 The way Premier Builder Guild
master builder/chief engineer
Gene Baker grips this b3
Water model suggests either
he has the finger strength of a
yeti after so many years in the
business or that the guitar is
remarkably light—or perhaps
it’s a bit of both. |
Gene Baker has been obsessed with guitars for a long time—he
built his first guitar when he was still in middle school. He
eventually ended up as a senior master’s apprentice at Gibson, and
then a Fender Custom Shop senior master builder before branching
out on his own. Over the last decade or so, he built a reputation
for building impeccable-playing double-cutaways with gorgeous
figured-maple tops stained in a huge array of colors. Most recently,
he’s gotten even more attention as the master builder and chief
engineer for Premier Builders Guild, where he oversees production
of a limited selection of designs from six boutique brands—his own
b3 line, as well as popular models from Dennis Fano, Roger Giffin,
Saul Koll, Johan Gustavsson, and Jason Schroeder. [Ed. note: PBG
is not affiliated with
Premier Guitar or any of its subsidiary brands.]
Considering what’s happened to him over the years, Baker
considers himself lucky to be in the business at all. Despite his
relatively new gig with this consortium of master builders, he’s
seen his fair share of troubles. Not long ago, a malfunctioning
CNC machine led to shutting down his Baker Guitars shop and
declaring bankruptcy—a debacle from which it took years and
more than $36,000 to recover. But while Baker has had his share
of the blues, his passion, perseverance, and sheer love of guitars
has carried him through.
PBG was formed in 2009 by Howard Swimmer and Michael
Bernstein. Their goal was to provide customers with an exciting
portfolio of boutique, master-built guitars and amps, without the
uncertainty, extended waiting periods, and lack of customer support
often associated with boutique instruments. They wanted
to assemble a lineup of all-star builders and build guitars from
those brands efficiently and under one roof. Both Swimmer and
Bernstein were admittedly new to the guitar business, and neither
was quite sure how to round up the group—but they had one
secret weapon: Gene Baker.
“I think the fact that we had Gene in our lineup out of the gate
is what actually let us open a lot of doors,” says co-founder and
PBG president Swimmer. “Everyone who’s building guitars today
knows who he is and of his commercial success with his line of b3s
and Baker Guitars. We didn’t know the other builders when we
started building our group, but as soon as you mention Gene, it’s
instant street cred.”
The Baker b3 Fire Tobacco Burst has
a quilted-maple top, a mahogany neck
and body, a
Madagascar rosewood
fretboard, Lollar Imperial humbuckers,
and a TonePros TP6 bridge.
Baker’s b3 Wood semi-hollowbody features a
chambered mahogany body,
flamed-maple top,
Lollar Imperials, and a Graph Tech TUSQ nut.
Two years and six brands later, Baker is now solely responsible
for every guitar that goes out the PBG door. Whenever PBG partners
with a master builder, Baker does the prototyping at the company’s
shop in Arroyo Grande, California, while working closely
with the designer to make each guitar specific and unique. Nothing
leaves the building without him playing it.
“We’re making guitars for six different builders, and Gene’s overseeing
the production of each one of these different brands,” says
Swimmer. “Each one has its own setup requirements. Each builder
has his own unique desires for his guitar. The beauty of Gene is
that he’s able to realize what each builder wants with his guitar and
make that a reality.”
“This is a guitar I would build on my best day,” says PBG
builder Saul Koll after handling a guitar Baker saw through production
from start to finish.
Baker’s b3 Metal-XS
neck-through has a solid
mahogany body, Lollar
pickups (two Imperials
and
a Special S), a MannMade
tremolo, Sperzel locking
tuners, and a Graph
Tech TUSQ nut.
Dennis Fano’s PBGbuilt
Alt de Facto PX6 is
available with an alder,
swamp-ash, or mahogany
body (a flamed-maple
top is optional), a maple
or mahogany neck with a
graduated 10"–16"
radius,
Lindy Fralin pickups, and
aged-nickel hardware.
The 411 on b3s
Within the range of PBG guitars, Baker’s own designs are represented
by the b3 line, which was inspired by vintage models from
Fender and Gibson. He says the b3 logo was created with the
Hindu
aum symbol in mind, because dealers he’s worked with favor
more organic names over numerical model designations. The line’s
models are named for the five phases of the ancient Chinese cycle
of Wu Xing: Earth, Fire, Wood, Water, and Metal. All five models
have similar body outlines, C-shaped neck profiles, and Lollar pickups.
“I’ve always been a huge Les Paul fan,” says Baker. “But there
were always small details I didn’t like about an LP, so I used the
model as a benchmark.”
The Fire model is his attempt to create a more ergonomic guitar
via appointments such as a sculpted neck heel, a tummy contour,
and a double-cutaway body that he feels is more balanced. He also
says the neck has straighter string pull for greater tuning stability,
but he still feels the model has “the meat-and-potatoes construction
details” that preserve its essence.
“Coupling these details with the best hardware—like Buzz
Feiten tuning and modern machining technology—gets us closer to
our end result so we can fine-tune the small details,” he says.
The Metal model is the neck-through of the series (the others
feature set necks), and Baker says it grew out of his love for Randy
Rhoads and the late master’s Jackson Guitars. That said, Baker
himself prefers the Water model—a hollowbody with Lollar humbuckers
and Kluson-style TonePros tuners—when he plays with his
Mean Gene Band. His has a makore (aka African cherry) back, a
maple top, a mahogany neck, a rosewood fretboard, and a recently
installed Graph Tech Ghost Acousti-Phonic bridge, which facilitates
a nice acoustic tone without switching guitars. He says he prefers
the Water because it’s lightweight and he loves the controlled feedback
that the hollowbody allows him to get. His is distinguished
by an ebony veneer on the headstock, the result of a serendipitous
accident that occurred when one of his shop guys machined the
headstock thickness too thin. “I had to build the thickness back by
adding the veneer,” he says. “But it looks very cool, like an old jazz
box guitar.”
LEFT: Baker’s personal guitar and b3 Water prototype
has a hollow makore body (production
models are mahogany) and Lollar Imperial
humbuckers. A Graph Tech Ghost Acousti-Phonic bridge and preamp were added
after the photo was taken. RIGHT: The PBG-produced Jason Z. Schroeder
Radio Lane has a mahogany
body with a flamed-maple cap, Lollar
pickups, and a Schroeder-designed
stop-tail bridge.
This PBG-produced Koll
Duo Glide has a chambered
mahogany body with a
flamed-maple top, thumbnail
position markers, TV
Jones Classic pickups with
Gretsch-style rings, and a
Bigsby vibrato.
Pre-PBG: From GIT to the School of Hard Knocks
Before signing on with PBG, Fender, or Gibson, and before he
owned any of his own shops, a young Baker, fresh out of high
school, took his early experiments and rock-star ambitions to
Musicians Institute in Hollywood (which was called the Guitar
Institute of Technology or GIT at the time).
“The very first week at GIT, they had a student seminar and
open house, welcoming the students and whatnot,” he recalls. “And
they said to us, ‘The majority of you guys are not going to go on to
become rock stars. You’re going to find yourselves somewhere else
in the music industry if you’re lucky.’” GIT laid the foundation for
his guitar expertise, not only making him a better player, but also
introducing him to countless guitar students whose stylistic tastes
still inform his business.
After graduating from GIT, Baker moved to Huntsville,
Alabama, with some bandmates, hoping to record an album to
bring back to California. That’s where he started his first guitar
line, building 10 or so guitars under the Mean Gene brand name.
“The first guy I built one for goes, ‘Why don’t you call it Mean
Gene Guitars?’” Baker says in a thick, faux-Southern accent.
Chuckling, he adds, “I guess it just kind of stuck.”
As it happens, it was the Mean Gene brand rather than a hit
record that Baker ended up bringing back to California. He and
one other builder worked out of his parents’ garage. They survived
on small-quantity runs for a while before moving into a small facility
where they kept a retail shop, a wood shop, and rehearsal studios
for local bands. “I think we only lasted about six months [in the
new facility] before we ran out of money and had to pull the cork
on it,” says Baker. “Altogether, it lasted a full two years—we should
have just stayed in the garage.”
Two unfinished Koll Duo Glide necks (left), a Jason Z. Schroeder neck
(middle), and a b3 neck lay
atop a selection of routed and unrouted
neck blanks and fretboard slabs. Photo by Joe Coffey
A stack of Giffin Valiants
after having binding applied
(back) and a couple
more
waiting to have their
necks glued in.
Photo by Joe Coffey
CNC templates for a Giffin Valiant headstock
and fretboard. Photo by Joe Coffey
A rack of CNC routing templates for (top to bottom) Fano, Koll,
and Jason Z.
Schroeder bodies. Photo by Joe Coffey
Realizing that it would take some Business 101 to keep a successful
shop running, Baker decided to get some field training. He
went to work for the Gibson Custom Shop in Hollywood, where
he became a senior master’s apprentice to Roger Gibson. Baker calls
Gibson his first real mentor—someone who knew and understood
guitars, and was able to guide him through the little nuances of
building and repair that he hadn’t learned yet.
The pair worked well together and absorbed the luxuries of their
location in West Hollywood. “We were right in the Studio Row area,
where there were tons of recording studios and a lot of session players
that we’d do work for,” Baker says. “I got to work on all these vintage
Fenders, Gibsons—just a slew of vintage guitar history that otherwise
I wouldn’t have been privileged to work on, which really got me into
vintage guitars and paved the way for what I’d do later at Fender.”
Baker attributes much of his success as an independent builder
to his time working in Fender’s Custom Shop, where he started in
1993 after declining to follow Gibson to Nashville. He was initially
brought in as sanding and buffing support before heading up
the Robben Ford department and eventually being promoted to
Master, and then Senior Master Builder. “I got to build a lot of guitars
from the ground up,” he says. “We had to build all the necks
and bodies and the little custom features, like mid-’60s round lam’
necks, a lot of the big peghead necks—a lot of times even double-neck
guitars, Bajo Sextos, rosewood Teles—things like that.
“I still didn’t have any real business background,” says Baker,
“but while I was at Fender I was going to night school to plan my
escape.” In the summer of 1999, he opened Baker Guitars, taking
with him a friend and all of his 401k investments.
But the fate of Baker Guitars was sealed, so it seems, from day
one. A faulty CNC machine resulted in an agreement with the
CNC manufacturer, in which they agreed to take back and fix the
machine while paying back Baker’s loan with the financing company.
If only they had. A year later, the financing company came
after Baker Guitars for the unpaid CNC loan, forcing the company
to declare bankruptcy and liquidate its assets.
“The liquidation was kind of like attending my own funeral,”
says Baker. “I was even fighting with some guy over my own bench
tuner.” Baker let the other guy win, but he didn’t admit defeat. It
took three years of laying low and shelling out payments to the
bank before he was in the clear to start a shop again, which he did
in the spring of 2004 with nothing but a storage locker. This time
he named his business Fine Tuned Instruments.
A bevy of PBG-built guitars—
a Giffi n Valiant Chambered, a
Schroeder Radio Lane, a b3
Fire,
and a couple of T-style
b3s—at various stages of
finishing. Photo by Joe Coffey
Rising from Ruin
Without tools or materials, Baker had to work backward. People who
had acquired unfinished guitars at the time of liquidation looked to
him for final assembly, prompting him to buy the tools necessary to
finish what he’d begun years before. Slowly, his business started rolling
again. But as more business came in, there was more pressure to
expand, and he found himself looking for a partner. “This time I didn’t
want any bank loans or silent partners,” he says. “I wanted to bring in
someone who had everything from attorney skills to business management
and even manufacturing skills—someone with enough money
and enough brains to turn this thing into something bigger than just
myself.” A dear friend of his, music industry veteran Cliff Cultreri of
Destroy All Guitars, understood what he needed and suggested PBG
co-founder Michael Bernstein. The rest, as they say, is history.
Still, Swimmer says the role that Baker took on is a tough one. “It
takes a certain personality to go in there and build someone else’s guitar
when you’re building your own guitars in the same building,” he says.
“And to be able to execute it with the same level of pride as if it were
your own? He’s a diamond in the rough.” But Baker says he doesn’t care
if it’s his name on the headstock or not, as long as the machines are running,
people are working, guitars are going out, and money is coming in.
During his days of hopping from one small storage space to
another, Baker may not have dreamed he’d be at the head of a
huge, well-equipped production space such as PBG’s—which has
14 employees and is putting out between 50 and 75 guitars a
month. Baker says working there is a little like changing companies
from week to week, because building methods vary for each brand.
Further, each brand can have as many as six models in the PBG
line, with multiple options—pickups, inlays, bridges, body lengths,
headstocks, and scale lengths—per model.
Still, with all of the options available to PBG customers, Baker
says the shop’s focus remains on quality, customer care, accuracy,
and thoroughness. “The main thing is having a really good formfitting
function and attention to detail,” says Baker. “Many larger
shops don’t have the time to make sure every little detail is really
nice, and so [at PBG] that is one thing we always pride ourselves
on—that attention to tiny details.”
Gene Baker (left) and his Mean
Gene band tear it up with the
legendary Ronnie Montrose
at
an October 2010 gig at Mongo’s
Saloon in Grover Beach, California.
Photo by Joe Coffey