for those moments in your life, you know? So if you can take us back to the beginning, you know, when and where you were born, to whom, name your parents, your brothers and sisters, if there are any, and then sort of take us through until we eventually end up back here. Yeah. Well, I was born in Los Angeles area sort of near LAX in 1954. So, and I am my, my mom was Laura, my dad, Arnold or Andy. And I grew up in a fantastic family. I had a great model of relationship in my parents. I had an older brother and sister. So my brother was eight years older than me. My sister was six years older than me. So they grew up on fifties music, Elvis and kind of the beginnings of rock and roll. And so I was subjected to all of that, including the crooners, you know, Jimmy Darren and, and

[01:07:36:04 - 01:08:05:22]
 oh gosh, I can't even think of them all now. But you know, a lot of that style of stuff. Sinatra, Dean Martin. Yeah. Oh yeah. The Rat Pack and all. The Rat Pack of my parents. Yeah. Okay. That was their generation. Paul Anka by your beard. Yeah. Yeah. Paul Anka. And then, um, so I grew up listening to that. And then probably by the time I was five years old, I wanted to play guitar. Um, and I had a badminton racket that I wore on the house playing guitar on.

[01:08:07:06 - 01:09:01:06]
 Um, and then surf music happened in the early sixties. Um, and then of course the British invasion. And you're here in California. Yeah. I'm already in California. So I think the first concert I went to, I was eight years old and I saw Dick Dale and the Chantays and, uh, Jan and Dean, all these surf acts and stuff. And it had a profound effect on me, especially Dick Dale, because, you know, the surf bands were all sweet and matching clothes and all this stuff. And Dick Dale was a wild man on stage and played fast. And, you know, he was just like, what is that? You know, I want to do that. Um, and so I listened to all the surf music. And then by the time sixth grade came around, I was playing, I started taking lessons playing guitar when I was eight. Um,

[01:09:02:10 - 01:12:23:18]
 and I took lessons for a couple of years, learned sort of to read music, but also just got familiar with how guitar sound and what it takes to make them work. Um, I took lessons at Ernie Ball's store in Tarzana. He used to have a store in Tarzana. So Ernie was there, his kids, Sterling, and the others were all running around the store as kids my age. Um, they would have recitals for this, for the teaching program. Ernie Ball would sit at a podium and he would accompany you and you would play, you know, for the, for your parents and whoever else was there. So, um, and then aside from the wanting to play guitar, so I had band, so I was in a band in sixth grade and we played, you know, early Rolling Stones songs and Beatles songs and some instrumental sort of stuff. But by that time, when the British invasion happened, that was way more interesting than the surf music was to me. You know, it was, it was batter. They were, they were bad boys. And that was fun, you know, being a folk kid, you know, sixth grade, seventh, eighth grade, that kind of stuff. So always played in bands from then on. Um, and then the flip side of that was my dad worked for Hughes Aircraft and in his early years he was a glass blower. So he made vacuum tubes, you know, blue glass to, for scientific glass and for tubes and stuff. Like he didn't, he, he was exempt in World War II because he was a glass blower and they needed tubes for radios and all that stuff. So he was part of that thing. We say, we say glass blower. I mean, I think of people with a fire, like literally. Oh, then we had a glass bench in our garage. We did that for vacuum tubes. That's, that was silly. It wasn't a mechanized process. Oh, no, that was his job. He had a bench at home. He made wine glasses. He made little glass animals for my sister, all that kind of stuff. So I was kind of always around things being made, create, you know, creativity and mechanics and stuff. Um, so at a very early age, I started taking guitars apart because that's what you do if you have a bench in the garage. And, and I also got into, uh, slot cars, which were cars, the scale. Um, and I got into building chassis and bearings and rewinding motors and things to make them go faster. There was a track near where we lived and in the evenings they would have races. I actually had prize money. Of course, most of the guys that were doing that were aerospace engineers with unlimited budgets. So I was, that was this kid, you know, competing with these grown men, you know, with endless budgets. But that got me again into tinkering. I love taking things apart and putting them back together and modifying things. I remember when the first guitar player magazine came out with the first guitar mod that was put a phase switch on your Telecaster, which is a virtually useless sound, but I did it anyway because it was another sound. Um, and then got into, you know, taking, when, when I saw Jimmy, I saw Jimmy Hendricks when I was 15 and that was earth shattering. You know, it was, you know, it was so loud. He was wild. It sounded so great.

[01:12:24:22 - 01:13:59:25]
 And, um, so I took my Fender Jaguar and ripped the pickups out of it and put two of them together to make a humbucking because you couldn't buy a humbucking back then. Um, and, uh, and then I just started taking things apart and putting it back together and made a living playing guitar in local bands, you know, around the LA area. Um, but I'd say it was the support of my family. I think from a really early age, when I decided by really this guitar was the most important thing to me, um, more important than other stuff that was happening at school. I got my school done, but I didn't, I spent as little time as I had to at school. Um, and, uh, uh, uh, where was I playing guitar? Yeah. Playing, playing, playing in bands and stuff. And, um, and, and, and I, uh, full support my parents, you know, we had band would always practice at our house. My mom would bring us lemonade and, you know, whatever, you know? And, um, so I felt like they let me do what I wanted to do. Um, and, uh, and, and I had this, this mantra as I was a kid growing up is that I, I wanted to be a rock star and buy my parents a condo on Maui in the late fifties, early sixties, Hawaii was a big thing on the west coast. People were visiting Hawaii and it was very rustic and very, you know, not like what it is now. So that was a deal for me. And then, uh,

[01:14:01:02 - 01:15:01:08]
 so, you know, I never got told, no, you need to spend more time on schoolwork. You know, you can't, can't play guitar so much and all that kind of stuff. So it was real whole family and, and, and particularly my parents were really supportive of that. Um, so I finished high school, was playing in bands around the LA area. And, uh, this was the, uh, early seventies, I guess. Um, and back then you could actually make a living playing in clubs and bars and stuff like that. You know, it wasn't the whole pay to play thing that happens now. So I really enjoyed it. I loved it. I was always into gear. I just always was into amps and, and I never got into building amplifiers, but I, but I ran into a guy named Dave Schechter at a repair shop in Hollywood when I had, uh, I had, so I grew up playing old Fender guitars,

[01:15:02:10 - 01:15:42:07]
 mostly. Um, I didn't get my first Gibson guitar until I was probably, uh, 20 years old, I guess. I had telly, telly was my main kind of guitar prior to that. Um, but I bought, so I was, I was playing these old guitars and enjoying some things about them. A lot of things about them. And I ended up with a no caster. I bought a 50 no caster. I'm at a local store, you know, I think it was $400 at that point in time. And then I pick up didn't work. So that's when I, uh, I'd heard about this guy Dave Schechter and it was working at a Red Road shop in Hollywood.

[01:15:43:14 - 01:16:05:22]
 And then he rewound pickups. So I went and I met him, took the guitar and he rewound the pickup for me. And we kind of just, I went back and forth with him a few times about other things, just cause he was a really creative guy and, and just really enjoyed this company. And we kind of hit it off, I guess. And then, um, about 1970,

[01:16:09:23 - 01:19:04:16]
 six, uh, I was working at a music store, uh, playing at night, working in a music store during the day to day job, you know, and, uh, this sales guy came in Hirschfeld Blankenship, who was a sales rep for Alembic and a few other kind of boutiquey brands back, back in the day that day. And he said, I only show you something. And he showed me this, opened this guitar up and it had the original first, the Schechter pickup assembly with the three mini switches on it and the three tapped pickups and oh, that's Dave Schechter. And he goes, you know, Dave, I said, yeah, no, Dave. He goes, well, you know, we've actually started a company and, you know, maybe you should come to work. And it's like, so that was about the time when, uh, my girlfriend and I, who'd been, she went to college. So we dated all through her going to college. And, uh, uh, after college, it was kind of, we looked at each other and said, yeah, we should probably get married, you know, cause I mean, five years and we're still going strong here. But we were still dumb kids, you know, but, but anyway, so I thought, well, maybe I do probably need to get a real job because that was the middle of the late seventies and disco was happening. And that ruined the live music scene in Los Angeles. So where you could go play pretty much any kind of music you wanted to play at clubs before that. But once disco hit, all anybody wanted to hear was danceable disco music. So that was super discouraging. And that's, that's when I realized that I don't want to play guitar bad enough to want to play music that I don't enjoy. So I thought, well, I'm going to give this working thing a shot. Uh, so I went to work at Schecter in 77. As a guitar builder and a player, you have a sense for when something's working right. That's why so many of the world's best trusted area, unmatched tone, perfect intonation and strings made to the tightest tolerances in the industry. That reputation is no accident. It's the result of 400 years of being obsessed with quality and innovation. To Dario, when you know, you know. And I say meeting day Schecter was a pivotal time as long as well as, you know, my parents being as encouraging as they were. Um, so started at Schecter in 77, which the company had just probably six months before that really came into existence. Um, and at that point in time, um, the whole guitar parts thing was kind of just starting. There was a boogie bodies up in Washington. Ken Warmoth was one of the, one of the, um, partners in that business. Um, Wayne Charvelle was down in Orange County,

[01:19:05:20 - 01:21:30:04]
 finishing stuff, not really making any, anything yet. Um, and then so we started at Schecter. They put the sales company together called ISA and, um, they just, they were trying to get us all put together in one place, or at least they were going to sell. So they said, well, let's have boogie bodies, make bodies and necks. We'll have, uh, Wayne Charvelle was making his first project. Product was a aluminum four hole jack plate for Les Falls because they were plastic and they always broke. So that was his first replacement part that he sold. And then Schecter had this pickup assembly. So they said, well, we'll put these three companies together. We'll sell the stuff that they make. Well, it didn't last very long before boogie body said, I don't want to be part of that thing, you know? And then so, so Dave Schecter went down to Charvelle, helped set up, set up their wood shop, made some templates for making bodies. Uh, and it wasn't long before that fell apart. And then so it ended up being Schecter making all the stuff. So we set up a wood shop. We had a metal shop. We made all the metal parts, you know, knobs, bridges, jack plates, pick cards, all the, all the different stuff. And then, um, and so we, and we already made pickups. Um, so we made all the different components and the main business for Schecter was parts. Uh, we made a very small number of guitars, never more than like five a week. It was a really small amount of guitars. Um, and then that company grew about 30 employees, I think at its peak. And, um, I thought I was going to retire from that company. You know, I thought I love this. It's just like something doing what I love to do. Working with Dave was great. Um, we kind of figured a lot of stuff out together. Um, and I think he was a pivotal person in my life in that more than any other person I've ever met, he had the ability to look at something, whether it was a guitar or a car, a toaster, I mean, you name it. And he had this focus that he could look at just about anything you could possibly imagine. And, and pinpoint,

[01:21:31:13 - 01:23:19:22]
 I wish they'd done this better, or wish they'd done this better. They should have done this a different way because then it would have worked better. Um, so I think I learned a lot of critical thinking skills, um, from Dave and, uh, um, so Schecter grew and eventually, uh, financial troubles happened and, um, they brought in some investors that were not from the music industry. And it just, they ended up, you know, letting Dave go cause he didn't have a daily production job. You know, they said, what do we need him for? And then they sent me to Japan to source bodies and necks because, you know, why should we make bodies and necks here when we can buy them from somewhere else cheaper? And it was just super discouraging, um, for me seeing something that I really loved, um, being changed in a, in a way that I didn't agree was the best way. Um, so Dave, right before he left, um, he just said, you know, Tom, if you, if you, if you really want to do this, you need to do it yourself without investors so that no one can tell you how to, how to do what you want to do. And I thought that is the last thing I want to do. You know, that was not on my radar. That was not, didn't even sound like interesting, you know, but it was clear that what was happening there wasn't going to go on forever and certainly not the way I wanted it to be. Um, so I went home to my wife. We had a two year old and we were two months away from our second child. My wife, Catherine is a saint. I went home one day and I said, Hey, quit my job today.

[01:23:21:02 - 01:25:20:05]
 I'm going to start a business. And she said, had you lost your mind, you know, and I said, no, I think I can do this. You know, cause I had certainly had people that we were making parts for at checker, you know, bodies and necks and stuff for John Surr and Roger Sadowsky and that kind of stuff and Jim Tyler. And, um, so I said, well, I think I have a little, a little bit of a built in business if I can get all the machinery I need to do stuff. Um, so, um, so we did it now. She said, she said to me, she goes, you're not a businessman. I go, I know, but, uh, but I know how to make guitars, you know, and I know, I know how to do this and I, and I, there's plenty still to learn and stuff, but I, I think I can do this. You know, she goes, you're too ethical. You can't be a businessman if you're ethical. And I, and I, and it really made me not worry, but it made me wonder, like, is she right? Is it, can you not run a business ethically and, and treat people fairly and all that stuff. And I said, why, why can't we do that? So, so we did. And, um, and it just grew and grew. I spent one year working out of my garage at home at a pin router in the garage. And it was just packed with stuff. You could barely walk in there. And then, uh, at the same time I was doing a lot of work for Steve Ripley who made the stereo guitar back in the late eighties and, uh, Kramer had picked him up because Ed was, Ed used the, the stereo guitar on the song on one of the, one of the Van Halen records. So Steve kind of talked me up to the people at Kramer and, um, and I started building artist guitars for them. So I started.

[01:25:22:04 - 01:26:31:29]
 What year is this that you're working out of your garage? And then you work for Six, 87, 88, probably. Yeah. Um, yeah, we, we made 10 years after starting with Schechter. Yeah. I started my left Schechter in 84. I started my left Schechter in 84. 84. Yeah. So you spent seven years there. Yeah. Yeah. So spring of 84 left. And, uh, like I said, worked out of my garage and without a clear picture of how I was going to generate enough money to support our family. Yeah. My wife was working part time to get, so we had medical insurance. She worked at Robinson's department store, which is like a Macy's now. They're, they're not around anymore. Um, so those first few years, she worked nights. I worked days. We passed at six o'clock and five o'clock, you know, so see you later, see you at bedtime, you know, and, uh, and, and that worked for a while for us. And then, uh, Schechter had set up a division in Japan for, to make products for Japanese consumption.

[01:26:33:10 - 01:28:35:15]
 They would make bodies and necks over there and we would ship bridges and pickups from the U.S. And they would assemble them over there for Japanese consumption. And Schechter closed in probably August of 84. So several months after I left, they closed up because there was nobody that knew how to do anything anymore. And the people that were running it were, there was, they were, they were from the meat business in Texas and they didn't know anything about guitars and they were just looking at bottom line kind of stuff. Um, so I got a call from, uh, Joichi Yui who Schechter had set up in Japan to run Schechter Japan. And he said, Tom, I really need American made pickups for these guitars were selling in Japan. So he was coming over to the U.S. So we met at a Carl's Jr. And we struck a deal to make 300 strat pickups a month for Schechter Japan. And that's what fed my family that first year in the garage and allowed me to generate enough money to buy so many equipment that I needed to start thinking about making bodies and necks. And I think in my garage, I think was the first, uh, made my first outside of Schechter, uh, body for John Sur. He was at Pensa Rudy, Rudy's music stop in New York. Yes. Making Pensa Sur stuff. So that's when I started making bodies and necks for him. Well, bodies first, cause I didn't have everything I needed to make necks yet. Um, and then contacted Roger and started making stuff for him, contact the gym and started making stuff for him. Roger Stodosky and Jim, Jim Tyler. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All, all three of those people I knew from being at Schechter. Yeah. Um, so we, so doing this work for Kramer,

[01:28:37:00 - 01:28:53:02]
 Steve proposed we make pickups for Kramer. So we had this big business plan of how we were going to make these thousands of pickups a month for Kramer. And we thought, okay, we're gonna be a place to do it. So I got my first shop, which is about 1600 square feet and got the shop,

[01:28:54:02 - 01:29:07:10]
 had nothing in it. They hardly had any equipment at all. And, uh, and then Kramer decided not to do the pickups. So there I was with overhead and rent and all this, you know, stuff with, uh,

[01:29:08:10 - 01:30:01:12]
 but these pickups, like I said, these pickups kept my family fed, um, those first, first years. And then we just, so I started adding, I got up to, I think after a few years, I had three people working with me, four people working with me and we were making bodies and necks and pickups and selling those things as parts. And then Harshall Blankenship, who had been one of the partners in Schechter had started a retail store in LA area called Lab Sound and they were, they were the rack place, you know, late eighties. That was racks. So they were the Mesa Boogie amps and racks and stuff. So they, and he just said, you know, if you put some guitars together out of these parts, I bet I could sell them in the store. And I wasn't anxious to do that. I kind of enjoyed

[01:30:02:23 - 01:31:34:20]
 making parts. Um, but we made some guitars and they started selling them. And then he, he was part of connecting to some other, a few other big dealers around the country. Um, and he would spread the word to them and they would order one or two or whatever. It was very small numbers of guitars. Um, and then that just grew and grew. And then we got a big, then we moved into our shop previous to this one, which was 4,400 square feet. So from 1,600 to 4,400, it was massive and we'll never fill it up, but we filled it up. Um, and then we were at that place for 25 years or so, I think. And we got up to the point of, we were in this 700 to 850 guitars a year kind of size. There was, you know, 15 people or something. I think we got up to, um, um, um, Cedar Creek custom case shop is your premier threaded instrument custom case maker. And we invite you to create a musical instrument case unlike any other one that's unique to you. Ever Cedar Creek custom case is hand built by highly skilled craftspeople using only select woods, Providence forge hardware, and premium instrument friendly materials at Cedar Creek custom case shop. We're dedicated to helping you design the case of your dreams. Find out more at cedarcreecases.com. Another pivotal moment was, uh, guitar player magazine did a tele shootout in the early 90s.

[01:31:36:06 - 01:32:22:18]
 And we sent one of our holiday classics, which is pretty traditional tele. Uh, we sent a dual humbucking short scale tele shaped guitar and we sent another long scale humbucking single humbucking tele guitar. And we won first, second and fourth place out of all these guitars. And that put us kind of put us on the map. Um, cause otherwise, you know, there was, there was no internet. There was no, you know, it was only magazine ads and magazine ads are expensive and we ran little tiny little ads, you know, but that, that guitar player shootout kind of put us on the map for that stuff. When was that? Do you know the year? I think it was, uh,

[01:32:24:25 - 01:32:32:26]
 89 or 90 might've been slightly earlier, earlier than that, but I'm not too much earlier than that.

[01:32:34:03 - 01:33:47:17]
 And, uh, and like I said, we stayed at that same size for a long time. I, so in, in 89, uh, I took on a business partner. My wife was telling me, you know, I was running my business on a yellow pad. I didn't have a computer and I just was, you know, when, when the page got full of orders, we made those orders, you know, it was just completely low tech. And, and my bookkeeping was equally low tech. So I said, you know, you really need to get somebody to help do the administrative part of the business. So there was a friend of ours, um, that had been in hospital administration and, uh, she was currently not working cause she was got sick of that part of the job. And so we were actually camping, uh, at the beach and they were there. Her and her husband were there too. And, uh, we took a walk on the beach and we talked about, you know, she was bored and she said, well, you know, I could come in and maybe work for six months and get you set up with systems and to make things work. And I'll find something else to do. And she was my partner for 28 years.

[01:33:52:28 - 01:34:00:10]
 She passed away in 2017, uh, pretty suddenly. And, um,

[01:34:02:06 - 01:34:12:10]
 pretty much, I mean, this was a functioning business, but, um, she was a big part of the heart of the company.

[01:34:15:05 - 01:34:22:25]
 What was her name? It was, it was, it was a very interesting, you know, my warning about having a partner.

[01:34:24:15 - 01:34:41:09]
 Never turned into anything with Lori. It was, it was, we were completely different. She was completely data-driven. And I was, no, I feel like this is what we're doing. And it was uncanny how

[01:34:42:11 - 01:35:03:01]
 we'd talk about a particular subject and she would come up with what she thought I come up with my thought. And they always were the same. It was just this weird thing. I mean, just, you know, it always frustrated her that I didn't do any work to come up with my numbers.

[01:35:04:16 - 01:35:35:26]
 She had spreadsheets and, you know, and all that stuff, you know, she could back everything up. All her decisions were backed up with data, you know, and mine were just like, no, I think this is, this feels better. And it, and we just never argued about anything. Um, um, she was from a very early time an advocate for our employees. Um, we were very early on doing medical insurance and we started doing profit sharing, um,

[01:35:37:00 - 01:37:17:24]
 um, fairly early on in the business. Um, because it was clear that people who stay and do a great job and feel valued do a better job than people who hate going to work every day. And so I think it just, we, we never lost people. I mean, we just, we had a couple of people move out of state and then come back, you know, cause they missed, you know, working here. And so I think that was, was and is why we're as efficient as we are with what we do because we treat our people well, they're important. I mean, they're, you know, and, and our vendors equally, um, you know, a lot of, I know other people who buy things and they get grind their vendors for the cheapest possible price and stuff. And, and I always tell my vendors, you know, I said, I'm, I'm, I'm very, you know, if, if, if I'm buying from this person and this guy over here says, I really want to be a vendor too. And I said, well, you're going to have to earn it. Cause I'm really loyal to my vendors because they are part, they are part of why we are where we are. If I didn't have predictable dependable vendors to get me what I really need, not just what they happen to have the cheapest that day. Um, that's really important. So, um, that's another, I'd say pivotal thing about this business is that, um, employees are really important. We have people that have been here 35 years. We just had a guy retire at the end of last year has been here since 92 or three, I think.

[01:37:23:26 - 01:37:54:20]
 So it, it allows us to do the things we want to do because we're not constantly training new people, you know, like, like I don't, we don't micromanage anybody out in the shop. People have been doing this stuff for so long that they know what needs to get done every day and stuff. So, and then we, we, since Marcus has been here, we've been doing a lot more

[01:37:56:09 - 01:38:49:24]
 planned meetings as far as talking about where we are and what's going well, what's not going well, what, you know, getting more input from the people that are doing the work. I mean, you know, in the old day, there were, there were many years when I was the only painter. There was many years when I made all the next, there were, you know, all that, that kind of stuff, but, you know, the more people you have, you know, we're up to 24 people now total. So I can't paint every guitar and I can't, you know, physically or, or, or, you know, there's, there's just so much stuff to be done that you, you know, got a partial portion portion it out to, to people that, that know how to do it. So I would say that, that sort of gets us to this place. So we moved in here in 2012

[01:38:50:26 - 01:38:57:26]
 and because the shop is laid out more efficiently than our old shop, our old shop

[01:38:59:10 - 01:39:44:21]
 evolved. So the finished department was in the two farthest corners from each other, you know, we did so when they had to go all the way through everything, you know, back and forth, moving stuff around all every day. So when we moved in here, we laid it out really nicely and so that things flow through the shop uniformly and efficiently. And so we did actually get more guitars made here with the same people in the same machines, you know. And then, do you know how much that changed? How much more efficient do you think it got? Do you know? When we first moved over, I think we were doing say 800 guitars and the very first year we were here, we made 50 more guitars. Okay. Yeah, substantial. And then we then we floated into this 900 number

[01:39:46:04 - 01:39:50:02]
 for a while because we, we had more space so we actually added a few more people.

[01:39:51:19 - 01:41:25:21]
 And then when Lori passed away in 2017, Rachel, who was doing some of the off, some of the office work when Lori was here, she was still here. So she took over many of Lori's like bookkeeping kind of duties and stuff. And but there was a lot more administrative stuff that fell on me than previously had. And it really kind of took its toll on me. It wasn't as fun for me to come to work as it had been. And so I started both thinking about the day to day here, but also I started thinking about the future because, and this happened, it was about five years ago this started because Lori passed in 2017. And it was within a couple of years after that is when I really figured something needs to change here for this to work as well as it should. It's not like we were still profitable and we were getting stuff made and all that stuff, but it was just, it was wearing on me and I didn't feel I was as responsive as I could have been in the past. I wasn't as interactive as I was because I was buried with administrative kind of stuff along with all the other stuff that I have to do. So I started talking with my wife and Catherine,

[01:41:27:20 - 01:42:42:13]
 who I will say again is a saint for putting up with me. I was late to dinner every day for years. There she's sitting there with three kids at home and I'm late for dinner every day, but I can't get out of here. We talked about, I said, well, someday I won't be here, whether that's I get hit by a bus tomorrow or I get real sick and I'm gone or I'm just too old to do this anymore. But there will be a day when I won't be here was kind of the reality of where my head was at. Because I was, let's see, so I was 67. So I was already an age where a lot of my friends had retired from working and my wife, when are you going to retire? I was like, probably not. So I started pondering this whole thing about what would it take for this place to continue when I'm not here? Because there will be a day when I'm not here, for whatever reason that is. I hope it's not, but that will happen.

[01:42:43:24 - 01:43:08:08]
 So I started talking with Marcus Spahn, who started as a customer in 2006, I believe. He was living in the Bay Area and he bought his first guitar in 2006 and subsequently probably bought 15 guitars an hour. Once he had got the first one, then he started selling other things he had.

[01:43:09:11 - 01:43:37:26]
 And so I started talking to him just because he had a different kind of business experience than I had had. So I was, and he just was always a helpful person. He would come down to go to NAMM shows with us and help us. And then he started working on some software for us because our ordering system had been built by Laurie using a DOS database, which you can't even run anymore.

[01:43:39:10 - 01:44:07:19]
 So he was one that kind of brought us into the present age with our order taking an inventory of software and stuff. So we started talking. I just started talking about this whole idea of someday I won't be here. And we talked and talked for months. And I started saying, "You know, I think Marcus is, you could do this." And he would always laugh. "Oh, yeah, sure."

[01:44:08:22 - 01:44:12:26]
 And then months later after we talked, and I probably said that a zillion times,

[01:44:13:27 - 01:47:02:00]
 he goes, "You're serious, aren't you?" I said, "Yes, I'm very serious." So we talked some more about it. We talked about money. We talked about location because he lived in the Bay Area. He has a wife and a daughter. And so he talked it over with his family. And we came to an agreement of what we thought would work. And they came down here just to kind of look at housing and see where would they live, what would it cost, all that kind of stuff. And they ended up, they were at our house for dinner that evening while they were down here. And they put an offer on a house and it got accepted that evening. So this was happening. We're in. Yeah. So that was four, I think it's four and a half years ago now, almost five years this summer. This space is normally reserved for brands who make stories like this possible, like the Dario and the Cedar Creek Custom Case Shop. If your company belongs in this conversation, let's talk. We partner with brands who value craft, culture, and the quiet power of a well-placed idea. So he came down here with the plan that he would be the succession plan. Yeah. And that we were not hoping for me to be gone anytime soon, which that's still the plan. But he's just... When I was telling the crew, we had a big meeting one day and I said, gave him a whole story about someday I won't be here, blah, blah, blah, blah, and I have this person in mind that I think is gonna come here. And I think it'll be a great fit. And I think, and you guys all know him. And after the meeting, one of our guys came up to me and he goes, when you were saying that, I was saying, I hope it's Marcus. I hope it's Marcus. I hope it's Marcus. Because everybody knew him. Because he comes down here. He was here three times a year, four times a year. And so he came on and I think I knew he technology and computers and personnel administrative tasks were totally in his wheelhouse. What I didn't know was how meticulous and what a fast learner he is. He'd been setting up his own guitars and stuff and he would change pickups or something like that. But he came in and it just so happened the first year he was here, we had a couple of guys go out on paternity leave. So he just fully immersed himself in the finished department, staining tops and all that stuff and then spraying paint and all that stuff.

[01:47:03:22 - 01:47:36:16]
 He's unflappable. I don't care what the task is. If you say, hey Marcus, you want to try this? Sure. Sure. Absolutely. I think I can do that. And he's just ridiculously fast learner. Like I said, he's doing the initial first pass on the guitars now and they're flawless. It's just hardly a return of screw because it's just German descent and

[01:47:38:16 - 01:47:53:28]
 he epitomizes all the goodness that there is in German. And has a heart for people. And that's what has made the biggest difference, I think. There's more of a feeling of

[01:47:55:03 - 01:48:39:24]
 more than ever feeling of camaraderie and we're all in this together and we've continued the whole, at the end of the year, we share whatever profit there is in the business with all the employees. That's why we make profit because everybody's doing a really great job. So we had a few lean years where it wasn't so great, but for quite some time it's pretty nice. It's a good thing. It's always fun when we're interviewing new people for the job and we can talk about benefits and profit sharing and stuff. And you can see their eyes get big. It's like, "What?" So all that stuff. So Marcus was absolutely the most recent pivotal moment

[01:48:41:27 - 01:50:43:29]
 because his and my musical backgrounds are totally different, which is also fun because I'm an old guy and I'm used to old school sounds and old school playing style and stuff. He grew up a metal kid. So it's fun to see the interaction between him and some of the younger crew members to do. And we're doing things that were divergent from where we were headed before a little bit. Not like a completely different direction, but a different emphasis. And we've expanded too. Marcus has pushed us a little bit to see if we can do more. And then if we can't, what do we need to change to how can we meet that goal? That kind of thing. And it's created opportunities for people here. Now we have a little bit of an hierarchy where it used to be Tom's in charge and everyone else comes to Tom. And now we definitely have department heads and people that have responsibility to make things happen. And he's now getting into design and programming also CAD and CAM work, which is traditionally I've done all of. So it's just, it's been really fun for me to watch him just, he's a sponge. He just picks up everything. And also has created a nicer environment. I would say here at the shock, we've never been a few times in our history where you have one person that's just a grumpy person. You know, and it just drags everybody down and we just don't have that now. And it's just, it's really, it's nice to come to work. That's great. So there's my moments. Well, thank you, Tom. Long moments.

[01:50:45:26 - 01:50:50:25]
 It's been a long and fruitful career. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:50:51:27 - 01:50:53:24]
 Can't cover that in two and a half minutes.

[01:50:57:10 - 01:51:56:08]
 Wonderful. So as we sort of wrap that up, is there, you know, you're standing at the podium with an award you've just sort of talked about thanking everyone for the work and the history and certainly when you feel like didn't get mentioned there, any moment there, you can just sort of reflect upon before we wrap this up or? Well, I would say something that I don't know if it's general knowledge, but the guitar industry, the people that make guitars, is a pretty tight knit group of people. People from other industries that come into this are shocked that John Sur and I are good friends and that we talk to each other all the time and we text back and forth and Nick Huber and Bob Taylor and everybody out there, there's Sheldon Dingwall and it's just,

[01:51:58:08 - 01:52:04:09]
 in the guitar business now, unlike when I started 40 plus years ago,

[01:52:06:29 - 01:53:06:03]
 if I'm having a problem with material, say my finish, like what is going on? We're having failures in finish. What's going on? I'll get on the phone and call John or I'll call Bob or I'll call somebody else, you know, and we all help each other to solve problems. And so consequently, I think that's one of the reasons you're seeing and obviously Bob, I mean, it's like from the grand scale of Bob Taylor to the guy making 20 guitars a year, everybody can talk. At the NAMM show, we had dinner and Sully guitars. He came to dinner with us, so he's never been with us before and it was just so fun to talk with him. He's a wonderful person then. Yes, yes. Larger than life character. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I mean, it was really fun for him to

[01:53:07:13 - 01:53:14:01]
 see this. Yeah. Because I think a lot of when you're new at something, you're a little reluctant to

[01:53:15:08 - 01:54:03:26]
 ask somebody questions because maybe that's their secret or their whatever. There just really aren't many secrets in making guitars. It's just, it's hard work and you have to be diligent, you know. And so I think that's something that every guitar player is now reaping the benefits of all of us talking to each other and helping each other make better guitars. So I think, you know, I think you could argue that guitars are better than they've ever been. Yes, some of those old guitars are great guitars, but they weren't all great guitars. I had plenty of horrible pre-CBS fenders before. Yes. But they were, you know, they were production cheap guitar. So

[01:54:06:14 - 01:55:43:29]
 I think this is a wonderful time to be making guitars. I do wonder, I was surprised at the NAMM show this year. I mean, there was probably 20 people that I'd never heard of before making guitars and making respectable guitars. You know, these weren't import guitars. These were people in this country making guitar, or in Europe, you know, making really nice guitars. And it's like, I wonder what it's like to break into this business now. You know, when I was doing it, it was so different than it is now. You know, there was no communication other than magazine ads and stuff. So it was really, you had to run around beating up, you know, beating on people to want to have your stuff in their store. You know, why would I want to have your guitar? You only make a few guitars, you know, I have all my fenders and gibsons and rickabackers. So Bob Taylor, super instrumental. He's always shares information, technology. He says the same thing about you. I had him on the stage in the boutique guitar showcase a few weeks ago at the NAMM show on a panel discussion. And he talks about this moment where you came to see him. I take a tour of his shop and you guys were talking about how you do next. He says, well, how do you do next? And so I have this computer, this machine, he's like, tour's over, we're going to your place. And he talks about how you change the future of Taylor and Taurus. You know, and I think that speaks to what you're talking about, that sort of interchange between. Yeah, that's what I mean. It's not like

[01:55:45:03 - 01:55:55:26]
 one person's getting all the benefit out of all this stuff. It's like everybody's just really shares. And there's a few that aren't as great at sharing, but that's okay.

[01:55:58:05 - 01:56:29:09]
 It's what I love about this part of the industry as well. So I've made my career in this spot because it has become my family. You mentioned Nick and Nick and I came up together. We're both young in the business together and we're still very, very close. As a matter of fact, just before lunch, I got an email from him saying he's got his 30th anniversary coming up and please come over to Frankfurt and celebrate with them, the rug go. And so it really is a wonderful place.

[01:56:30:27 - 01:58:01:08]
 Well, I've said for years, there's just no room for assholes. We're all doing this because we love it. And so if you're not going to love this with us, just go do something else. Yeah, people that don't participate intentionally just don't. It's not like you push to try to get them involved. It's like, "Yeah, if you won't do your thing, go ahead." But you're missing out. Yes, yeah, you are. Tom, thank you for your contribution to the guitar. I agree that there are better guitars made today than we've ever made guitars before and you have an important part to play in that role. So you have, the world of guitar is better because of Tom Anderson. Well, my wife will say this is a hobby gone wild, which is kind of what it is. You liked it because it was a wild hobby. Yeah, and I'm still doing this because I'm trying to make the guitars I wished I'd had when I was 20 years old. That thing I talked about with Dave Schechter pointing out the things that should be better. There's lots of room for improvement on almost anything in the world and it's just fun to keep working at that. Yeah, so another day. Aim up. Yeah. Well, thank you for aiming up, Tom. All right. And thank you for being on Life With Strings Attached. All right, thanks for having me. Ciao for now. All right.

[01:58:03:15 - 01:58:16:23]
 You've been listening to Life With Strings Attached. If today's conversation meant something to you, consider passing it on. These stories find their place through the people who share them. The new episode comes out every Friday, right here, wherever you're listening.

[01:58:18:04 - 01:58:21:21]
 I'm Jamie Gale and thanks for listening to Life With Strings Attached.