Ghost Builders Guitar Makers

Let's say you own a large production guitar facility, Let's say that a famous pro endorser, who you are paying top dollar for is not satisfied with your usual off the rack BS guitars. Let's say this guitar player who happens to wear a Top Hat and isn't real easy to please wants to get a real custom made guitar.

You may be skeptical regarding some of the facts that I will be relating to you in the examples section below. It is possible that there may be a couple of errors, it's possible that some dates are incorrect but 98% of the facts below I can personally substantiate.

Some of these are supposed to be kept secret. I have not listed all of the ones that I know or I might get some friends of mine into trouble. Some of them are common knowledge, most of them are little known facts that the big guitar manufacturers don't really want you to know.

I have received about 15 letters since I posted this with people asking me to remove their names from this list. I have even been threatened with lawsuits for disclosing some of these facts. So this list has shrunk quite a bit from it's original size.

How many people know what a Ghostwriter is? In the publishing business a Ghostwriter can be several things..........

1. Most commonly a Ghostwriter is someone who writes someone's life story or autobiography for them. For example, let's say you never got past the 5th grade but you became famous. (Actually many people who do become famous are not well educated). Simon & Schuster wants to do an autobiography of your life and times. They will approach you with a cash offer and give you the option of using someone else, to actually write the book. That someone else could be called a Ghostwriter. You would sit and be interviewed by the Ghostwriter who would write the book or story in the first person.

2. A different kind of Ghostwriter might be a young talented storyteller or Sci-Fi writer that nobody ever heard of. A well known writer like Tom Clancy or Steven King or Harold Robbins might read a story by him and like it. In fact, he might like it so much, that he might buy the rights to the story and then rewrite it in their style so that it would be a guaranteed best seller. Of course the Ghostwriter would get no credit. I am not suggesting that the well known writers I listed above have ever done this, or may have done this, or even thought about doing this. The only reason I used those names were for analogy purposes only. I haven't got even the slightest idea that any one of these people ever engaged in any activities like that.

Ghostwriters write books, songs, poems, plays, movie scripts, and very commonly jokes. Do you think that Jay Leno or David Letterman don't use a bunch of joke writers backstage. The only thing that separates a Ghostwriter from a known writer is who gets the credit. When Conan says something funny, how do we know if it was him talking, or some talented joke writer backstage.

Are you starting to get my point? It happens all the time, in fact it's so common it has actually become accepted. Well, that still doesn't make it right. If I bought Jimi Hendrix's biography I would surely enjoy it more if it was written by Jimi and not by Joe Schmeaux. (Schmeaux is my poetic license name for Schmoe). By the way, anything you read on my website, is directly from me. Punctuation mistakes and all.

In the guitar business, a Ghostbuilder is someone who builds a guitar for a celebrity or another company but does not put his name on the headstock. Many years ago my shop Ghostbuilt several Spector lefthanded basses because their machinery was not set up to do lefthanded instruments. Carl Thompson used Ron Blake to Ghostbuild hundreds of basses including one for Les Claypool, Stanley Clarke and Jeff Berlin. In fact Ron Blake built most of the Carl Thompson custom basses for over 15 years.

John Bolin Guitars Ghostbuilt American Gretsch Guitars for ZZ Top's Billy Gibbon's & Aerosmith's Joe Perry.

Several different no name Korean companies, Ghostbuild all the Epiphones. Most of the Washburns and Music Yo Kramers.

Heritage Guitars Ghostbuilt the top of the line USA made Gretsch until the quality problems forced Gretsch to go to Terada in Japan.

Jim Triggs Ghostbuilt all the D'Angelico models when Heritage couldn't keep up with production and their quality was dropping off.

Tacoma Guitars Solely Owned by Fender Ghostbuilds all of the Guild Flat top Acoustic Guitars

Bruce Becvar Ghostbuilt Led Zeppelin's John Paul Jones Alembic Omega Bass.

JBG Ghostbuilt Fender & Gibson Vintage Style Guitars and Basses for ZZ Tops Billy Gibbons & Dusty Hill. Also for Joe Perry.

Samick Ghostbuilds 60% of all the guitars made in the world. Washburn, BC Rich, Epiphone, Steinberger,

Chu Shin Gakki Ghostbuilds all the Jackson imported guitars (Very fine quality)

Paul Reed Smith actually Ghostbuilt Ted Nugent a Gibson Byrdland back in 1974. Ted wanted something better than stock.

Fuji Gen Gakki Ghostbuild the Japanese Fenders and many of the Ibanez guitars available.

Jackson Guitars Ghostbuilt all the Neal Schon Guitars in the 80's (I purchased the last 170 of them) still some available.

JBG Ghostbuilt Ned Steinberger Designed Guitars for Steve Miller.

Ed Roman's Custom Shop Ghostbuilt several of the Gene Simmons USA Made AXE Basses after Kramer went out of business.

Joe Despagne Ghostbuilt many of Steve Vai's original Ibanez brand name guitars.

A California luthier named "MAX" Ghostbuilds most of Slash's guitars that say Gibson on them.

Danelectro Ghostbuilt the Sears Silvertones and Montgomery Wards guitars of the early 60's

PBC Guitars, (Dave Bunker) Ghostbuilt all the USA Made Ibanez Custom Shop guitars for about 3 years.

JBG Ghostbuilds Guitars for Keith Richards and Ron Wood of the Rolling Stones. Many famous bands are contractually bound to play certain brands.

Abstract Guitars Ghostbuilt the Randy Rhoads Polka Dot Guitar for 10 years before actually putting the brand name on the guitar.

ESP Ghostbuilt all of the early cheaper Kramer guitars during the 80's`

Terada Ghostbuilt the original high quality Gary Levinson Blade guitars in the early 90's

Ed Roman's Custom Shop Ghostbuilt all the Jaros guitars for a 2 year period when Jim Jaros hurt himself and could not build.

Jack Westheimer Ghostbuilds, Curbow, Tobias, and many more

Ed Roman's Custom Shop Ghostbuilt the Van Halen Kramer Red 5150 style guitar after Kramer went out of business. Over 600 were made

Ed Roman's Custom Shop Ghostbuilt the Van Halen Yellow Candy stripe guitar with the Fender Headstock during the years 1989 and 2002 over 30 were made

Ed Roman's Custom Shop Ghostbuilt 4 Ace Frehley style flashing light guitars during the never ending Kiss last tour

Ed Roman's Custom Shop Ghostbuilt over 200 Steinberger style headless instruments using acquired old Steinberger parts after Steinberger shut down

PRS actually had their EG Model USA Ghostbuilt by a small guitar manufacturer in Baltimore (I can't remember their name)

2006 Eastman Guitars will be Ghostbuilding the popular Blues Deluxe slimline that Heritage made under private label for Ed Roman for 6 years.

Heritage Guitars of Kalamazoo Ghostbuilt all the D'Angelico guitars in the early 90's. (Heritage built a great guitar during that era)

ESP outsourced a Skull N Bones body, This is not the best example because the bodies were really horrible. They hired a guy named Dave McSwain to carve some bodies. They used an imported Asian made neck and proceeded to call these crappy guitars made in USA.

PRS outsources their Dragon Inlays. Nothing wrong with that, it's totally legal.... I just don't happen to like it that they use "The Dragon" as their main icon and trademark etc etc. and they don't even really make it. It is completely CNC made by the very talented Larry Siffel of Pearlworks in Baltimore. I outsource some of my inlay work, almost everyone does. I just don't try to iconoclize my products with trademarked outsourced items. ( Iconoclize? is that a word?) (yes it is, a very cromulent word indeed)

PRS has used the Dragon to embiggen themselves from a small company the mega company they are today. Embiggen? that's another very cromulent word.

Hey sometimes I take poetic license.

I don't want to get off on a rant here, but I happen to believe that people should know who builds their guitars.

It pisses me off to no end that some 14 year old kid goes out and buys an expensive overpriced guitar. Just because he saw someone in "Creep" playing it. He assumes incorrectly that the company who's name is on the headstock actually built that instrument. He assumes incorrectly that if he buys that guitar it will be the same guitar that his guitar hero owns. In some cases that might be true like Alembic's Jerry Garcia tribute guitars or their John Entwistle bass. Most of the time however the poor hapless customer gets reamed.

If you want the straight story call Ed Roman Guitars.

Handmade one at a time in the USA by a secret Ghostbuilder starting at $4,995.00

10 "A Personal Love Song for You -- Yes, You! We Really Mean It! You Are the One and Only Girl We Really Love, Even Though You're 12 Years-Old and Live in a Trailer Park in Nebraska. Honest!"

6 "You Should Buy This CD -- Or That Bitch Suzy Will, and She'll Be More Popular Than You"

4 "Baby, You Can Drive My Car (When You're Old Enough to Get a Learner's Permit)"