Master builder Chad Henrichsen pours his creativity into Falcons, Jets, Penguins, and other axes that soar, including the Tom Petersson 12-string signature bass. His secret: experience and micro-attention to detail.
The art of guitar building lies somewhere between Zen and a lightning strike. The watercourse way of experience dictates some processes, their workflow eased by years or decades of practice. Other turns come in a flash of inspiration and leave an instrument that will give off a distinctive creative charge for decades.
Chad Henrichsenās inspired builds for the Gretsch Custom Shop are exemplary. Online, you can see his matching Bastogne walnut Duo Jet and Penguin models, as resplendent as Louis XIV furniture, but with a whole lotta music inside. A little searching also reveals a Baritone Jet in an explosive nitro silver sparkle metal flake finish, showing how high a low-tuned instrument can fly. Thereās a ā59 Penguin Relic in sonic blue that boasts a vintage voice to match, via TV Jones TV Classic pickups, and a paisley-and-goldburst ā55 Relic Duo Jet with a hiply retro catās-eye f-hole, Seymour Duncan DynaSonic pickups, and a Bigsby B3C tailpiece. The guitar looks as if plucked from George Harrisonās dreams.
YouTube It
Thatās just a handful of the multitude of guitars Henrichsenās made with equal measures of precision, inspiration, and love since 2008, when he joined the Corona, California-based Custom Shop, where he and Gonzalo Madrigal are the master builders. āMy mind is constantly running at about a million miles an hour,ā he says. āI am always thinking of a different way to do things, like how can I change the internal body chambering structure to maybe make a guitar sound a little bit different? Sometimes those thoughts are fleeting, but when I get one that really sticks I might write out a spec sheet just to have it saved, and go back to it later and build off of that original idea and play with it.ā
Those ideas sometimes become the spark for the instruments that Henrichsen makes for the Custom Shopās annual online dealer events, which he describes as āsort of a mini NAMM show for us. We come up with our own builds and really play around with our ideas.ā Some of the results get ordered for top dollar; others are not so lucky. But either way, Henrichsen feels he walks away a winner. āWhat sticks and what doesnāt gives me a chance to see if Iām in line with the customer base. Some get great reviews; some kind of fall flat, and so you go, āwell, let me focus on something else.āā
āThere were so many little things I had to take in bite-sized chunks as I went along. When I was faced with something I hadnāt seen before, I had to figure it out.ā
Henrichsen describes his ascent to master builder as ākind of a weird journey. I actually went to school to be an audio engineer. I wanted to work in a studio and play with faders and all that stuff, but the timing was less than desirable, meaning I got into it at the time DAWs started coming out, and recording technology became widely available to home consumers. That shift happened as I got out of school, so I took a detour. My bandmate at the time got a job here at Fender [which owns Gretsch] and helped me get hired as a setup tech, and then I quickly progressed into doing repairs.ā
Heād already been rehearsing for that gig. āI was really interested in guitars and Iād been tinkering around with them,ā he says, āswapping pickupsāreal simple thingsāand then started working here and really dove headfirst into it. I talked to a lot of the builders that had been here a long time. I got a lot of good pointers, and luckily I had a little place at home where I could go and make some sawdust. I was no stranger to saws. Maybe not so much routers, but I knew how to handle them, and I looked at it from a thousand-foot view and realized, āthis is just geometry.ā You can make things very complicated if you like, and especially in the Gretsch world, where our designs often dabble in the complicated side of things. But if you want to build a Strat or a Tele, itās not that much work. So, I started building my own guitars at night and on weekends, and it just snowballed from there. I kept upping my game and kept trying different things, like āNow I want to do a carve top,ā and āNow I want to do a set neckāāand just kept developing my skills.ā
Although Henrichsen can build any Gretsch guitar from scratch, his specialty is necksāthe most important aspect of an instrumentās playability. āAs far as making necks and bodies, we keep it very old school,ā he says.
Henrichsenās first home-builds were āreally models that I wanted for myself and just didnāt have the money to buy. My very first was like a SoCal-style Strat, with a humbucker. The second was basically a copy of a ā54 Les Paul with P-90s and a wraparound tailpiece. Thatās where I dove into carve tops. I made a carve-top Telecaster with some FilterāTrons in it. In building my own instruments, I could make them to an exact thickness, make the neck shape exactly how I wanted it. Itās fun to watch it take shape throughout the process, and it gives you a sense of accomplishment after a few months of toiling at home after work when you see it come together and finally get to plug it in and make some noise. Itās the greatest feeling ever, really.ā
āWe take a problem and we find a solution with what we have to work with: chisels, drill presses, handheld routers.ā
After about 18 months at Fenderās Corona factory, Henrichsen transferred to the distribution center. āI worked in the inspection and repair department that deals with all the import models that come in,ā he recounts. āWe do checks on all that stuff, and if things need to be fixed, we do that. I ended up supervising that line for a couple years, and I applied for the Gretsch position a year before I got it.ā
Asked if he hit any serious roadblocks while developing his building technique, Henrichsen replies, āThere were so many little things I had to take in bite-sized chunks as I went along. When I was faced with something I hadn't seen before, I had to figure it outāwhether sketching it out on paper or making real rudimentary drawings in CAD, like āOkay, hereās my bridge height, hereās the thickness of my body, the rise of the top.ā A lot of people do this very differently. Some do actual full-size, one-to-one-scale sketches. It was a lot of little things and I slowly chipped away at them.
This gorgeous walnut G6134 Penguin is one of Henrichsenās recent creations. It has a natural stain finish, tortoiseshell/cream binding, chrome hardware, a mahogany neck, an ebony fretboard, and a mother of pearl inlay at the 12th fret. The TV Jones TV Classic pickups enjoy a treble-bleed circuit and a no-load tone control.
āIn the Gretsch shop, we hardly use any CNC. We do use CNC for the logos and the inlays, just for speed and consistency, but as far as making necks and bodies, we keep it very old school. We actually have an old copy carver, a purely analog machine, and if we want to do a solid top, we actually use that old copy carver. We actually take a lot of pride in not having fancy new machinery. We donāt have engineers that need to program things to make something happen. With Gonzalo and myself, we take a problem and we find a solution with what we have to work with: chisels, drill presses, handheld routers. We obviously have a pin router for things, but other than that, itās a lot of hands-on work, and I love that.ā
So do customers who order a guitar from the Gretsch Custom Shop, which has eight staffers in total. āWe have a very small shop and itās just filled with woodworking tools: joiners, planers, pin routers, edge sanders. It is not fancy by any means,ā Henrichsen says. āItās like a very small cabinet shop. Gonzalo and I have help with finishing and binding, but we basically oversee the whole process. Gonzalo focuses mainly on bodies. I focus mainly on necks, but if either of us has a build that we want to doā¦. Iāll dive in and make bodies and heāll make the necks, so our jobs are very intertwined. But just for the sake of efficiency, we tend to stick to those two areas so we can move as fast as we can yet still retain that handmade vibe the Gretsch Custom Shop is known for.ā
āGretsch is kind of known for gadgetry throughout the years, and so to have all those switches.ā¦ To me, itās kind of like piloting the space shuttle, but weāll happily build whatever they want. I like the surprise orders. And tone is very subjective.ā
Exactly how long it takes to deliver a guitar once an order comes from a dealer or player depends on the complexity of the build, as well as how many orders are in line before it. āSomething like a standard ā57, ā59 Duo Jetāwe can get those out pretty quickly. But a custom Falcon with three pickups and custom inlays and things like thatāthat all adds to the time,ā the luthier says.
One of Henrichsenās favorite instruments to build is the Tom Petersson Signature 12-String Falcon Bass, which is tagged at $12,999. āIt is such a monster, and the reason I like it is because I have to do things very differently from all of our standard necks. For a Jet or a Penguin or Falcon, I have jigs that I use on a shaper table, a pin router.... That speeds things up a little bit for me. But that 12-string bass neck? I literally have to do most of that on a standard router table by hand. That makes you think a little bit differently, keeps you on your toes, and thereās really no room for error. Itās a measure twice, cut once sort of situation.ā
Hereās a close-up of the Tom Petersson Signature 12-String Falcon bass, focused on its pair of Custom Seymour Duncan SuperāTron pickups. But for Henrichson, the 3-way switch electronics are a snap. His favorite challenge is hand-shaping, without templates, the 12"-radius neck, which has a 30.5" scale length.
Electronics are another matter. āI love playing with different types of pickups,ā he says. āIf somebody wants that classic Gretsch twang, then I would go with a TV Classic or maybe a Ray Butts Ful-Fidelity, or if somebody wants a little bit more output, then maybe a PowerāTron. We do a lot of 3-pickup guitars, where you might have a SuperāTron in the bridge, and maybe a DynaSonic or a TV Jones T90 in the middle position. I love mixing pickups because it expands your tonal palette. We could get into the arguments about tone pots or tone switches. Iām not a big fan of the tone switch, but there is a place for them, and some people love āem, and it doesnāt matter to me when a customer order comes down. You get what you want. But most of the guitars that I come up with are going to have a tone pot. I do enjoy the no-load tone pots, so most of the time that toneās running wide open. Iām a big believer in trying to keep that signal path as short and as clean as possible. I had a Falcon order a few months ago where the customer wanted a blower switch for the bridge pickup. He also wanted a phase switch for the pickups, and coil taps for each pickup. It took me a couple days to map that out, but it was great fun! And Gretsch is kind of known for gadgetry throughout the years, and so to have all those switches.ā¦ To me, itās kind of like piloting the space shuttle, but weāll happily build whatever they want. I like the surprise orders. And tone is very subjective.ā
āYou donāt want to think about your instrument at all. You just want to be that instrument.ā
Given that, what does Henrichsen do when a buyer asks for a ācrunchyā sound, or something bright and biting? āI reach out to the customer and have a conversation, to say, āOkay, what is your idea of brightness or grittiness,ā or whatever adjective theyāre using, and try to narrow down as much as I can, so then I can offer suggestions about pickups. But thatās a tough one, so I try to talk it out and offer different options. We explain that, in our experience, if you use this pickup with this body style, this is the kind of sound that youāre going to get. Obviously if you want a really tight focused sound, a full-size hollowbody may not be your thing. All those little things factor in.
Henrichsen sands a neck in the Custom Shop, which he says looks very much like a small woodshop from decades past.
āIf I want that really open, big-sky sound, Iām going to go with a Falcon. But if I want something a little tighter, Iām probably going to go with a Jet and maybe even a center-block jet, to tighten it up even more. Iāve done some builds in the past where our Jets and Penguins, even though we call them solidbodies, have not been very solid. Theyāre highly chambered inside, and Iāve played with the floor of that chamberālessening the depthāto see how that changes the sound. Thatās part of the fun I have as a builderāplaying with those dimensions and seeing the results.ā
The endgame of all this, of course, is to create a great-playing and -sounding guitar. The key, says Henrichsen, is āattention to detail. That is one of the things Iām most proud of about the shop. All of us really are paying attention 100 percent of the time. Of course, we make mistakes; weāre human. When you are doing some of the run-of-the-mill operations, itās easy to let your mind wander and you think about, āOh, Iāve got to feed the dogs when I get home,ā or whatever. But we really try to be cognizant of that and get that tunnel vision, in a good way. With woodworking, if youāre not paying attention for half a second, things can go sideways, or you may miss a little hairline crack in that wood and it may rear its ugly head later on when youāre trying to put a finish on it. If every little piece that makes a final product is the best it can be, then that final product is going to be even greater.
āThe player can immediately recognize when the proper attention has been paid to details,ā he continues. āWe do a lot of binding over frets, for example, and when you have those fret ends nice and smooth, it feels comfortable. Things are balanced. The last thing you want as a player is distractions. You donāt want to think about your instrument at all. You just want to be that instrument. It needs to be a part of you, not something that youāre fighting. When the customer picks it up, and it just works and it feels great, and they have no complaints whatsoeverā¦. Thatās our end goal every time.ā
Join John Bohlinger as he goes inside the San Luis Obispo facility to see how these majestic machines are crafted with a mixture of delicate handwork and precise automation.
Led by Ernie Ball Music Man's Tomas von Engel, PG goes inside the SLO-based factory to see how this talented crew turns piles of wood into impeccable instruments.
The tour starts in the wood shop where Tomas explains EBMM process of grading and sorting tonewoods for opaque or translucent. He then discusses the struggles sourcing wood during the pandemic and how the company has been able to keep up with demand. After that we get introduced to Ernie Ball's first major machine "Big Bird" that takes the glued blanks and trims them down into bodies.
Following that scene we check out some of their beautiful quilted maple and buckeye burl tops. From there we check out how a neck-through Petrucci Majesty is cut into shape in less than 45 minutes. The next stop puts us into the neck carving location and fretboard area were frets are inserted and the radius is shaved down.
The final stops of the process breeze us through sanding, painting, buffing, setup, and final assembly. In under 20 minutes you'll witness the dedication, skill, and machines that make these impressive instruments.