BUILDER PROFILE
[ WALLACE DETROIT GUITARS | Doug Doppler ]
Detroit is once again on the rise, and Wallace
be a business venture.
Warehouse of Detroit, a local non-profit. They do
Detroit Guitars is part of the fabric of artisans
a great job and take people who haven’t been
crafting a future for the city that birthed iconic [GTR] What are the sonic hallmarks of these previously employed and teach them how to
automobiles like the Mustang, Continental, and instruments? deconstruct houses. Any profit they make from
Corvette. Like many boutique builders, Mark
selling the wood gets put that back into historic
Wallace started building guitars as a hobby, [Mark] The sustain is pretty remarkable, and preservation. Through them, we find out which
not a business. But this hobby turned into a I think they have a unique, crisp edge to them. locations around Detroit the wood came from.
mission – to reclaimed old-growth wood from You’ve been playing on one for a bit now, what dilapidated structures and turn it into finely crafted is your take?
I would love to see Detroit full of vibrant families,
instruments that literally are the sound of Detroit.
properties that are occupied with the grass
[GTR] It’s got one of my favorite Fender-like cut, and we’re headed in that direction. In the
[GTR] Once you started building guitars from qualities – you hear a lot of the sound coming meantime, I want to make sure that some of
reclaimed wood, at what point did you decide from the pickguard. It’s refreshingly consistent these materials don’t get lost forever. Once this
you had to launch a company around the idea? from the lowest to the highest notes, which I don’t wood is gone, it’s gone and no one will benefit
find in a lot of guitars. I take it that’s a result of the from that history, and the heritage of those forests
tighter wood grain from the old wood? will just disappear.
shop, and I bugged him to let me borrow a CNC [Mark] Absolutely! The increased resonance is [GTR] How do you pick the wood?
machine, and that’s how it started. When I put the definitely from the tighter wood grain.
[Mark] This has been a dream of mine for a really
long time! A friend of mine’s dad had a cabinet
first image of the guitar up on Facebook, it went
viral, and all of sudden my inbox was full of people
[Mark] We’re typically looking for wood that is 75
[GTR] How do you source the body wood?
who were interested in buying one. Up until that
point, it hadn’t even dawned on me that it could
12
to 150 years old and was harvested the same
time that the classic instruments were made. We
[Mark] Through the Architectural Salvage
Sep Oct 2017
GearTechRec.com
also look for wood from historic buildings that