Sully's guitar garage.

[tonemonster]

Sully, you havent updated us in a while..... you got any sawdust flyin' over there?? any fumes in that paint booth? any fret filings on the floor? what you workin' on???

[veemagic]

Oooh good call! It has been awhile.

[sully]

Lots and lots and lots, actually. I do a pretty good job of keeping the site (as well as the fb page) updated with new pix, so check it out! That said, here is what I’ve got going on at the moment (in order of what should be completed first). I’ve added some pix, but they’re not the most recent ones

Bolt on Swamp Ash Catfish (S-style), reversed head, ebony board, stainless steel jumbo frets, gonna have 3 lil’ 59s with a coil split and a brass hardtail bridge


Bolt on Alder 624, one hum, Floyd, regular head, ebony board, slash inlays, stainless steel jumbo frets


Neck thru Galaxy V, quilt top, Floyd, Alder wings, EMGs, kill switch, black/white binding, split V block inlays, stainless steel jumbo frets, new “Aero” headstock (which may or may not continue).

Neck thru Galaxy V, 3pc maple center, poplar wings, reversed headstock, rosewood board, stainless steel medium jumbo frets, one hum, V-trem (may do a wilkinson, but we’ll see). This one is meant to be a stripped down version, and I have a really cool paint idea for this.



Bolt on 624, Honduran mahogany body, direct mount SD blackouts, brass hardtail bridge, oiled finish, maple neck, 24 fret ebony board, Aero headstock (body is shaped and contoured. Construction will resume after the first two guitars are completed)

Bolt on Raven, Spanish Cedar body, 3pc maple neck, bound ebony board, bound ebony headplate, stainless steel jumbo frets. Will have a Floyd, but not sure if I’ll go one hum or two, or what color it’ll be. Since it’s not a customer order, it can sit.

Sully ’71 prototype (LP style, but a little pointy).

I get the "when are you gonna do a new video?" question more and more, so I answered it on the "Dear Sully" blog on my site. I've pasted it below.

I’ve tried to write a brief answer for you, but clearly you already know my penchant for yammering on. So with that in mind…..

The videos have been a lot of fun to do, but while I’ve been filming these things and sharing over the years, my main purpose has been to get a guitar company established. I noticed when I did those two fretting videos that it killed an entire weekend. That was kind of an eye opener. Shooting all of it, trying to sound relatively coherent, trying to make it somewhat entertaining, and editing it all later takes a lot of time; time that quite frankly, needs to be spent on completing customer orders. Since I don’t build guitars full time, I have very limited time available, and I need to spend it more wisely.

I’ve been meaning to do a brief update of what I’ve been doing, and will probably get around to it, but I don’t foresee more than a couple of quick hits here and there over the next few months, and possibly going forward. I hate saying that, because let’s face it, those videos have helped me a lot and I’m super aware of that. I’m happy that anyone finds them useful or at least mildly entertaining, and I’m incredibly grateful for that. On the other hand, I’ve stopped accepting any new guitar builds at least until October of this year so that I can finish the orders that I have now, and complete a couple more prototypes.Thankfully. I’ve got some things in place to add some automation, so hopefully I won’t need to stop taking orders for long periods of time in the future.

There are a few more things going on (building necks for later use, etc), but as mentioned, the site www.sullyguitars.us and the facebook page http://www.facebook.com/sullyguitars

Sully

[Gartron]

Although I totally understand why you are not doing the videos at the moment, I really enjoyed them...,many a Sunday afternoon was spent watching them!!

good luck with everything!!

[sully]

Thanks man. I'll probably do a couple of quick hits here and there. I'll try to post a little something soon.

[Hellbat]

You need a video guy to do all the editing and stuff for you so that you just spend a bit of time on the shoots. This would all be so much easier if you were just ridiculously wealthy and could hire help...

[sully]

Agree 100%!

[surfreak]

How hard is it on your tools to work on stainless steel frets?

[sully]

I'm trying a few different tools to decide which ones I like best; last weekend, I put my Dremel in a jig and put a grinding wheel in and used it to handle the undercutting of frets, and that really sped things up instead of tying to use cutters on them. Leveling takes a bit longer, but if you bend the wire to match the fretboard radius, they seat much better than overbending them. Then, there's less leveling involved. There's a guy in Japan who wants me to endorse his fretting tools, and he's kinda working on some things that he wants me to try. So we'll see how that goes.

I'm not sure that answers you, but I'm still looking for cutters that will hold up a bit better; my stewmac end nippers are pretty chewed up, for sure. I like using SS wire, but I'd say that overall, they're the hardest on my hands than anything else; cutting the jumbo wire tires you out, for sure. The thinner frets are easier, tho.

Sully

[markD]

i really like that 3+3 pointy head!!!

[sully]

Thanks! I designed it 8 years ago and never got around to using it for anything. But since the Broderick soloist has some similarities, I'm not sure that I'll be using it much more. Granted, if you put them next to each other, you can see the differences, but I try really hard to stay off of the radar of the headstock police.

[veemagic]

Sully, as always, great job my man! Ilove your classic headstock, the 3x3 is cool too, but your in-line hook is awesome, and it looks freakin fantastic reversed!

[sully]

Thank you!

[markD]

yeah, i hear you on the radar thing. that's gotta be the hardest part of being a small builder....

i, too, like your reverse standard headstock. i would LOVE to order a FB with that reverse head....i just gotta stop buying production guitars!!!

[tonemonster]

I think you should call your headstock the "harpoon" shape. it kinda resembles a harpoon hook. you know, they have hockey stick, gumby, bookend, pointy, all those shapes, well I think you should officially call yours the "harpoon headstock".