Doubleday Guitars: “I have a hard time saying no to interesting ideas”

In our Luthier Interview Series we dive into the world of electric guitar craftsmanship with the experts who bring these instruments to life. This time we feature an interview with Walker Doubleday from Doubleday Guitars.

He learned the basics at the Roberto-Venn School of Luthiery, then landed a job as a luthier at Collings Guitars, and eventually founded Doubleday Guitars. In his workshop, Walker Doubleday builds exquisite custom guitars AND pickups.

Wanna learn more about this master luthier? Then I invite you to read on!

As a graduate of the Roberto-Venn School of Luthiery, how has your formal education in guitar making influenced your approach to crafting instruments?

I attended Roberto-Venn School of Luthiery in the spring of 2014, shortly after graduating from Texas State University with a Bachelors Degree in Music, Business, and Pop-Culture.

It was such a great change of pace and mindset to transfer from a traditional college education atmosphere, to a guitar making education where I felt truly engaged.

Roberto-Venn was an excellent place to learn the basics of guitar construction methods, but I have to say I really gained the majority of my knowledge from my 8 years working for Collings Guitars here in Austin Texas.

Being able to deep dive into several different aspects of the guitar building process, and really hone those particular skills was invaluable in my building methods I use today.

I learned many important aspects of guitar building at RV, but at Collings I was really able to understand why they matter and how they can affect specific parts of the completed instrument.

Can you walk us through your journey from becoming a Certified Luthier to establishing Doubleday Guitars in Austin?

After graduating from Texas State, I went straight to Collings guitars and applied for a job, with my only actual luthiery experience being a one off Explorer style guitar I built in a Woodshop class at Boarding School in New Hampshire.

Collings suggested I’d attend Roberto-Venn and reapply with some more experience upon graduation. Luckily, they decided to hire me at that point.

While I worked there, I spent time in the buffing department, quickly was moved to the Acoustic Body Build department, and finished my time there in the Neck Construction department.

The skills I learned in each department are what have allowed me to branch out with the confidence to establish my own business crafting high quality guitars. 

I was allowed to use the Collings shop on weekends to build ‘Personal Projects’, where Doubleday Guitars truly began. I had a router table and drill press in my apartment, that I could use sparingly at home, but the finish booth and workspace at Collings was essential to producing complete guitars. 

After the first six Doubleday Guitars had been completed, I decided it was time to quit my full time job and seek a shop space of my own.

I have since fully outfitted the current Doubleday Guitars shop with all the machinery needed to build these guitars under one roof, including a fully functional spray booth for nitrocellulose finishes.

How does the music scene in Austin inspire or influence your guitar designs?

I was born and raised in Houston, and always saw Austin as the cooler city with interesting people; and being known as the ‘Live Music Capitol of the World’, it was where I needed to be.

Though many of the wellknown legends have come and gone, and the atmosphere around town has definitely changed, I still catch myself wondering if Stevie Ray Vaughan might have played a Doubleday Guitar in his day.

My style of guitars are definitely suited to blues/rock style musicians, but the country music scene in all of Texas has had the biggest impact on my guitar designs. The genre has grown at an astonishing rate over the past few years, and these guitars fit very well in the Country music culture.

You specialize in both acoustic and electric guitars. How do you balance your time and expertise between these two different types of instruments?

While I worked for Collings Guitars, I solely worked on the acoustic guitar side of things. Many people think an electric guitar would be harder to make than an acoustic, but the artistry and skill required to produce a good sounding and playing acoustic is much higher.

That being said, I’m currently only building electric guitars. I do plan to build acoustic guitars as the business grows. That’ll require an entirely new set of tools and jigs, as well as space to build them. I don’t use any CNC machines in my build process, so jigs for each specific process are paramount. 

Can you tell us about your process for hand-winding pickups? What makes Doubleday pickups unique?

While I was a student at Roberto-Venn, I was lucky enough to take a pickup winding class with Jason Lollar of Lollar Pickups. The moment I was able to install my first hand-wound pickup into a guitar and hear it for the first time, I knew I would be making my own pickups for all of my guitars.

I learned the fundamentals of pickup making in this class, but there was still so much more to learn and understand. So, I read everything I could possibly find on pickup making to really develop my own understanding of how different components of a pickup affect the overall tone and characteristics of a pickup. 

There are endless opinions about pickup construction, but I have developed my own philosophy on what makes a pickup sound good. I believe that the most important factor, is simply the fact that the wire is hand-wound, rather than being machine guided.

The randomness of the human element reduces what is known as inductive capacitance in the coil, which raises the resonant peak of the pickup’s eq response. The high end clarity and harmonic content of a hand-wound pickup puts them in another league than mass produced machine made pickups.

There is less consistency with a hand-wound pickup, but that is part of the magic of the pickups, just the same as how each piece of wood used in a guitar has its own personality. 

What’s your philosophy behind the statement ‘Good enough is never good enough with Doubleday Guitars’?

There is a certain big name guitar manufacturer who says only their guitars are good enough, but they seem to leave quite a bit of room for improvement in their guitars.

I really strive to make each tiny little detail of my guitars the best they possibly can be, including some things that the customer will never see or even know about.

The stacking of tight tolerances is what produces a complete product of the highest quality. This mantra was instilled in me during my time working for Collings Guitars, the highest quality craftsmanship is the only option.

Good enough implies to me that it could be better. 

For our readers who are aspiring luthiers, what advice would you give about pursuing formal education in guitar making?

I have many luthier friends who have also attended Roberto-Venn, as well as the Galloup School of Luthiery in Michigan. Not a single one of them, including myself, has ever said they wish they hadn’t had that experience or education.

There are plenty of online videos about guitar building that many people choose to use as guidance, but many of them offer bad advice or leave important information out. Having a formal education is a far better option to learn correctly.

Being able to ask the instructors specific questions to a problem you may encounter will teach you so much more than trying to figure out why your work doesn’t look exactly like what somebody has done on a screen.

And to top it all off, you get to take home a couple incredible guitars that you’ve built when you graduate!

How do you approach customization requests from clients? Can you share an interesting custom project you’ve worked on?

I do have some hard lines that I will not cross when it comes to customization (like a headless guitar or multi-scale design), but I do find I have a hard time saying no to interesting ideas.

Many of my hard limits are simply due to my manufacturing processes that don’t allow for deviation. I have built custom guitars for clients with some interesting finish, binding, or wood choices.

One that stands out was one of my Broadwing models where the customer requested a white finish with the grain showing through, but with a gold sparkle binding to match the gold sparkle pickguard he had picked out.

Gretsch used to make guitars with gold sparkle binding, but they used leftover drum wrap material to create their own binding, which I was unable to get my hands on.

I decided to create a binding channel and fill it with a clear epoxy with a gold glitter substrate that gave a very cool 3D effect to the binding.

We decided to take the build one step further and use a gold pigmented grain filler for the grain on the body. The final result was pretty stunning!

As both a builder of acoustic and electric guitars, how do you see these two worlds intersecting in terms of innovation and design?

The body of an electric and acoustic guitar couldn’t be more different, but the neck construction is very similar. The way the truss rod is installed and functions is a critical part of how a guitar neck will feel and play.

I only use vintage style one-way truss rods, which provide a tension to the neck that newer style two way rods simply don’t provide. The way the fretboard is shaped using the tension from the truss rod is very similar between both acoustic and electric guitars. 

That being said, I do offer a semi-hollow version of most of my models, and I have plans for introducing a new piezo style pickup option in my electric builds to offer an acoustic type sound from some of these electric guitars.

What are some of the unique challenges and rewards of running a boutique guitar company in today’s market?

The most prevalent challenge of running a boutique guitar company is having to handle all of the business aspects of it all while also building the guitars themselves. There are so many tasks to complete to keep the business alive that take away from the time spent actually cutting wood.

Today’s social media prevalence forces a business owner to stay on top of multiple accounts on multiple platforms, and think about creating content while trying to get work completed.

The feeling I get when I hear from a customer about how much they love their new guitar makes it entirely worth it. I am lucky enough to build guitars for some incredibly talented musicians, so I get to go to their shows and see them make art on a guitar with my name on it!

It’s also a great opportunity to get some content for those social media accounts, all while having a great time.

Can you give us a sneak peek into any new models or innovations you’re currently working on at Doubleday Guitars?

I am currently growing my ‘Standard’ line of guitars, which offer quality American made craftsmanship on a guitar with a price that is much more attainable for many. The options on these are more limited than the ‘Custom’ line, but they offer an exceptional value on a great guitar.

The next big venture will be diving into bass guitars. I have plans to offer a P-bass style guitar as a part of the Custom line.

How do you see the future of guitar making evolving, and what role do you hope Doubleday Guitars will play in that future?

Fortunately, I don’t think people will ever stop making and enjoying music. Even with the recent growth of computerized music, musicians and fans still love the sound and feeling of an analog instrument.

The violin has a gold standard of construction that was set by the Stradivarius violins of the late 1600’s, and hasn’t changed much since.

I believe there will always be a demand for electric guitars built similarly to those of the 1950’s and 60’s, when they changed the entire music scene.

A professional musician demands reliable and consistent guitar, and that’s what we need to keep producing. I hope for Doubleday Guitars to become a benchmark for quality of American made guitars.

For our beginner guitarist readers, what should they look for when considering a custom-built guitar?

Roberto Venn taught the difference between hand-made and home-made. There are lots of ‘luthiers’ out there that are building poorly made guitars and trying to sell them as a high end custom built guitar.

It is definitely important to do some research on a boutique guitar company and learn the experience and pedigree of the builder. It’s a great idea to look for reviews from customers of a builder to see how their experience with the process went as well as if they enjoy the guitar they have received. 

It can be risky ordering a custom guitar with a higher price tag, but the benefit of getting the exact specs that you want can definitely out weigh the risk.

There are plenty of incredible guitar builders out there, just do some research or try to get your hands on one beforehand if possible!

How do you balance maintaining traditional guitar-making techniques with incorporating modern technology or materials?

I really strive to keep my building techniques very similar to how they were made in the 50’s an 60’s. I don’t use any CNC machines, and I only use nitrocellulose finishes.

While the majority of guitar builders today have moved to CNC production, and it does speed up the process, many believe it takes the ‘soul’ out of the guitar. The attention to detail in guitar building is crucial, beginning with selecting the raw materials, all the way up to stringing it up for the first time.

There have been incredible innovations in the machinery used to produce guitars, but most of them sacrifice accuracy and detail for speed. 

The main area where I look to innovation in guitar building is the materials used. I love to use light weight swamp ash, but it has become incredibly scarce, so I look for more sustainable woods that can offer the same benefits.

I have built several guitars out of Ppaulownia, which looks and sounds just like swamp ash, but is much more sustainable. I only plan to use organic materials for construction, but the traditional tone woods are not the only option.

As a luthier who makes both guitars and pickups, how do you approach the integration of these components to achieve the best possible sound?

The electric guitar is a signal generator. The signal path from the hand-wound pickup all the way to the output jack needs to be as good as it can be.

I only use high quality electronic components, with quality wire, and practiced soldering techniques. Any weak point in the signal path will be detrimental to the signal generated by the guitar.

I have even developed my own shielding paint for my guitars that is non-ferrous as to not affect the magnetic flux field of the pickups. The whole circuit must work together as a system to produce the best signal.

The guitar itself needs to transfer the energy of the vibration of the strings efficiently in order for the pickups to transmit the best signal. The pickup is simply a transducer, taking the energy from the strings and converting it into an electronic signal.

The guitar, and most importantly the neck, needs to allow the strings to vibrate freely and truly for the pickups and the electronic circuit to work at its highest potential.

Making the guitar and its electronic circuit to work together to their highest efficiency is what allows the guitar to produce the best possible sound. 

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