My Blue Ridge Guitar

Can anything be done to save this guitar? It needs help, and help is on its way.

    Ever since I was 17 years old, I’ve had a guitar. I started out as a bass player. Arlyn Houzenga, Bob Edmunds, Cha McCue, and Steve Bailey created a little group. Bob and Cha taught me my first bass lines. We were a mishmash of late 50s and 60s music. The Ventures, Buddy Holly, Rolling Stones, and popular tunes of that period. We had a few gigs; no one showed up for them. Maybe a few did. But mostly we were going nowhere and we were going there fast.
     I had a Harmony bass guitar. The body was huge. Probably could have used it for a boat if I need to in an emergency. Wish I still had that guitar. Somehow, it left me, but I would soon get another one. None of them were really great guitars. I would go for long periods of time never picking it up. It sat on a stand, in the corner. It never complained wanting me to pick it up. The most enjoyable memories was when I would play for my two daughters at bed time.
     About 25 years ago I noticed that my acoustic guitar’s fretboard was worn. It was right on the “E” note on the D-string. Never could get chords to sound right. So, I went to my local second-hand guitar dealer and traded for a Blue Ridge acoustic. It was a beautiful guitar and the sound was full and rich. I had never heard of Blue Ridge. By the end of the month I realized that the $150 that I had paid for it was $150 too much. I traded a bad guitar for an equally bad guitar. The top was completely warped inward. The strength of the strings was completely caving in the beautiful top. I tried to put some strenghtening into the inner structure, but to no avail. It was just more than I could do. I was not a luthier and didn’t care to be one. So it went into case and remained there.
     So................this is a story about my Blue Ridge acoustic guitar. I tried to make it into a Resonator-type guitar. There I proved that I would have been a horrible luthier. One evening, my former neighbor, David Pietrzak, showed me a 3-stringed guitar that he had made from a cigar box. David is Director of the Aviation Program at Lincoln Land Community College. He has great experience working with metal. As I begin this story, you will see various instruments that he has made as well as bits of information about my Blue Ridge-Pietrzak Resonator. This story has been over 25 years in the making............and maybe it will be coming to a conclusion soon. Taking something worthless and making it into some beautiful is a great talent. 

Aircraft Grade Aluminum from Cessna Aircraft. It is a section cut out for a window in the fuselage. This is the new soundboard.

Here is the new sound board. Nicely shaped and ready for the next step.

Next: Part Two.......Some of David’s Cigar Box Guitars.