Chris Smither tells a story about how a custom guitar that one person rejected became a guitar he’s embraced.

Here’s what Smither had to say:

This guitar. This is a Collings ... let's see ...  0002H and I got this about, I think, in 1999 at the Music Emporium in Lexington, Massachusetts, from Joe Caruso, and it was a custom build, but not for me. It was built for a guy that everybody... nobody liked! But he was insistent he wanted ... he wanted the Collings. He wanted one, a 12-fret, not 14 to the body, 12 fret; cut away; short scale; speed head, not a slotted head, and most of the 12 frets usually have the slotted heads like a classical guitar. And so Joe Caruso said, "We'll see what we can do."

And he called up Bill Collings. Bill says, "I don't want to do it!" He says, "I gotta reprogram my cutter and all this, you know, the neck and..." yada yada.

"Oh, please, please!"

"Yeah, OK, we'll do it."

So make a long story short, they start building the guitar, and about two weeks before it was done, they called up Joe and said, "Man, this guy is onto something. This guitar is a cannon! Nobody in the shop wants to let it out, but, you know, it'll take us a little while to get the finishes on it, and then we'll send it up to you. Should be a week or two."

So they sent it up, and the guy who had ordered it walks in and plays it for about 20 minutes, half an hour, and says, "I don't like it."

You know, Joe is like, I don't know how, I wasn't there, but you know, his first impulse was to yell at the guy, and then he thought to himself, "This is stupid," you know, "I'll sell this guitar to the first player that walks in the door." And the guy [who ordered the custom guitar] left with — I think he bought a Santa Cruz or something.

And I walked in, like, 45 minutes later. I said, "You got anything interesting?" And he says, "Do I! Let me show you something." That's how I wound up with this guitar.

Credits

Guest – Chris Smither
Host & Producer – Mike Pengra
Audio & Video – Evan Clark
Camera Operators – D’Vir Rudin, Erik Stromstad
Graphics – Natalia Toledo
Digital Producer – Luke Taylor

External Links

Chris Smither – official site

The Music Emporium – Lexington, Mass.

Collings Guitars – official site