Reader Guitar of the Month: A Playable Heirloom That Honors a Family History

Reader: Eddie Heinzelman

Hometown: West Harrison, IN Guitar: Barncaster

This month, our reader is Americana musician, luthier, and guitar tech Eddie Heinzelman, who toured with Radney Foster and fronts his own trio, the Rebellious Sons.

My family bought our West Harrison, Indiana farm in 1917. It was a working family farm for decades that belonged to my grandparents when I was a kid. I spent every Saturday morning at their house watching TV westerns and every Saturday night watching Hee Haw. My grandma got me my first guitar, from Sears, when I was eight years old, and we listened to the Grand Ole Opry and WSM AM radio every time we milked cows or worked in that barn. The farm had been in our family 100 years, but after my grandfather passed away a few years ago, we couldn’t continue to farm it ourselves. We sold it to a neighbor that I went to school with who kept on farming it.

I moved to Nashville after college and became a musician, songwriter, and luthier. I got the idea to build a Barncaster guitar so I’d have something from the farm that I could keep and pass down to family. I went back to the farm and pulled some boards from the old barn, which has been standing since at least the ’30s. Impressively, it was built with wooden pegs in the beams, rather than nails or bolts.

A friend of mine in Murfreesboro, Patrick Johnson, planed and cut the boards to make the body. The barn wood is poplar, which he used for the top, while a piece of striped sassafras makes up the back. This combination results in a very light guitar—in fact, my Barncaster has many of the qualities of a pine T-style instrument. We decided to also cut a wood pickguard from the barn wood (which includes all of the original worm holes), and then applied a light finish to seal the guitar, without laying it on too thick.

“The old barn has been standing since at least the ’30s. Impressively, it was built with wooden pegs in the beams, rather than nails or bolts.”

I didn’t have a vintage-style Telecaster, so I went with a Fender vintage-spec maple neck. It has an Oak Grigsby 4-way switch, Bourns 250k pots with a treble bleed circuit, an .047 uF Emerson Paper In Oil tone capacitor, compensated brass saddles, and Porter Vintage Tele pickups. It’s a really special heirloom that plays and sounds so good! In 2022, I used it on tour with Radney Foster for his Del Rio, TX 1959 30th anniversary tour, and in a tribute to my grandparents, I played it on the Grand Ole Opry, which sort of brings the story full circle.