The 10x acoustic electric GuitarViol
Demo encounters/shop tours by appointment in Valencia, CA.
[Above: TogaMan 10x acoustic-electric GuitarViol with Bosse Cedar outer layer top (vacuum resin infused with balsa, flax, and light carbon fiber cloth construction). Eye candy with benefits! It is all about sound and best playability!]
If Johann Stauffer (Vienna luthier who invented the Arpeggione in 1823) entered a time machine to the present, landed in a world of 21st century composites technology, Space X, and Ferrari, today’s Arpeggione might perhaps resemble the TogaMan 10x? In “Fits and Starts”, I attempted to give a satellite pan-out view of the lesser known history of the modern guitar’s bowed cousins over the last 5-6 centuries. One could speculate what time traveled Stauffer would think of the TogaMan 10x. I can tell you from personal narrative that this instrument was indeed influenced by Stauffer’s concepts and re imagined for our age. (Guilty as charged!) I am happy to report that the last 400 instruments out of my shop have been overwhelmingly (90% or more ) used by daily active Film/TV/Media composers since the dawn of the 21st century. (Trust me, you have heard them. A lot.). More to come!
So, why this new modern Ferrari meets Stradivari (GuitarViol) out of space age construction approaches? It began with my battle with wood and the elements! For roughly 30 years, I have been involved in rescuing entire retail inventories of high end guitars that fell victim to failed humidity maintenance systems during Santa Ana Seasons in Southern California. I have also been involved with the designing and construction of retail guitar humidor rooms. As my (unexpected) career as a maker of niche guitar formatted violas (TogaMan GuitarViols) took off, I had to deal with those realities as a builder. In southern California, those winter rainstorms followed by bone dry Santa Ana winds can crack not only existing fine wooden instruments, but also ones under construction! I ship instruments around the world and never want to see them again in my shop (*except on Instagram and soundtracks!). When the public is about as diligent at maintaining the proper 47% relative humidity for their (fragile wooden) instruments as they are at daily gum flossing, it really becomes problematic! It feels like maintaining relative humidity rooms (like cigar humidors) is about as insane is keeping the ocean off the beach with a push broom! (it’s never done and the tide always comes back in). Therefore, I have made it my mission to properly explore alternative materials that can take it! Anywhere in the world! The caveat is that it sounds, plays amazing, and inspires!
Don’t get me wrong, I love wood! (I use it strategically where it matters: the soundboard/top/speaker. Also hand carved quartersawn roasted maple bridge). However, I do not think that I have to prove that I can build instruments out of it after all these years and hundreds of them. I stopped the use of Rosewoods and Ebony (and many other endangered tropical woods) that are highly regulated and, in some cases, subject to seizure (and destruction) at some borders over CITES regulations. I am not a “Green washer”, but am allergic to many tropical woods and can not suffer working them with COPD in my family history. About a decade ago, I went over exclusively to North American woods (Spruce, Maple, Alder, Walnut). The most successful models were the Spartans which were natural finish Spruce/Maple/Alder constructed acoustic. In post 2019 times, the milling network and infrastructure (of colleagues and peers) I had before began to disappear. So, the time of the 10x has come! (Good thing I had much of the heavy lifting of tooling/molds prepared from the Fillmore 2015-2019 era!) I have been building some last random (wooden) Inspiration builds in creative ways to essentially “burn the ships” as well as put (metaphorical) short term coal into the steam engine of this voracious resource munching operation. Any subsequent wooden builds will be few (and at a premium). Not kidding.
So, why is it called the “10x?” It derives it’s (dubious) name from an unfortunate period I was reading Grant Cardone’s book The 10X Rule. The theme of the book was to take “massive action” and essentially “10x” everything. It was the age of “crush it” blowhard podcaster entrepreneur shows. (Yeah, I know. It is a good book though!). I was picking myself off the ground from a then recent brush with bureaucracy (LA city zoning/haters) and subsequent strained move of both home and (Fillmore, CA) shop (2015) to separate locations. By new years 2016, I commited to an ambitious “10X” project called the 10XBETACF and rallied early adopters (which, to my chagrin, I am still fulfilling!) What I thought would take 2 years of weekends and evenings (massive action?) outside of routine production took 6 + years of deep engineering, mold making, and, yes, AGAIN, escaping a city hall (Fillmore) shakedown - another unwelcome impediment - that lead to another November 2019 shop relocation). It became more of a Mt. Everest level climb and treacherous road with “10X” the amount of work and worry! (An ironic way to ultimately make the process infrastructure more efficient, repeatable, and maybe even future factory friendly?). At times, the journey felt like running up a playground slide, hitting a grease spot, and running up again from the bottom while juggling chainsaws. (Or, at least how Charlie Brown felt when Lucy yanked the ball every time he went to kick it). This stuff becomes less cute when you are in your mid-50’s. (COVID shakedown era notwithstanding). On the other hand, I do genuinely enjoy the engineering challenges and find the accomplichments satisfying! The ball is teed up with some solid engineering!
Ready, swing!!
So, here we are! Years of side-hustle (engineering, study, application) while juggling an already demanding build queue of proven routine models. (Seriously, people tend to highly underestimate the level of demand and why my backlog is so epic!! This is not the average guitar/violin manufacturing rodeo! Crafted; not produced). I have been essentially taking a manufacturing (delegation) resistant (impossible) instrument into a state of being at least repeatable in my own small space. (Another story). Will it ever scale up? Maybe. But, not by myself! Not without the right partner or massive capital action. Spoiler alert: I did not get into this to run a factory! I was simply developing an instrument for myself and became overwhelmed by the demand for an instrument that no one in the instrument making business understood. (Yes, there are some obtuse sea lions out there. Some ignorant though well meaning). The caveats were deliberate and precise; no compromise!
I welcome you to come by my Valencia CA laboratory for a hands-on demo (by appointment). Typical visiting hours are between 10AM to 4PM. (I dive til 5).
**This is a mini abridged version of content intended for an upcoming documentary/book effort in the not too distant future. Thanks for reading! Stay inspired! I will soon be publishing more free content and paywall deep-dives on the instrument making business as well as other ancillary topics (Music, art, food, wine country drives and other on the fly topics). Also, some podcast interviews with various artists, makers, producers, composers et al. Stay tuned!