ROB WARMOWSKI: Hey everybody. Welcome to Gearwire.Com. I'm Rob Warmowski and this is the Chicago Guitar Show for 2007. We got a very rare opportunity here to sit with a master luthier. This is Bill Hollenback from Hollenback Guitars. How are you doing, Bill?

BILL HOLLENBACK: Just fine.

ROB WARMOWSKI: We just had a chance to take a look at Bill, working on a part of building a new hollow-body electric guitar. You take every readings at every inch or so? What other way is there to do it?

BILL HOLLENBACK: No there isn't.

ROB WARMOWSKI: Right. So why would they think they're crazy? If that's the difference between, you know, handcrafting and machining then fine.

Right now, Bill flipped over the back piece, and is showing us his markings. Tell us what those markings are.

BILL HOLLENBACK: Okay. This is a top for a guitar. I have to carve a board that's about an inch and then 1/8 thickness to allow for the arch of the guitar. And so, I do the outside first, and so that the angle of the neck and the bridge and saddle will work out for the string height. And then once I get the outside done, then I cut out the inside to about 250,000ths before I start my graduation or tuning of the top.

ROB WARMOWSKI: I'd say what I find very interesting is that when you see a piece of wood like this, it becomes very clear that an archtop -- the arch of an archtop, which may not be so obvious, once you got the hardware on the guitar.

BILL HOLLENBACK: Yes. This is all hidden, but this is the soundboard for the chamber itself, and this is very crucial if you have a nice-sounding guitar.

ROB WARMOWSKI: And what type of wood are we looking at here?

BILL HOLLENBACK: Oh, this is Sitka Spruce. This is probably 30 years old, and the age, if it is at least five years old or over, it will work, but this stuff I happen to come across some stuff that was some guy had and it had been kept in storage, so I picked it up and started using it.

ROB WARMOWSKI: Now, did you use a regular chisel to get to the rough depth that we see here or did you use a different tool?

BILL HOLLENBACK: I had some little block planes that I make, and this allows me to shave off the inside and so forth. The -- You can use them -- I use some machines to do the rough gouging and get rid of things, but when you get around to doing the actual tuning and carving, you pretty well have to do it by hand. There's some CNCs that are being used, but you get to shape but every board is different so you have to do some individual tuning and carving.

ROB WARMOWSKI: And how did you get from sketches to your outline?

BILL HOLLENBACK: The outline is pretty much determined by the angle of your neck that's mounted on the guitar, and the height of your bridge and saddle, so you have to just sit down and work that out mathematically to get the -- and then match it. That's it.

ROB WARMOWSKI: Are you -- What kind of tools are you using? Are you using any digital tools or any computer-aided design of any kind?

BILL HOLLENBACK: No. No. I'm still the old school, and I'm pretty much -- I use a router, a table saw, a jigsaw, block planes, some sanding discs, that type of thing, but it's I can't achieve -- I can get some duplications of what I do by hand but when you get down to the fine points, the computer doesn't know what to do with it.

ROB WARMOWSKI: Fair enough, fair enough. We find that in a lot of places where computers are in use in music and here's yet another one. Bill, we appreciate your time. Thank you so much.

BILL HOLLENBACK: Thank you.

ROB WARMOWSKI: Bill Hollenback for Hollenback Guitars. I'm Rob Warmowski.