Tunguska Guitars: “Everything that Makes Our Guitars Sound and Play Like Butter Is all Made by Us”

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 Kent Meloy from Tunguska Guitars.

Tunguska Guitars, based in Newton, Ohio, is making waves in the guitar world with their distinctive designs. Under the leadership of Kent Meloy and Mark Szabo, the company has been turning heads with their unique instruments.

At FretboardFrenzy.com knew we had to sit down with these innovative luthiers to learn more about their craft.

Here’s what they shared with us!

What inspired you to name your company after the 1908 Tunguska Event in Siberia?

I’ve always been fascinated by the Tunguska Event, ever since I first heard about it on Leonard Nimoy’s “In Search Of” series back in the late 70’s. I mean, “eyewitness accounts” of the object changing direction before it exploded totally fueled my sci-fi pre-teen sensibilities, and hey – Mr. Spock was telling me about it!

I was totally hooked. Years later I used it in one of the first songs I wrote for the first ‘real’ band I was in, Collins Gate’s “Tunguska Love Affair”. Then a dozen years later I used it for my not-really-a-production-company “Tunguska Pictures”, which I did all of my indie filmmaking adventures under.

My buddy Jay Nungesser designed the comet logo, and when I started doing the guitar thing a little more seriously, I started calling it Tunguska Guitars just for fun, but the name started to really stick. That and when I realized how much Jay’s comet logo also looked like a guitar – well, never look serendipity in the eye and question it.

Also, turning this into an actual business (aka, going full-on LLC and stuff) was forced by an unexpected end to my employment at the time. I was doing remote Learning and Development for a software company out of Boston, and a merger nuked a handful of positions.

I was one of them. Never saw it coming and it really fucked my life up. BUT, it also got me thinking about what my future could look like. I was doing tweaks on the Tunguska Guitars website, and wanted to verify a couple things about the Tunguska Event, and discovered it happened on June 30, 1908.

I got let go from that position on June 30, 2023. So, of course, we launched Tunguska Guitars LLC on June 30, 2024. Like ya do.

Can you tell us about your first experience building guitars in high school during the early 1980s?

I was learning guitar in the late 70’s in high school (a lot of things seem to have happened in the late 70s…) and was becoming an addict of the six-stringed magic machines.

I was totally broke, not a ton of high-paying work to be had in high-school-aged rural Illinois, so any of the high-end axes I wanted were out of the picture. I cut my teeth on a horrible Sears acoustic that had something like a 1/4″ action, and graduated to a black Encore Les Paul knock-off that was entirely made of plywood.

I was also falling in love with things like the Ibanez Iceman and Gibson RD, but like I said, both were well beyond my reach. Me and my buddies who sort-of had a band used to draw pictures in study hall of ‘our band’ as something between Kiss and Rush, and I started drawing weird-shaped guitars that were super futuresque.

I was taking shop class and everything normal I tried to make (shelves, chessboards) came out wonky, but I turned a chess set on the lathe and it came out quite nice, so I figured why not try to build an electric.

My dad found plans for a 6-string bass in an old (I think) Popular Mechanics magazine. We converted the scale and I built it out of pine and maple. We even wound our own single-coil pickups. It was basically unplayable, but I had a blast.

What made you return to guitar building in 2015 after such a long break?

The need for a new hobby. So much of what I did at work and for fun involved sitting in front of a computer. I wanted to get my hands a little dirty, and decided to spring for a cheap GFS Explorer kit.

I think it cost like $125. That went reasonably well, so I then did a more expensive Warmoth Iceman. Also went well, so I thought – I should design my own body style and see if I can do it with a blank and a pre-made neck.

That was the first “v1” – or as we’re now calling it the “Stanford”. Side note – our models are/were all named “v1”, “v4”, “v5”, “v6”, “m5″…etc. and Mark and I decided we need to give them actual names.

We were starting to lose track of which was which, and hell, if we can’t keep ’em straight, how will our customers? So anyway, that guitar came out way better than I expected, and I think that was when I realized I needed to keep at it.

You mention being drawn to “odd-shaped” guitars like Explorers and Flying Vs. How does this influence your design philosophy?

I think the main thing is that those are guitars you don’t just see everywhere, and (for me at least) whenever I see someone playing one I’m instantly interested.

Breadwinners/Deacons. Iceman. Parker Fly. The elusive (and sorta not real) Moderne. A Rick 4001. Anything like that, so when I start designing, my first thought is how to make something that feels familiar but totally different.

Or just off-the-wall bonkers. No shade is being thrown at any of the classics. I own a couple of LPs, a Tele, etc., but I want to hopefully feel that same excitement at the aesthetics of the stuff coming out of the pencil that I do for those wild instruments.

How did your partnership with Mark Szabo come about, and how has his expertise in custom pickups and electronics enhanced your guitars?

I’ve known Mark for around 20 years. We both played in bands in the Cincinnati scene (originals, not covers. Oh, the internet forum cage matches that once ensued!) and our paths crossed often.

His wife-to-be once auditioned for a band I was throwing together, and around the same time I started really taking the guitar building thing seriously we started “Oh So Luminous”, a cool little 4-piece with a sorta Foo Fighters vibe.

I’ll never forget the day he said. “I’m digging the guitars you’re making. You know I do electronics, right?” He also had a side gig doing repairs and setups.

He did an amazing fix on a snapped Parker headstock that still impresses me to this day. So it turned into a brilliant pairing – I’d get the axes built and initial assembly, then he’d do incredible setup and fretwork, and he’s better at guitar wiring and soldering on his worst day than I’ll ever be on my best.

He then said, “By the way, I’ve 3D printed components for a pickup winder”, and after a few experiments, started cranking out some absolutely incredible pickups.

I just love the idea that other than some hardware everything that makes our guitars sound and play like butter is all made by us. We’re even looking at designing/manufacturing bridges and Mark is totally jonesing on rolling up some low-watt custom amps. Both of those are a bit down the road, tho.

Your “Victor” semi-hollowbody guitar seems to have been a turning point. What made this particular build so significant?

I came to realize that all the guitars I was building for myself always had an issue or six. Mainly because I was still learning, and also because I’m willing to let a problem or two slide if it means I get to play with it sooner.

I used to do the same thing with model kits when I was a kid. So I figured the only way I can really up the game is by making one for somebody besides me.

My best friend, Jeff Bentle, is an accomplished fingerstyle guitarist who writes the kind of songs that just hit all the storytelling buttons, and due to his acting chops (which are also impressive), tends to have a sort-of minstrel quality.

I’ve always loved his stuff, and we’ve written together now and again since college. Well, he didn’t have an electric and would talk about maybe getting one now and again. So that hatched the plan. I was going to design something that felt like it fit that ‘minstrel’ vibe, build it, and give it to him.

I conspired a bit with his wife Joyce on colors and the like, but he had no idea it was being built. The look on his face when we gave it to him will stick in my memory forever. That’s when I realized if I was going to keep doing this building thing, I needed to do it for folks other than myself.

Can you walk us through the evolution of your v5 series and what distinguishes it from earlier models?

As I mentioned above, it was a model that was designed for a specific vibe, and it needed to feel somewhat normal. The high-school guitar was total sci-fi hard-rock silliness.

The Stanford was a not-so-cleverly-hidden nod to Parker. So this one had to be all me, but accessible. It was also the first attempt at a semi-hollow of the chambered variety, something I’d wanted to try for ages.

So, Jeff’s was the first version, and it’s unique in that while building it, I had my first experience of the router table grabbing end grain, which reminded me that whirling blades of death mean serious business.

It shattered the horn almost an inch into the body, so I had to cut that bit off and slightly reconfigure the slope and shape. That mishap made me modify the original design a little bit because a couple elements of the change I liked better than the original.

After that there was the slimline version which I’ll talk about in a moment, a thicker version to see if it would feel any more ‘jazzy’.

And now the two variants that Mark suggested – the “Jazz” which has no ‘baroque’ violin-ish hook on the top bout and the horn comes all the way down to the neck, and the “Kaiju” which is also missing the hook, but retains the top horn.

The biggest departure from this design is the “Keefe”. It’s a live-edge swamp monster that involved heat-bending a hunk of 3/8″ steel rod to make the bridge and tailpiece, a single pickup mounted in a wrought-iron ring with a hole bored all the way through the axe, and a single floating volume knob inside an alcove in the top horn. Fun stuff!

The M5, your entry in the 2022 Great Guitar Build Off, featured some unique design elements. What was your vision for this competition piece?

As always I wanted to come up with something really out there, but still feel like a guitar someone would play. I figured with sooo many other builders in the fray, I needed to design an eye-catcher.

My first real obsession as a kid was the 60’s “Speed Racer” cartoon. Hell, I’ve got a large die-cast Mach 5 on the TV stand to this day. So, if I could come up with a design that felt like that iconic car somehow, well, that would be cool.

That’s why it’s got the Fender-esque (car body, not guitar brand) curves and sweeps. I knew I wanted two pieces of contrasting wood between the top and the body, and my love of working with Cherry started there.

I continued with the thing I’d been doing on most Victors – a thick top with relief down to the body in places, and knew because of that I’d have to recess the bridge, so making that cutout in the top where the two straight lines meet in the cherry worked out really well.

I’m actually about to start work on another one now that Mark and I are really getting our build processes down.

Many of your builds incorporate unique wood combinations. How do you select materials for each project?

It started out as a stroke of luck – my brother-in-law had a large stash of cherry and walnut 2″ slabs drying in a shed on his property. He invited me to come down and take what I needed.

That wood generated the Keefe, the m5, and a few others. I became really interested in using wood that the big builders don’t, and each build starts out with pondering what kinds of grain will really set it apart.

I know some folks really frown on ‘furniture’ guitars – using flames and burls and what have you for tops, but man, I LOVE a spalted pattern and crazy deep grain patterns. That being said, if it’s a solid color, I’ll revert to Alders or Basswoods, though, of course, I am still partial to Cherry.

I have found, though, that you really have to be purposeful in the choices; you can’t go totally bonkers with a million different textures; you need to highlight the most beautiful piece and let the rest of the axe support that.

Though I’m making a liar out of myself because I’m building a v4 (new name to come) right now with an incredible black limba top and neck, but a contrasting spalted tamarind fretboard. I think it’s gonna be gorgeous.

The “Def Bef” was specifically designed to be lightweight. What technical challenges did you face in achieving this while maintaining tone?

Surprisingly not many. The big one was to be sure the body was deep enough to house the controls we needed. Mark is partial to using push/pull pots to achieve a variety of tones, but in this case the body cavity wasn’t deep enough to allow that.

So instead we opted for mini toggles to do the coil taps. Beyond that I was most worried it would have no sustain because it’s super hollow, but not to the point of having bent sides.

I figured the hogged-out chambers would reduce weight, but it wouldn’t really sing like a heavier instrument. To our amazement, that guitar absolutely shimmers! Super resonant, and sustains for days.

It was the absolute right combination of wood and structure. I’d love to say we employed physics and days of calculations to ensure it would do just that, but I’d be lying.

“Barbarella,” your doubleneck guitar/bass, seems to be one of your more experimental builds. What inspired this design?

The afore-mentioned Jeff and Joyce invited me over to do a little acoustic mucking about. She plays viola and keys, and both of them were in Collins Gate with me a million years ago.

So, I went over, we had quite a bit of fun, and then they said “so when we play out, how are we going to do this?”. Which was a bit of a surprise to me, but I was totally up for it.

In the interest of keeping the group small, we discussed using some backing tracks, guest musicians, clever use of looping pedals, whatever – but the main thing would be that Jeff and I would have to trade off bass duties depending on the song. It was highly likely there would end up being an electric guitar in there now and again.

So I started thinking – what if I had one instrument to handle my three needs? That and the thought of dragging three instruments around is something that just doesn’t appeal to me anymore.

And the Barbarella was born. Bass and Six-string electric with a piezo bridge (Fishman Powerbridge) for the acoustic tones. It’s a little wonky to play – I’ll tweak the design a little if we ever build another, but it sounds pretty amazing and does exactly what I was hoping

You’ve used Lace Alumitone pickups in several builds. What drew you to these particular pickups

Honestly it was the aesthetic and the science. When I first saw them I was instantly attracted to the design, and the more I read about them the more excited I got.

Noiseless, damn near weightless, and the look absolutely vibed with the sorta-art deco sensibilities that live in my own designs. The fact that they sound amazing was icing on the cake.

Though we’re using Mark’s pickups now (and super excited that we are!), we will almost certainly offer Alumitones if someone wants them.

How has your neck carving technique evolved since your early builds?

Not much in the ‘how I do it’ angle, but quite a bit in ‘how it gets done’. I employ the centerline/facet/facet/facet carving technique to rough it in and then finesse to final.

I usually start by doing a band-saw profile to get the thickness within about 1/16″ of final at the first and twelfth frets, then use a Shinto rasp saw to rough the profile and final thickness, a dragon rasp to clean it up, then a half-round wood file and sandpaper to make it pretty.

I’m still adjusting how I blend the neck-to-fretboard transition, but for the most part that’s just whatever mood I’m in that day.

Could you tell us about your first-ever guitar build from the Popular Mechanics plans – what lessons did you learn from that experience?

I learned folks shouldn’t turn off the heat in the woodshop room when it’s single digit temperatures outside. Heh. Cracked the pine body right in half. I learned some cool stuff, too.

The ‘rule of 18’ where you use the scale length of the guitar, divide it by 18, place a vertical line at the nut at that height and then draw a line from there down to zero at the bridge.

Then, you simply place a compass point at the nut, adjust it to that sloped line for the radius and sweep down. There’s fret #1. Then, at fret one, you place the compass point, change the radius up to the new sloped-line height, sweep down, and there’s fret #2.

And so on until you have ’em all. It is not totally perfect, but it is certainly close enough, and the way they did it in the dark ages. I also learned that hand-winding pickups takes FOREVER when cranking it by hand with no motorized support.

I’m not sure I would use pine again, though many folks make beauties out of old barn wood. It was a lot of fun, and when I did the re-imagining of it last year on the 42nd anniversary, I also took a lot of what I’ve learned and not only made a pretty groovy new version but also did some super rudimentary fretwork on the original, replaced the horribly useless bridge and shimmed the neck angle.

By god, the thing actually plays like a guitar for the first time ever. Very fun!

Your recent builds show increasing complexity in design. How has your building process evolved over the years?

Mainly in the ‘just because that’s how everyone does it, doesn’t mean it’s the only way’ area. I’ve become a little obsessed with trying really odd ways of doing easy things.

A couple good examples are the steel/copper rod tailpieces in the Barbarella and my 2023 GGBO entry of the Phoenix where I chopped pieces of 3/8″ rod, machined string holes through the diameter and JB-weld epoxied them into holes.

It’s not a practical manufacturing technique, but it’s a pretty cool look and works just fine. I also like integrating unusual materials.

The Phoenix sports a 1/4″ copper strip that defines the arc between the walnut body and the distressed ash top, and the Keefe and Mouse electric uke both have wrought-iron rings emulating a sound hole.

Stuff like that is super fun and keeps the imagination fueled.

Can you tell us about your custom-designed tailpiece for the M5 – what led to developing your own hardware?

When I was working on the m5 I was (and still am) also teaching part-time at the University of Cincinnati. They opened an absolute state-of-the-art makerspace and because I’m faculty I get free access.

Amongst the toys they have on site are a pair of HAAS 3-axis CNC machines. I started mucking about in Fusion 360 to see if I could design a flying tailpiece for the m5, because I couldn’t find a single thing available that did what I needed design and function-wise.

So, long story short, I tweaked the design til it was just right, and they ran the job for me, and it looks amazing on the guitar. The only downside was that after a million iterations of tool path tweaking and testing by the guy that ran the job, the silly thing cost me just shy of $800.

So, future versions would, of course, be a lot cheaper, but I’ve also decided to change up the design a bit to make it sturdier and less likely to sever an artery if you go all Pete Townshend with it.

Sometime in the near future, I’m going to attempt to do one in our shop; we picked up a CNC router a couple of months ago to handle cavity-hogging, pickguard- and template-making.

It’s completely capable of doing aluminum, and I’ve already made a test version out of maple. So that’s what led to hardware development, but also it’s this damn need to roll our own whatevers.

So many times I’m looking for something to fill a design vibe on something, and literally can’t find anything even close, so my go-to thought process is “well, let’s just make our own, dammit!”.

That and as long as we don’t go ridiculously off-spec of normal hardware, anything we can do to make our guitars stand out is a good thing.

Mark has started a project refurbishing guitars for young players. How did this initiative come about?

Mark noticed that a lot of high school performance bands (mainly of the marching variety) don’t usually have anything all that great where the electric guitars and basses are concerned, and he has a super strong philantrhopic nature.

It’s one of the things I admire most about him. We did a ‘Les Paul Shootout’ video where we compared a vintage Gibson Custom, a new Epi Custom, and an Agile Korean knock-off, all with basically the same build materials.

He’d done plenty of mildly crappy guitar upgrades in the past and we even talked about that in the video, and it got him thinking why not do it again, find an ok, super cheap LP knockoff and give it the Tunguska treatment.

I’m woefully behind editing the final couple episodes for that series, but he did an incredible job. Upgrading all electronics, new tuners, winding a pair of gorgeous-sounding pickups, dressing frets and perfecting the setup among other things.

The end result is remarkable and he had a blast doing the work. I’m completely thrilled that he has brought this idea into the business, and the plan is to do a few of these every year, and give them all away.

Looking at your current lineup, which model do you feel best represents Tunguska Guitars’ philosophy

That’s a really good question, and I’m not sure I know the answer to it. They all have, or at least I hope they all have, something of a through-line that sets them all up as Tunguskas.

In some ways I feel like the v5 Victor is probably as close to ‘iconic’ as you can get for a guitar company that’s only technically/officially been around for a year or so.

The Mach 5 may represent our philosophy the best though – unique woods, radical design lines, custom-made hardware and pickups. And it’s ridiculously playable.

How do you balance maintaining consistent quality while experimenting with unique designs?

I’ll let you know when we figure it out. Seriously though, that’s a lot of what the past six months have been about. How do we ramp up production and repeatability enough to make enough instruments to call this a successful business?

I have spent more hours than I can count working in Illustrator to take all of our designs, draw them to a precise scale and account for everything from how different setups will change parameters (trem bridge vs. TOM, bolt-on vs. set neck, etc.) to perfecting the shapes and hardware placement – and document all of it.

I mentioned the CNC machine, or as I like to call it, the pet robot. Mark and I argued on that quite a bit. One thing we both absolutely agree on, though, is it’s – not – for doing the work that makes a guitar still qualify as ‘handmade’, at least as far as we’re concerned.

That’s super important to us, so while we’re cool with letting it hog out pickup and control cavities, getting neck pockets perfect, cranking out our groovy pickguards for the v6 or making new hardware, we do – not – want to have it cut the bodies out or profile necks.

That’s all love and sweat and stuff we really enjoy doing. It speeds up the build process to where I think we can knock out 3-4 instruments per week, at least from a rough-built status. That doesn’t include the finishing schedule, so that number is probably way off – but it’s totally within the realm of possibilities.

The next year will really help hone our processes until it really feels like a well oiled machine. To the point of the experimenting – we absolutely will still be doing that, so that will become part of the ‘how many per year’ calculations.

There will be times where it’s going to be more important to stretch the creative muscles and go a little crazy than it will be to knock out another five or ten existing models.

I’m confident we’ll sort out the mix, because one thing neither of us wants is for this to get tedious. We love it too much.

What’s next for Tunguska Guitars? Any new models coming up?

The main thing is building up stock. We know we need to get out to some guitar shows and see what resonates with players. Though we’ve currently got something like nine or ten official designs, we want to be cognisant of what sells.

No point in making a dozen v4s if nobody really digs them. New design-wise, there’s an honest-to-gosh semi-hollow ala Gibson 335 that I’ve been dorking around with for about a year now and finally have all of my side-bending jigs ready to test the whole thing out.

Marks’ designed an absoluetly bonkers through-neck multi-scale 7-string that is sort-of a Tunguska take on a Tele. It’s our first real through-neck and we’re pretty excited about it.

Also we’ll continue to experiment with things most indie guitar companies don’t seem to do. Having so many models is probably a little insane anyway, so why not go all in?

We did a custom lap steel commission that came out -really- good, so we think that will become an official model. I did the Mouse baritone electric/piezo uke, and it too has proved intriguing to folks.

I owe an electric five-string violin to a dear friend, and that’s been percolating for a couple of years now, so at some point, I’ll play around with that. I’d like to come up with a baritone guitar, but that’ll probably be more of an available option for an existing model vs. an all new one.

And I feel like we need to have a 12-string variant as well. A lot of that is definitely barely vaporware at this point, but we’re certainly keeping our options wide open.