Marty Lanham takes a lot of pride in his work, and generally does most every operation with a minimum of tooling. He believes he has more control of the building process by concentrating on hand work and on the details of each guitar as an individual.
Having heard a number of his instruments, I'd say his approach is working nicely.
I asked him to show off some of his favorite tools, and he immediately reached for this collection of precision layout equipment:
Marty really likes fine measuring tools; he's particularly fond of the Bridge City Tool Works. Layout, and measurement is especially important for a hand builder who wants to make a changing variety of instruments, says Marty.
In the not-so-precision department, Marty has a collection of modified tools, such as this bent chisel for bridge plate removal:
In another room, he has a fine little old South Bend lathe for those tricky tooling jobs:
Here are a couple of banjo necks in progress:
Hmm, that's a familiar name on the upper one. . .
As a parting shot, Marty reached into his spray area to show another Brazilian rosewood guitar body in progress:
A fine piece of Adirondack spruce on the top:
Marty builds in a strictly traditional manner, including the dovetail neck joint.
Visit Marty Lanham's Nashville Guitar Company website!