Building a melody

The band Phish has always had a huge influence on Jacob Montague's life. Montague, a Trinity freshman, cites the group as not only one of his favorite bands, but also one of the biggest influences behind his latest creation: a handmade electric guitar.

“I wanted a guitar that was a cross between a Paul Reid Smith and Trey Anastasio [lead singer of Phish]'s guitar,” said Montague as he quietly fiddled around with the feedback on the newly finished guitar.

Because a custom guitar can cost up to several thousand dollars, most people would just daydream about this kind of creation. Not Montague though. He had already had some past experience with guitar-building, having built two acoustic guitars during his senior year of high school.

“Since I had already built acoustics, I pretty much knew how to build [an electric] guitar. Plus,” he added with a half-grin,” I thought it would be cool.”

Yet while he did have ambition and experience, this was a project that couldn’t have been completed without the help of the Internet. “I screwed around at first and used the Internet to research and figure out what I was doing,” said Montague. “I bought most of the materials online. When I had a problem, I looked it up online.”

Montague admitted that the Internet made it possible for relative amateurs like him to undertake such complicated processes as electric guitar-building.

“Most real wood stores were far away, in Raleigh or farther. So I got a lot of my wood and other materials from warmoth.com, stewmac.com, and lmii.com.”

Once he had all the materials there was the issue of putting them together. When describing the actual process of building the electric guitar, Montague mentioned tools such as routers, electric saws, handsaws and a blowtorch, most of which are definitely not found in the ordinary dorm room.

“I had to do most of the work outside to avoid getting into trouble. But the cleaning people still got mad at me for the mess I made!”

There were also difficulties with other students. “He kept me up all night running the electric saw outside until 5 AM,” said Matt Rinehart, a hall mate of Monatague's in Gilbert-Addoms dormitory, “but I still really liked it in the end.”

“Plus I only did that twice,” retorted Montague.

Overall it took Montague about four months to build the guitar (from early December until last Friday) at a total cost of approximately $700. Though he seemed surprised that the cost was so high, he made sure to emphasize how reasonable this price was in comparison to store-bought electric guitars.

“A mid-level, mid-priced electric usually goes for around $800, so this is a good price, especially because it’s a custom-made guitar out of good materials. The high price for most standard electrics comes from the fact that you know it’s going to be put together well in a standard and predictable way. But all the materials are really shitty.”

So now that he’s completed his latest project, Montague is looking ahead.

“My friend and I are starting a custom made guitar company this summer. We’ll build you anything you want: bass, acoustic, electric. You should make sure to check us out,” he added with a mischievous smirk as he cranked up the Phish and started to strum away.

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