Lynn Ellsworth Guitars used by greats, made in Spokane Valley
Too far south. Not enough elves.
And the jolly old patriarch drives a white hearse instead of a red sleigh.
Nevertheless, the row of handmade electric guitars that hang from a wall inside the Spokane Valley home of Lynn Ellsworth Guitars is too much for the kid in me to resist.
“This one’s amazing,” I tell the 72-year-old man whose name is affixed to the guitar I’ve been picking for the past few minutes. “How much?”
My enthusiasm makes Ellsworth merry, but he’s hardly surprised.
His wares have been owned and enjoyed by true greats like Eric Clapton, Joe Walsh and Pete Townsend, to drop a few names.
Creating the body and neck that Eddie Van Halen bought in 1976 and then turned into his iconic black-and- white-striped “Frankenstein” guitar is Ellsworth’s biggest claim to fame.
Yet here he is, toiling away right under our noses.
“How do you make a small fortune in the music industry?” he said, quoting the old joke with a grin. “Start with a big fortune.”
Not that Ellsworth has any regrets. He seems far too upbeat and good-humored for that.
“I still love it,” he said of his trade. “I still love coming to work. And no two pieces of wood are ever the same.”
But before we go any further …
A hearse?
“It’s a trademark,” says Ellsworth of the behemoth ’93 Caddy that is moored outside like the Queen Mary. It’s the third hearse he’s owned over the years. “I don’t care who you are. Everyone looks at a hearse.”
A hearse will also hold a lot of guitars. That’s a real plus for all those times that Ellsworth traveled from concert venue to concert venue, doing whatever he could to get his instruments into the hands of as many guitarists as possible.
Distribution is always the biggest hurdle for an independent instrument maker. Giant corporations like Fender and Gibson have a huge edge in being mass-produced and available to the masses at a music store near you.
Ellsworth grabs onto his left earlobe and wiggles it.
“You know what sells my instruments?” he says, answering his question a second later. “It’s all about the sound. When players hear the sound, they don’t believe it.”
After living in Southern California and Washington’s West Side, Ellsworth and his wife, Diane, settled here 10 years ago.
Why? He says he found Spokane to be the most beautiful place he encountered during his many road trips.
Patrick Coleman, a musician and luthier, met Ellsworth here in 2011.
The two struck up a friendship and then a partnership as Lynn Ellsworth Guitars. The business is headquartered in the spacious professional woodshop next to Coleman’s Valley home.
Heated by a wood stove, the shop is filled with stacks of raw cut lumber, tools and guitar parts. This year, Trevor Stutsman was added to the staff.
I was immediately taken by the affordability of an Ellsworth ax.
Sure, you can go all out and pay these guys several thousand dollars to make you a custom guitar out of exotic woods and fancy inlays.
But most of their instruments range from $599 to under $1,000, an incredible value for a guitar handcrafted by someone with Ellsworth’s pedigree.
I shelled out $700 after the $100 discount offered on all guitars sold through Christmas.
It’s one of a line made from weathered and reclaimed woods like redwood, cedar and red fir.
Ellsworth picks one of his guitars off the wall and holds it in front of my nose. “The wood in this one came from a Lake Pend Oreille boat dock,” he tells me.
The rustic result is a radically different look from traditional smooth-and-glossy guitars.
But the tone advantage, adds the maker, is mind-blowing.
Ellsworth stumbled onto this innovation through a happy accident that occurred while he was feeding the fire a couple of years ago inside his Spokane Valley home.
He fumbled a piece of firewood.
“Bong!”
The resonant sound of wood hitting floor gave Ellsworth pause.
In a matter of days, he began building what he calls “Rusticasters” and “Relic Masters.”
Aged wood aside, the guitars still bear those traditional shapes that Leo Fender became known for way back when.
The search for the right old material has Ellsworth looking in all the odd places. He once bought an entire fence because of the way one of the ancient boards vibrated when he kept rapping it with his knuckles.
Maybe it’s just me, but I’d be careful who I told that story to.
“Some of the wood still has Mount St. Helens ash on it,” Coleman says.
In looks, the guitars are an acquired taste. But the playability and sustain of the strings had me hooked at first strum.
“We make guitars for stars,” Ellsworth says. “But you don’t have to be a star to afford one.”
That’s me all over, Lynn.
(NOTE TO SELF: No more stories like this for awhile or you’re going to go broke.)
Doug Clark is a columnist for The Spokesman-Review. He can be reached at (509) 459-5432 or by email at dougc@spokesman.com.