R.C. Allen

Holy serendipity, Batman!!!

My connection to Paul Bigsby gets one big step closer:

We had an unexpected guest at R-V today: R.C. Allen. Although I had heard his name in the past, I really only understood the man's story after reading Andy Babiuk's book, "The Story of Paul Bigsby: Father of the Modern Electric Solidbody Guitar." I've been referring to my copy on a near daily basis for information on the electric I'm building here at school. R.C. Allen is known in certain circles because of his unique relationship with Bigsby, who as I've mentioned in earlier posts, had a massive yet somewhat unsung impact on the development of the electric guitar. In a nutshell, Bigsby was the man who built the first "modern solidbody electric guitar." What I mean is that the instrument he designed and built for Merle Travis in 1948 was truly the first solidbody electric guitar built with a full size solid body and 6 inline tuner headstock. (see top photo) His design predates Fender's Telecaster (1949) and Gibson's Les Paul (1952). Even under casual inspection, you can see the obvious Bigsby influence in both of these other classic instruments.

R.C.'s claim to fame is that he owns Bigsby solidbody electric guitar #2, acquired from his uncle, George Grohs, in 1952. The "Grohs guitar" was actually the first of Bigsby's solidbody electric guitars to feature the now famous 6 inline tuner peghead shape (similar to the Fender Stratocaster). While the Bigsby/Travis guitar also had the 6 inline tuner setup, it originally was built with a large knob on the top side of the peg head (or headstock). Travis later had this shape changed when he saw the headstock of the Grohs guitar.

R.C. (a luthier himself) gave a short lecture on the instruments he has been building over the years and told us some stories of how he came to own the Bigsby/Grohs guitar as well as some anecdotes about his pals: Leo Fender, George Fullerton, Merle Travis, Joe Maphis and of course, Bigsby himself. Amazing stuff! The whole thing was made that much sweeter for me as I was given the opportunity to demo R.C.'s guitars for the class.

R.C. Allen looks at me and says, "Do you wanna plug this in?"

"Um... yes, please."

So I played three different instruments. The first was a Stromberg influenced archtop with a Johnny Smith style floating pickup. Instructor, Don Windham, with the guitar:

Me playing one of R.C.'s Bigsby replicas (note the headstock):

R.C. hung out at Bigsby's workshop throughout the 50's picking up different tips on guitar building. He has spent his whole life building, repairing and setting up guitars. Since R.C. was one of the few people Bigsby allowed in his shop to learn his techniques, playing one of his instruments might be the next best thing to an actual Bigsby. He even builds Bigsby replica pickups, an absolutely crucial component to the sound of an electric guitar. ($500 for a pair!)

Below, a closeup of R.C.'s Bigsby guitar with his hand made pickups. (Guitar Geeks note the aluminum compensated bridge and tremolo arm, two more of Bigsby's revolutionary innovations.)

A student, Paul Barnstable, with R.C.:

The guitar in the above photo is R.C.'s replica of Chet Atkins's 1950 D'Angelico Excel, which Mr. Guitar himself modified with a Bigsby pickup, a Gibson P 90 pickup and three way switch. It's tough to see in the photo, but the switch itself was simply mounted over the bottom F-hole...

The truly hair raising part of the day was when R.C. presented the class with some original Bigsby templates. These were the actual templates Paul Bigsby crafted and used to build his guitars in the late 40's and 50's. Below are templates for two guitar bodies, an armrest and the famous headstock:

Below is the actual template (as seen on page 49 of "The Story of Paul Bigsby") which became the standard Bigsby peg head. To me this is a fairly big deal: this was the headstock shape that first introduced the now industry standard 6 inline tuner layout. This shape is the basic idea Leo Fender incorporated into all his electric guitars. (In fact, Leo once borrowed Travis' Bigsby guitar for a week, dissected it and returned with a prototype that was to become the Telecaster.) The Bigsby peg head shape was to become world famous on virtually every Fender guitar or bass model. Fender's iconic instruments from the 50's and 60's are some of the most highly collectible guitars on the vintage market. I remember a Burgundy Mist Strat at Rudy's that clocked in around $125K. I'm not trying to take away anything from Leo, mind you; he certainly had his own ideas and introduced instruments that redefined what a guitar should be, not to mention pioneering the concept of well made, mass produced instruments. Leo might be compared to Henry Ford in terms of his assembly line approach to instrument manufacturing. His gift was the ability to examine something (such as the Bigsby/Travis guitar), and come up with his own version (the Telecaster) that sounded great, was affordable for the working musician and was easy to manufacture and repair. In contrast, Bigsby would take upwards of one month to build each of his custom guitars, taking pride in crafting each unique instrument... a far cry from the high volume factory that Leo developed.

R.C. told me the birdseye maple used in this particular template came from the same batch that Bigsby used to craft both the Travis and Grohs guitars. The Holy Grail indeed... shivers. Looking closely at one side of the headstock template, you can make out Bigsby's scribbled some notes, apparently a "to do" list for some guitar he was working on at the time.

So here's me, a novice luthier who is basing his first instrument on the Bigsby/Travis guitar. For R.C. Allen to come waltzing in one day, unannounced, out of the blue, never having visited our school before... well, you can imagine the goose bumps. Unbelievable.

And yes... I traced all those templates for future use.