Lumber In, Guitars Out
At LsL our main objective is to do everything we possibly can ourselves. That’s how it gets done right. All our bodies and necks are hand shaped, pickups hand wound, everything down to the pickguards. Here we’ll give you the dirt on all those little details that come together to make an LsL special, from beginning to end.
Lumber
At LsL we make a point of finding and purchasing the highest quality lumber on the planet. The wood we use for our guitars is incredibly important to us because it’s a chief element in our guitar’s impressive resonance. Our founder Lance has been in the wood products manufacturing business in L.A. since 1983 and over the years has built great relationships with many lumber suppliers. Everything is hand picked, so we can find the lightest wood with the best grain, and we are always looking for the most striking exotic woods out there. The lightest ash, the burliest burl, the flameyest flames. You’ll find it all in our shop.
Routing
Once we find the right lumber it gets chopped to length, glued up for grain match and placed on our CNC router. Our CNC is very large and accurate with a 5’ x 10’ machining area, 4 16HP router heads and 10 drills. It is not a hobbyist machine. We are very specific about what the CNC is used for. We use our hands for features that are based on comfort and feel. Once routing is done you will have a chunky set of pieces ready to become hand-shaped and refined.
Shaping
After routing the necks and bodies go to our woodworking department. These guys are good. It takes quite a while to learn how to do this - it is not easy and its not fast, but it is better. We give the neck the exact profile you want. “C” shape, “D” shape, “V” shape… we can even make a “W” if you like, and anything in between. If you find yourself torn between two different shapes we can just blend them together. We can also shape your neck to specific measurements so the guitar works with you and your playing style. And…if you like, you can come here and we’ll shape the neck while you wait.
Painting
Following suit with quality we generally use nitrocellulose lacquer for the most resonance and historical accuracy. However we don’t only use nitro. For the models with no age we can also use polyurethane or polyester finishes to keep it nice and glossy even after its fair share of gigs. And on the subject of paint, what would a custom guitar be without a custom color? Since we do everything by hand we can basically make any color under the sun. Not only that but on models with more aging, you can even have multiple colors layered on top of each other for a vintage rub through look. The possibilities are endless, and we are far from done inventing new ones.
Pickups
Every pickup that comes from our shop is wound by hand in house. We have personally found the right output for each pickup on each model, and we can make any output you’d like. The only exceptions are the La Perronita and Big Bone models, which use TV Jones Filtertrons. If you’ve found yourself in love with a certain set you have you can also send them in and we’ll put them in your guitar ourselves. No stone is left unturned. Now that we’ve got your pickups let’s put them in the guitar.
Electronics
In electronics department the pickups are installed and can be wired with a variety of configurations for the exact tone you’re looking for. For example, all humbuckers (One Series exempt) come equipped for coil splitting if you would also like a single coil tone from them. Just like everything else from LsL, this is all done by hand with the details down to the solder, potentiometers, and tone capacitors.
Assembly & Setup
Once all these parts come together it’s finally time to assemble it all. The main thing to note here is that our neck pockets are meticulously hand fitted. This means that we rout them slightly too small for the neck so we can then hand sand it down until it perfectly fits the neck. Our neck relief is zeroed in with a tolerance of half a thousandth of an inch (.0005”) and our action is set at sixty thousandths of an inch (.06”) at the twelfth fret. Finally we have a completed guitar, ready to make music. There’s just one last step before we can ship them out.
Inspection & Playing
If you have an LsL at home, it’s been played by Lance. Every single guitar that goes out our doors has been handed directly to him to play and inspect as if he were opening it right out of the box himself and handing it to you directly. He and our team also think up a unique name for every single one (except from the “one” series). Sometimes he ends up liking the guitars so much he plays them for too long, and we actually have to pry him away so we can ship them to you.
Done.
Now our decades of experience making these guitars can be met with your decades worth of playing them. Welcome, to the tone zone.