After almost two decades at Fender, where as a master builder his guitars reached the hands of the rock elite, Carlos Lopez split to start Castedosa, a family business built around a high-end baritone.
“I’m not gonna follow you, you’re gonna follow me.” As soon as I hear these words, I realize this is Carlos Lopez’s ethos. Throughout his career, the Souther California-based luthier has forged his own path, landing a job at Fender at a young age, soon moving into the custom shop, and rising to prominence as one of the company’s elite master builders. But in 2021, he took a big leap when he left that position—which many of his former colleagues hold for decades—and with his wife, Stephanie, started their family guitar company, Castedosa. Maybe bigger still: Their flagship model? An electric baritone built to command top dollar.
“When people are doing the same thing, I’m gonna do something different. I’ve always had that,” Lopez says, adding “nobody’s doing a high-end baritone.” Inspired by low-end-loving guitarists like Mark Lettieri and Ariel Posen, he saw the instrument as his way to set his new company apart.
It was a bold move, but as Lopez tells it, that’s his style.
Growing up in ’90s East Los Angeles, Lopez felt like he was living near the heart of guitar culture. He witnessed plenty of players ripping at backyard barbecues and was inspired to pick up the instrument. Soon, he was learning Santana songs and reading about Steve Vai and Joe Satriani in guitar magazines, which, along with tales of onetime local-legend Eddie Van Halen that circulated the area, fueled his musical fire. When college approached, Lopez sought a way to be a part of the guitar community, but not as a player. With the encouragement of his mother, he enrolled at Musicians Institute to be a guitar tech.“When people are doing the same thing, I’m gonna do something different. I’ve always had that.”
Upon graduation, one of Lopez’s teachers told him about some job openings on Fender’s assembly line. “I got a job real quick,” he remembers. “The Highway Ones were on the line when I started.” Lopez found something familiar as his passion for guitar-building grew. “I felt real comfortable. All the people that worked there were primarily Latino and Hispanic and were the age of my mom and my aunts. It was a home and it felt like that.”
The foundation of Lopez’s work is his ability to blend classic design into new forms, as seen in this 3511 Lobo.
Photo by Nick Millevoi
He didn’t stay on the line for long, and Lopez says his “false sense of arrogance” gave him the confidence to go for exactly what he wanted. “I’ve always had kind of a chip on my shoulder because of where I grew up,” which he calls “kind of a rough neighborhood.” So, not long into his tenure at Fender, “I went to the director of the custom shop, I showed him my shitty guitar that I made [in school], and said, ‘I should be in the custom shop.’ Within a year, I started working in the team-built custom shop.”
Now on the inside of the “secret lair” where “some of the best builders in the world” were creating high-end Fenders, Lopez remembers that he took advantage of his access, picking the brains of his co-workers at each stage of building, rotating his way through all the positions in the shop, and soaking up as much knowledge as he could.
At the same time, Lopez was active at home, where he’d set up his own workshop in his living room. When he left Fender for the day, the journeyman builder would go home and get back to work doing repairs for local musicians or building his own guitars. “I was always hustling,” he recalls.
After about 13 or 14 years at Fender, a position in the prestigious Masterbuilt shop opened up, and Lopez recalls he was an easy fit. During his time working as apprentice to Todd Krause in the team-built shop, Lopez created instruments for top-level players that include Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Robbie Robertson, and it gave him the confidence to take on the master-builder position and flex his creativity.
“Everybody has their thing. You have to create your own name for yourself.”
“Everybody has their thing,” Lopez says of the Masterbuilt team. “You have to create your own name for yourself.” Lopez saw his ‘thing’ not in the shape of a Strat or Tele, but in the oddball Marauder and Electric XII. “They’re forgotten, so I found something that could separate me, so that was the first thing I did. I knew there was a cool story there.” Auspiciously, he also created the Fender Brawler Baritone model.
Former Chili Pepper and freelance guitarist Josh Klinghoffer has been a supporter of Lopez’s since his Fender days. He got so stoked by his Conchers Baritones that he bought a round of them for his Pearl Jam bandmates.
Photo courtesy of Castedosa Guitars
If you’ve never handled one of Lopez’s Fenders—I haven’t either—YouTube is going to have to suffice. There’s a video of former Chili Pepper and freelance guitarist extraordinaire Josh Klinghoffer ripping the extreme double-neck Marauder/Electric XII beast that Lopez built in 2021. (While taping his demo, Klinghoffer fell so in love with the guitar that he eventually snatched it up for himself when it popped up on Reverb.) If you’re the type of person to get into oddball builds, this is as good an initiation in Lopez’s world as it gets. From there, dive into Carlos’ Instagram feed and have at it. (Good luck.)
As tony as the master-builder job sounds to those of us on the outside, it wasn’t long until Lopez was looking beyond the company. Spurred by a series of close personal losses during the pandemic, Lopez began thinking about his own legacy. Ultimately, he explains, feeling like he wanted to create something of his own and for his family, he left Fender in 2021, and started the family business.
“I need it to be where it’s recognizable but different.”
The foundation of Castedosa—a word that is a combination of letters from Carlos, Stephanie, and their two children’s names—is Lopez’s aesthetic, which by 2021 was well documented in his eclectic and eye-catching creations at Fender. Lopez is one of just a small cadre of boutique builders working today whose designs evoke the timeless feel of classic models and manage to create something that is entirely fresh, innovating within familiar forms. Castedosa’s debut model, the Conchers Baritone, offers an alternate history of baritone guitar, setting a new, high-level standard of building and design. “I need it to be where it’s recognizable but different,” Lopez says. “That’s the goal of the shape. But when you play it, it’s different.”
At Central New Jersey’s Relic Music, a dealer specializing in boutique builders, high-end and hard-to-find brands, and vintage instruments, I had the opportunity to play a Conchers Baritone. (While it wasn’t for sale, Relic’s owner, Mike Nicosia, hooked it up for PG and called in a favor to guitarist Scott Rieger, who purchased the guitar.)
I’ve been looking at photos of Castedosa baritones since they first hit Instagram, and visually, the body style, the finish, the knobs, the headstock design, the entire instrument surpassed my expectations in three dimensions. Upon picking up the guitar, the first thing that caught my attention was the roasted maple neck with rosewood fretboard, which boasts a 1.725" nut width. With a 27" scale length, it’s a substantial instrument. But after a few warmup licks to get a handle on the feel, I recognized the significant V-shaped profile in the lower frets made it easy to navigate and even encouraged longer reaches, gently softening as I made my way up the neck. Somehow, this long bari felt easier to handle than most standard 6-strings.The Conchers Baritone played for this piece was responsive, resonant, and hard to put down.
Photo by Nick Millevoi
As I sat with the Conchers, I pulled out all my bari-guitar tricks, from delicately plucked arpeggios and faux-Ennio Morricone melodies—meant to coax the twang out of the low strings—to quick, articulated lines that cross strings, extension-heavy chords across the range of the neck, and brute power chording. I was rewarded at each approach as I got to know this responsive, resonant instrument, which sits in a class with some of the finest luthier-built guitars I’ve laid my hands on. (It’s worth mentioning here that Lopez did tell me, “I hate calling myself a luthier, I hate putting titles on things.”)
I was struck by the warm, even voice of Castedosa’s in-house mini-humbuckers. Not entirely unlike a PAF—and visually way cool—they are major contributors to the new-classic vibe of the Conchers. “I did a lot of [research and development] on the pickups—they need to be right. The mini-hums that I did just sounded great,” says Lopez. And once he dialed in the design, he trained Stephanie how to wind them. (She’d never worked in guitar building before, but he says that immediately “she just had the feel. She’s a natural.”) Paired with a Hiwatt Custom 20 head and Hiwatt 1x12 cab loaded with a Fane Purpleback, plus a little reverb from a Mr. Black Supermoon, the bari simply sang. Simply put, I could have written an entire record around the Conchers right there in Relic’s showroom.
Some two-plus years into the company, it’s early to gauge Castedosa’s mark. But it’s obvious the Lopezes have made a strong start.
“Carlos is revolutionizing the use of baritones in music.” —Josh Klinghoffer
“Anything that I saw out of the Masterbuilt shop that I really dug has had Carlos’ name attached to it,” says Nicosia. “What I love about Carlos is there is zero compromise anywhere. He’s building the guitars he wants to build and doing it from an inspired place.” Relic’s customers, he points out, have noticed as well.
With Lopez’s Masterbuilt pedigree, notable players were bound to follow, and some have been especially quick to get hip. Posen and My Chemical Romance’s Frank Iero are early adopters, and Lopez cites Klinghoffer as a big supporter. “Everything I needed to know about him was communicated by the fact that he decided to be the guy that starts making Marauders,” says Klinghoffer, who first purchased one of his Fender Marauders, followed by an Electric XII. Then, he says, “I just saved a ‘Carlos Lopez’ search on Reverb.”
When Lopez left Fender, Klinghoffer was struck by the “enormously heartwarming story” of the Lopez family business and he bought Conchers Baritone #3. “I fell in love with that thing instantly. There were baritones on the market, and they were fine and serviceable, but they weren’t sexy. Carlos is revolutionizing the use of baritones in music. Finally having a really well done, well-conceived, beautiful instrument in front of you, how could you not be inspired?”
In the shape of a T-style—in this case a double-humbucker Marianna—Lopez’s aesthetic shines.
Photo courtesy of Castedosa Guitars
Klinghoffer also eventually purchased #13 and #33. Then, following his 2022 tour with Pearl Jam, he purchased a Conchers Baritone for each member of the band. “I can show this person and this business this kind of support and show gratitude to my new home, my new band,” he says. “It all comes down to my love of guitars, Carlos’ love of guitars, all five guys in Pearl Jam’s love of guitars.” For about a year, he adds, Mike McCready sent him a video every month or so of his Conchers Baritone in action.
The guitarist is certainly helping get the Castedosa name out there. (In addition to the Pearl Jam guitars, he purchased a few more as gifts to fill out what he thinks is the entire lot of serial numbers in the 50s.) And with six models now in the catalog—Conchers Baritone; Conchers Standard; the Marianna, Lopez’s take on a T-style; the monstrous double-neck baritone/12-string; the semi-hollow 3511 Lobo; and a short-scale bass—Castedosa seems to have hit its stride. Apprentice Connor Moore also left Fender to join the team, and more models are on the way.
In each Castedosa build, it’s obvious that Lopez enjoys poring over the details, from the obvious aesthetic elements, like body, headstock shape, and finish, to sonic touches, like pickup design. He even mentions approaching his fret ends with a signature flourish—“You’ll see what I mean when you play one,” he tells me. I immediately did. They’re rounded with a distinctive ball-like end that make for a smooth playing experience and sleek look.
And the builder wants to keep his head in the details. He isn’t looking to scale up too much and take over the world. Instead, he plans to stick with the market he knows and build what he wants to build, which will keep Castedosa in the high-end lane.
“I just want to make something special and unique and live in that world,” he says. “I like being in the shadows, being in the limited-quantity, sought-after market, and I want to continue doing what I’m doing.”
YouTube It
Klinghoffer puts a Conchers Baritone with built-in fuzz circuit through a thorough and thrilling sonic evaluation.
Tour Gretsch’s Corona, California, custom guitar building operation with company master builder Chad Henrichsen and PG’s own John Bohlinger.
“We get a lot done in a small amount of space, but this is where it all happens,” Henrichsen says. It starts with the wood—mahogany, maple, and spruce body blanks; mahogany and maple neck blanks; rosewood for fretboards—and so does our tour. It also begins, of course, with specific orders from dealers, artists, and individual players, commissioning instruments."
Henrichsen describes Gretsch's process of making hollow- and semi-hollowbody guitars first, which uses pressure and heat to form tops and sides from wood laminate. The plant also uses old-school craftsmanship—a copy carver, for example—to cut wood tops and more to shape.
One of Henrichsen’s fortes is necks, so he explains the process of creating necks for Falcons, Duo Jets, 6120s, etc., in detail, and we see the neck shaper machine in operation. The evolution from wooden block to smooth, finished neck is fascinating! And some of the machinery, jigs, and other tools are older than your Uncle Billy. After inlays comes binding—gold sparkle for a Penguin, white for a Duo Jet, for example. And, by the way, all work in the Custom Shop is done by hand.
Master builder Gonzalo Madrigal makes a cameo to explain the step-by-step process of fitting a guitar’s neck to its body. The example here is one of the super-colorful, intergalactically shaped Billy-Bo models—half Diddley and half Gibbons. Madrigal also displays the process of setting a tortoise shell binding in place—a method that takes about 45 minutes overall, and then must sit to set.
In the final assembly department, we see a 12-string Country Gentleman turning to life—tuners, bridge, electronics, tailpieces and everything else comes home to roost. The grand finale? Dig a killer 3-pickup Penguin in a black paisley finish with Super’Trons, cats-eye f-holes, and a Bigsby. It’s gorgeous! And, in a sense, the culmination of Gretsch’s 140-year history of craftsmanship.
Following a long road from Saskatchewan to California, this master builder lands in Corona, to painstakingly reproduce Jerry Garcia’s “Alligator’ and other gems.
Like everything in the Grateful Dead’s orbit, each of Jerry Garcia’s stage guitars has been pored over by Deadheads, with data on their usage rivalling baseball-stat-level analysis. Dedicated fans can hear the differences between each of these iconic instruments—not just because of their tones, but in the type of music and playing they inspired. So, it’s only natural that each 6-string has its own subset of fans. Some love to hear and see Wolf and Tiger—custom instruments built by Doug Irwin, both of which have their own merch, including T-shirts, hats, and miniature replicas. And some prefer Garcia’s deep-cut Travis Bean era. A large cadre of others prefer Alligator, the Stratocaster that Graham Nash gave to Garcia as the Dead embraced cleaner, country- and folk-inspired sounds.
Oddly enough, until now, some of the finer details about Alligator and its extensive modifications remained improbably unknown. A quick visual inspection will catch the brass control plate and unique bridge assembly, and maybe even the brass nut. The details of what lies inside, however, have been less reported. So, when Fender set out to create a Custom Shop Jerry Garcia Alligator Stratocaster, master builder Austin MacNutt took on the monumental task of analyzing the finest nuances of the original in order to painstakingly recreate each and every one.
Master builder Austin MacNutt joined the Fender Custom Shop team in March 2022.
Photo by Han-Su Kim
When he took on the project, MacNutt was already familiar with Alligator and some of its unique attributes. “I’ve seen pictures of it,” he says, “but not detailed shots. There’s not a lot of great pictures of it from back in the day.” MacNutt was given one day to spend with the guitar and collect all the necessary data. “That day when we brought it in,” he recalls, “we opened it, and the room was just silent—everyone taking it in for a good minute or two before anyone even touched it. We pulled it out, put it on the table, and started taking it apart. To get to disassemble it is such an honor.”
MacNutt knew he had his work cut out for him. “There’s a lot of strange stuff on it,” he says. “It’s one of a kind, for sure. It was definitely a work in progress, like a test bed, where they’re trying out different things.” He took extensive notes and photos on everything from the guitar’s boost circuit and the unique metal bar that serves as a string retainer, to more refined details, like the scalloping on the brass nut and unique hammer-pattern on the control plate. “I was writing down how thick this thing is, what size this screw is, how long is this screw,” he explains. Surprisingly, when he disconnected the neck joint, MacNutt discovered that Alligator—believed to be a 1957 Strat—was actually assembled by ground-floor Fender employee Tadeo Gomez back in 1955.
“That day when we brought it in, we opened it, and the room was just silent—everyone taking it in for a good minute or two before anyone even touched it.”
Over the course of a couple months, MacNutt set about creating a prototype for a limited edition run of instruments. When we talked in mid-November, the production of those guitars was under way, and MacNutt sat at his computer with a rack of six in-progress Alligator builds behind him. When MacNutt talks about the process, his face lights up. It’s not lost on him that the Alligator model is a full-circle project with deep personal roots.
Growing up in a musical family in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, both of MacNutt’s parents played country music. His older brother is also a guitarist and helped Austin find his way to classic rock when he got started playing around the age of 11. While MacNutt’s first guitar was a Hondo Paul Dean II, it wasn’t the Loverboy guitarist’s signature model that really inspired him. It was his dad’s 1963 Fender Jaguar that was often laying around the house. He says he felt that the Jaguar was special even before he started playing.
MacNutt’s first build was a Tele copy with a Jerry Garcia-style flourish. Here, he works on an actual Fender Telecaster.
Photo by Han-Su Kim
“My dad tinkered on his stuff a lot,” he reminisces. “He worked in a music store. When I was real little, I have faint memories of being in the basement where all the parts are. It was always fascinating to me.” Austin took to tinkering at a young age and, after high school, he decided to attend the Guitar Craft Academy in Hollywood.
During the program, he built his first guitar, a Telecaster-style instrument with some auspicious modifications. He explains, “The bottom horn was kind of like some of Jerry Garcia’s Alembic builds, with the little thumb. Three P-90s, a wraparound bridge, the big Strat headstock on it, ebony build with no face dots. It was a lot of weird stuff. A lot of times, people’s first guitars are filled with strange choices.”
The folks at the Guitar Craft Academy must have noticed something special in Austin’s work, because once he finished the program, they offered him a job. “Before, I was working at a grocery store, saving up money to go there, and I didn’t know what I was gonna do next,” he explains. “At the end of it—honestly, I wasn’t even sure I was gonna stay in L.A.—they offered me a job.”
The painstakingly detailed Custom Shop Jerry Garcia Alligator Stratocaster prototype.
Photo by Han-Su Kim
He found teaching to be a great experience. “It was a perfect opportunity,” he says with a warm, appreciative tone. “Not only did I get to work there, I kind of got to continue my education by continuing to keep the rate at which I was doing all that stuff up.” But that wasn’t the only opportunity that came from working at the Academy.
“We brought Ron Thorn [of L.A.’s Thorn Custom Guitars] in for a day, and he’d go over inlay work—he’s a master of inlay,” he says of the esteemed luthier. The two hit it off and Thorn invited the up-and-comer to join him at his shop. Starting first as a part-time employee, MacNutt eventually moved on after five years of teaching to join Thorn Custom Guitars full time. In the small, dedicated shop, MacNutt gained loads of new experience. “I was resawing wood, fretting, truing boards, picking the wood, gluing body blanks, whatever needed to get done,” he says. “I got to learn a lot of skills under the whole umbrella of guitar building.”
But in 2018, Ron Thorn took a job at Fender and closed his shop. MacNutt moved on to Xotic and also began running his own shop, where he focused on repair work. Along the way, he stayed in touch with his old boss. And when there was a position available in the shop, Thorn gave him a call. “I jumped at the chance,” MacNutt says.
“A lot of times, people’s first guitars are filled with strange choices.”
Last March, MacNutt joined Fender as a master builder and says there have been “whirlwind aspects of it, definitely diving in and just getting the lay of the land.” It’s not lost on him that, like many builders, his first build was a Telecaster copy, and now he gets to build the real thing. “The first one I put my signature on the back of the headstock,” he says, “I had to sit and look at it for a little bit, taking it in.”
By the time we spoke, about eight months later, MacNutt estimated he’d built about 100 Fenders. In the shop, he spends his days bouncing between various builds and says he gets to work on a nice variety of instruments. “It’s a good mix between spec pieces—things I want to build—and something a customer or a dealer has ordered,” he points out.
His favorite spec piece so far was a special one: a copy of his dad’s ’63 Jaguar. “I pitched it to a dealer, and they loved it,” he enthuses, “and they wanted me to go ahead and do it. I had my dad take pictures and send them to me. Nobody else knows that guitar, but it was special to be able to do that.” He adds that it was weird to play a copy of the guitar he’s admired for his entire life. “There’s a few paint chips on the back that I remember noticing when I was a kid. To see the paint chips on there, they’re strange.”
MacNutt and longtime Grateful Dead crewmember Steve Parish take a close look at the Alligator prototype.
Photo by Han-Su Kim
The Alligator project drew on the same inspired, detail-oriented skills. “When that opportunity came up, I knew the guitar,” he exclaims. “Ron pitched it to me, and immediately, I was on board.” While MacNutt was the expert on his dad’s Jaguar, he turned to former Grateful Dead crew member Steve Parish—who made some of the guitar’s modifications—to give his Alligator prototype an enthusiastic thumbs up (and there’s a video to prove it).
Re-creating the iconic Alligator has a unique angle. “To see a vintage Strat like that heavily modified, you’d never see that now,” he says, shaking his head. “But in the early ’70s, it was just an old guitar—‘Let’s hack it up, let’s customize it.’” And reproducing his reproduction is another endeavor. “Up until this point,” he says, “I’ve been building different guitars, and I relic them however I want them to look. Whereas with these, I’ve got a template that I stick to. That’s been a new experience. It’s fun the whole way through.”
Looking ahead, MacNutt sees a lot of builds in his future and is plotting out some new spec pieces. But he feels like the Alligator will loom large for quite some time. “I know that guitar pretty well at this point. I’ll come across a picture of it on a random Instagram post now, and it’s like, ‘Hey, there it is!’ It feels strangely like a part of me now.”