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SHOP TALK

SHOP TALK
DOUG KAUER

GUITAR MAKER

WORDS DAVE HUNTER
PHOTOGRAPHY SCOTT BECKNER & ELEANOR JANE

In an industry that fetishises all things

hand-built, it can be refreshing to hear
a manufacturer state that some forms
of automation are capable of creating
greater guitars. Doug Kauer values
the creativity of human hands, while

celebrating the power of machines

ore so than the makers, it’s probably the
customers of the boutique-guitar market
who have romanticised human hands:
M bodies and necks must be hand-carved,
pickups hand-wound, finishes hand-sprayed. Ask
makers to speak candidly, however, and many will
admit to superior and more consistent results when
automation is allowed to play its part. Doug Kauer,
head of California-based Kauer Guitars and a luthier
with a growing reputation, is one of them.
“There’s that question of how we can take
something to a level that the hand simply cannot
match,” says Kauer. “And that’s what blows my
mind. The CNC is a legitimate tool that opens up
all kinds of possibilities we didn’t have before, and
then the Plek machine is the next level. We’ve been
taking guitars that I thought were the pinnacle of my
experience and the best-playing guitars I’ve ever done
– and then you put them on the Plek and realise
that they’re good but could be noticeably better.
“It’s amazing to see how many cottage industries
have sprung up from people who are taking advantage
of – and this is going to sound very bourgeois – the
democratisation of technology,” he adds, “using CNC
machines, CAD/CAM software and stuff like that.”

EX MACHINA

Stuff like that seems to come naturally to Kauer; it’s
in his blood. He was born in Elk Grove, California, in
1983, after his parents had moved away from the San
Francisco Bay Area to escape its rising cost of living.
His dad devoted much of his career to the precursors
to such machines.
“My dad got into woodworking as a hobby,” says
Kauer. “He got into restoring these things called
Shopsmiths. They’re like Swiss army drill presses, I
don’t know how else to describe them. They’re all-in-
one variable-speed presses that you can lay flat and
use horizontally. There was a table-saw attachment Doug Kauer built this custom
and a sander – most of the stuff was terrifying but, Super Chief doubleneck for
as far as drill presses go, they’re fantastic machines. Rival Sons’ Scott Holiday

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