BLUEPRINT
DUTCH COURAGE
Eric Smid of Smitty Custom Guitars is the kind of maker the world could do with more of: dedicated to quality and blissfully unconcer ned with marketing hype. We meet him to find out what makes his guitars sound so good
Words Jamie Dickson
Ina world filled with corporate PR, it’s a breath of fresh air to talk to a guitar maker who is as open and frank as he is skilled at building superlative electrics. Netherlands-based luthier Eric Smid is the man behind Smitty Guitars, and his approach to making instruments is refreshingly pragmatic. An avowed enemy of snake oil in all its forms, Eric selects his tonewoods and hardware based on the evidence of his ears and eyes rather than forum folklore. The result is a series of original electrics and subtly tweaked classics that are a dream to play, sound exceptional and which have an understated beauty all of their own.
We join Eric to talk about his no-nonsense approach to building guitars and gain an insight into the design evolution behind his debut electric, the Model 1, which is today just one of many thoroughbreds in the Smitty stable.
What was your route into lutherie?
“I have played guitar since I was 12 years old, but I started tinkering with guitars when I first bought my first real guitar, which was a Fender Telecaster, in 1979. Later on, I discovered it was one of the worst production years of Fender, lots of finish problems. The pickups were giving me so much trouble feeding back so I replaced them with DiMarzios, which was a brand that was coming up in those years. And that’s where it started. But building professionally started in 2009. So it’s a little over 11 years ago now.”
Why did you decide to start building guitars professionally?
“I always had an idea of the ultimate guitar in my head, you know? But I could never get it. I tried many builders, went all over the country, even US Custom Shop instruments –I found them too expensive and I couldn’t get all the specs I was asking for. So I decided to build what I thought of as the ultimate Strat- and Tele-style guitars, and I also always wanted to have my own designs out, too. So I contacted a CAD/CAM engineer and we started drawing guitars, until I had a pretty strong idea about shape and form and specs for each. And so that’s how the Model 1, 2, 3 and 4 electrics happened. Designs for a Model X, Double-X, 5, 6, 7 and 8 followed after that.”