Joe Till Guitars – Handmade Electric Guitars from Joe Till

September 27, 2008 · Posted in Joe Till Guitars · Comment

Joe Till’s whole thing is to take a great piece of wood and see how nice of a guitar he can make out of it. Twelve years and 150 guitars later, He has developed an understanding of the instrument that gives him the confidence to offer them to buyers from around the world.

Joe tries to give his guitars the widest range of tones possible. Through creative switching and the right set of pickups, Joe’s guitars can cover all the bases. Warm, fat, buttery, twangy, spanky, jangly, snarly… And when you add piezo pickups to the mix you get all those acoustic adjectives, as well.

Joe Till currently offer two different models which can be modified endlessly. The TG-100 “Solo” and the TG-250 “Lady on the Beach”. Besides their shapes, the major difference between them is their scale lengths. The Solo is built around the ultra-fast 24 3/4 inch scale (think Gibson) and the TG-250 comes standard with a Fenderesque 25 1/2 inch scale. The Lady can also be ordered with shorter or longer scales.

Joe Till Guitars are completely handmade. Joe uses a few power tools like a bandsaw, routers and sanders. But nothing more technologically advanced than what you might have found in Leo’s shop in the late forties. The handwork is emmence. Handsawing, carving, shaping. And hours and hours of hand sanding. I’ve estimated that my hands run back and forth across the top of a guitar about 90,000 times. That’s 3 sanding strokes a minute for 8 hours. Then there’s the neck, the back. Double that for the 9 coats of lacquer.

It’s shameful the way some of these guys toss around the word “handmade” anymore. Swishing around some 220 grit sandpaper after a robot spits out a nearly complete guitar does not qualify as a handmade guitar in my book.

To learn more about Joe Till’s Handmade Guitars, visit the Joe Till Guitars website at:
Joe Till Guitars