Workshop: Waghorn Guitars
This month, we’re heading west to seek out a builder whose diverse customers include some of the bright lights of the tech metal and prog markets – and get to meet one of his more illustrious signature artists…
tucked away in the backstreets of Bristol, away from the tourist thrum and bustle on the city’s main highways and byways, you’ll find Tom Waghorn’s workshop. Neat, compact and festooned with instruments in all stages of completion, the apparent calm is in direct contrast to the fact that Tom Waghorn’s order book has rarely been so full. Manufacturing instruments that range from classically designed electrics through to customers’ slightly more unconventional fantasy models, Tom’s workshop turns out just about everything you can strum, pick or pluck. His guitars are used by a broad spectrum of players, although he has noticed that tech metal and prog musicians in particular are fans of his work. “A big part of our customer base is the tech metal genre and djent – there are so many genres,” he tells us. “But mainly metal and through to prog. We’re also doing guitars in a classic style and we’ve still got a good order book for acoustics. I’ve always felt I wanted to do anything and everything, there’s no particular style that I feel like I wanted to cling to. Companies like Gibson or Ibanez make everything, and I’ve always looked at those and thought it’s a great formula.”
One of Tom’s high-profile customers is Alex Hutchings from modern-prog star Steven Wilson’s current band. Alex’s instruments are currently back at the workshop for a mid-tour service and set-up. His custom-designed guitars are among the most demanding Waghorn has taken on and so we were pleased to talk to the guitarist himself when he visited during our interview (see page 130).
But for now, we’re interested in where it all started for Tom. What was it that made him turn his hand to the luthier’s art? “I actually fell into it by accident,” he confesses. “I went to art college, thinking I was going to be doing some form of art, like graphics or fine art, got disenchanted with it, took a year out and got a job at Hobgoblin Music on [Bristol’s] College Green as their guitar salesperson. I met their repairer, who also made mandolinfamily instruments, banjos, guitars – a guy called Phil Davidson – and the day I went to his workshop and had a bunch of instruments for repair, it was an instant, ‘Wow. That’s what I want to do’. So I expressed my interest to the manager of the shop at the time and she said, ‘Yes, let’s ask him if he’ll teach you’. He was up for the idea, he was kinda getting sick of all the repairs we were bringing him anyway, and so I was working in the shop four days a week and then doing a day at his workshop – that’s how it started.”
Fledgling Maker
During these regular visits to Phil Davidson’s workshop, Tom’s skills as a repairer began to flourish. But it wasn’t until he turned up empty-handed that he tried his hand at making an instrument from scratch. “I turned up at his workshop one day without any work,” Tom says. “I wanted to go anyway, and he said, ‘What work have you got?’ I said, ‘Nothing’ and he said, ‘Well, how do you feel about building something?’ I thought that was way beyond my capabilities at the time, but my first project was a travel guitar, which was really overcomplicated – I should have gone for something straightforward. I had to design it, make the mould… It took me a very long time before I actually built the instrument and then it didn’t really work
“My first project was a travel guitar, which was really overcomplicated – and it didn’t work out”
out. There were a lot of design faults with it and to this day I haven’t finished it!”
So what came next? Did he take on something that posed less of a challenge? “I actually moved on to a dreadnought acoustic, that was the first guitar I ended up finishing, and then I moved on to a couple of classical-sized steel strings after that. I probably built a handful of instruments before I decided I’d quite like to go into business for myself. At the time we were talking about the shop having a workshop that we could start building and repairing instruments from. But that didn’t happen and I was getting more and more itchy – I had the bug and I just wanted to get out there and do it. So I went into business in early 2000 making mandolinfamily instruments for Hobgoblin Music initially and that’s what gave me the leap into the job.”
Electric Power
To begin with, Tom was making acoustic instruments. We asked him what spurred him on into building solidbody electric guitars? “Well initially it was just acoustic instruments,” he says. “But I’ve always played electric, so that was something I loved anyway. I sold my electric, vowing to make myself one – and didn’t! – but did a few designs a bit like the Ibanez Artist style, what we call our double-cut, that was my first design. Then it wasn’t until after 2008 that we got stuck into designing more modern shapes that were properly ours.”
As we’ve mentioned, the Waghorn workshop is awash with all manner of instruments – including an oversized SG-type model. “The customer’s very tall,” Tom tells us. “He loves that style, but a regular SG-shape was much too small for him and so we’ve super-sized it.” This made us curious about what other things his customers have asked for. “It’s a tricky one because we offer everything and customers find it quite hard to choose when the list is infinite. So they can either choose our shapes or we can modify our shapes or
“It wasn’t until after 2008 that we got into designing more modern shapes that were properly ours”
we’ll take a classic shape and modify that, if they like. We tend to put our own twist on things, but it’s ergonomics, playability and aesthetics all rolled into one, really.”
What was the most challenging build he’s taken on? “I’ve got to say Alex’s guitars are up there because he was quite a demanding customer,” Tom laughs. “Very particular about his action, his sound, the ergonomics, the way he plays, the access, the way it sits on a strap – all of those things were quite a task to get right. The prototype wasn’t quite right, so we built on that and came up with his current model. So that took some time and process to get to where it is now.”
With so many physical attributes to get right, Tom shares what proved to be problematic during the build: “The extreme droptop… it’s way bigger than standard, which does pose some issues. Bending a piece of maple like that is tricky! The comfort thing for Alex is key, he wants to feel like there’s nothing getting in his way. The problem he’s had with so many guitars is that the bottom horn is in the wrong place, it doesn’t sit on the strap properly, the arm chamfer is not comfortable enough, access to the 24th fret – the prototype had 26, but we realised that squeezed up the pickups a little too far and, therefore, tonally it wasn’t the greatest idea.”
Tom tells us that some of his customers’ designs can cause him further dilemmas when trying to decipher their somewhat primitive drawings and turn them into fully fledged guitars. “It’s never a big problem, but obviously there can be some very rough scribbles. It’s quite funny, but we do have to redesign them with all the correct dimensions and realise it into a proper playing instrument. But it’s all part of the fun of what we do.”
And, after years of realising other people’s dreams, does he still enjoy his work? “It’s hard work and there’s always stress involved when you’re running a business, but I always look forward to working on things. I still get those days where I come in and think, ‘Right, let’s get started!’ www.waghornguitars.com
“We redesign the scribbles with all the correct dimensions and realise it into a proper instrument”