Bringing Guitars Back from the Dead

People often over-romanticize the past without a solid foundation as to why. Sometimes it’s nostalgia, other times a mere distaste for the present. For guitar builder Ron Luczak, there seemed to be a happy medium that led him to recreating masterpieces from decades ago, as well as creating new, revolutionized originals. He was bringing these legendary pieces of music history back from the dead, but making them better than ever. After seeing several of my friends’ beautiful custom guitars and hearing the stories of Ron, his intense opinions and his craftsmanship, I had to dig in deeper.

I walked through the garage door and into what seemed to be the ultimate guitar nerd’s man cave. I was greeted with a nice solid handshake and an instant apology for how messy his shop was. I looked around and the walls were lined with schematics, unfinished pieces of guitars and the rest of his shop was filled with lumber and power tools. For some reason, people always seem to apologize when you get a glimpse into the headquarters of their creative output. From the stories I’ve heard, there’s magic being made in this garage and I assured Ron that keeping it messy was how he did things and it’s admirable. He focuses on what needs to get done, not the presentation. That was the perfect segue into my first question about his musical origins. Ron had music in both his mother and father’s sides of the family without truly realizing it until later on. At family gatherings, his cousins brought their fiddles and violins and one day an accordion, which really sparked some interest. It was such a strange instrument and the intrigue of not only how to play it, but how it was put together may have subliminally flipped a switch in his brain. His mother’s uncle was in a bluegrass band and his grandmother worked at a radio factory. It’s the perfect combination of creating and performing that lead to the creation of The Most Violent City In America’s best guitar builder.

Like most people his age, Ron was raised on the Beatles. Watching them perform on The Ed Sullivan Show, he wanted nothing more than a guitar, but having six other siblings meant if one kid got an expensive gift, everyone needed one. That’s a lot of money every Christmas. After a few years, he was finally able to get guitars and, out of curiosity, would take them apart to see how they were built, without necessarily knowing how to put them back together. He felt like he was excelling at playing guitar when he was able to comfortably play along to Van Halen, Boston, and Paul McCartney on the radio. Guys in the mom and pop music shops around town would be wailing away and it was just more fuel to the fire to get better and know more. There was a big music community and he wanted to get involved with it in one way or another. In high school wood shop, the passion for building finally had a focus. For his main project, he decided to build his first guitar in class. Well, it was a nice attempt but he considered it a failure. The dream was subdued once again. Out of the blue, a close friend invited Ron to move to Tulsa with him and get jobs working on airplanes. They moved and lo and behold, that job didn’t pan out and Ron got a job at a dry cleaner. The city’s music scene ended up being phenomenal and sparked the idea to build guitars again, but this time the proper way. The owner of the dry cleaner let him use the garage next to their place of employment as a work space. It was finally happening, he had his first shop.

Ron’s first “real guitar” as he claims was a Gibson 1954 Les Paul reissue and it was the basis of his first cloning experiment. I’m not talking stem cells or test tubes, I’m talking about recreating a piece of history to the exact specifications starting from scratch. Using an $80 band saw and chisels was the early approach for these endeavors. It all clicked when he wanted an overpriced Floyd Rose installed into his no-name Japanese Stratocaster copy and he met his first real guilder builder. People had their repair guys, but this was someone who could virtually do anything. It seemed everybody played but nobody really built guitars, and it was the perfect way to become a part of such a great music community while making his hobby a profession. When Paul Reed Smith guitars were introduced to the market, it seemed to change everything there was to know about guitar building. In Ron’s eyes, Gibson and Fender were losing their quality while these new builders were revolutionizing instrument construction. He began buying all types of guitars to see how they were designed and began learning new tricks and ways to replicate them from hands-on experience. He moved back to Flint, Michigan to work in a music store as the guitar repairman feeling completely unprepared and eased into real experience as well as a sense of professionalism and pride in his work. The better he got, the less he wanted to simply repair guitars. He wanted to be known as a builder.

In the early years, it seemed everybody wanted Ron to build them either a standard Stratocaster or something completely off the wall. I found it similar to tattoo culture. A client approaches an artist with their idea, the tattooer will throw in his two cents and compromise or if it’s too ridiculous, send them packing. From 1985 to 1989, Ron had built about fifty guitars. He started building the guitars he’s always wanted for himself as well as getting better at replicating people’s favorite discontinued guitars with pin-point accuracy. Over time, he found tricks like using hide glue to bind the wood and muratic acid fumes to age the hardware. He also suggests that people heavily research these procedures because there is danger involved, especially when dealing with acid. Ron stopped me abruptly and let me know that he does not want to be known as a forgery artist. He is simply creating a new version of something not made anymore and always throwing in his own style. He’s infatuated with the building process of times past and the care people took in their work before mass producing junk to fill the supply and demand of the new chain music store conglomerates. Even trees used decades ago were better quality when they naturally grew before the hurry-up-and-grow-them, cut-them, sell-them mentality of the present. This is why when Ron was assembling a replica or Frankenstein version of a guitar, he'd start using actual pieces of that guitar. Whether or not a piece seems cosmetically pleasing, there’s a way to bring it back to life. This wasn’t all he wanted to be known for. It was time to make his own custom model.

A custom Luczak.

In 1999-2000 Ron decided to combine his beloved PRS body style with that of the ever-popular Gibson Les Paul and create something completely his own. After all, there are only so many designs you can do before you start stepping on another company’s toes. He wanted something classic without the shock value of other, newer guitar companies. The body style would stay the same, but customers had the option to pick anything from the size of the neck to the electronics inside. It was a Luczak guitar, but each one was built by hand so it only made sense to let the people make it their own customized original. Instead of using serial numbers, Ron took an idea from Stradivarius, the violin builder extraordinaire of the 17th and 18th centuries, and decided to name the instruments he took pride in. It may be an apples to oranges comparison, but loving what you create is a universal concept. Since their inception, about 30 of these guitars have been built, all with various and potentially hilarious names.

Maybe those who live in and love the past know something that we don’t. Maybe there is something special that has been over-saturated and washed away in the seas of time. One thing that Ron Luczak knows is that he does what he loves. He never settles. Most importantly he acknowledges that the past is the past. He refuses to confuse generations of the future with something he’s replicated. He makes Luczak Guitars. Instruments are no different than artifacts. They have emotions and stories attached to them and for a lot of them, Ron Luczak is the author. Fortunately for him, the story just keeps getting better and better.

Jonathan Diener is the drummer of the Swellers and once made a custom drumstick out of some toothpicks and a bunch of straws he found. Follow him on Twitter - @jonodiener

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