Page 120 - FLIPMAG.NET
P. 120
guitars aren’t made by some dude on a mountain Running standard bodies for friends’ projects segued
top, a gift from the heavens that only a chosen few into building ground-up Firebird copies, which paved
could create – it’s wood, metal and strings, you the way for Kauer’s first original design: the Daylighter.
know? Almost anybody can learn to do it. It’s “I designed the Daylighter as a Jazzmaster meets
not some mythical art.” Les Paul mash-up,” he says. “Two humbuckers, Gibson
scale, set neck, that kind of thing. It just happened
BAND OF BROTHERS to be right place, right time. People started bumping
The truth is, Kauer never intended to get into guitar me for them. I was like, ‘I don’t know if this is what
making at all. He used the resources in his dad’s I want to do. I don’t know if I want to ruin another
wood shop to make one, then another, and another, hobby of mine’, which I had done once before and
learning from his mistakes and improving upon the was apprehensive about doing again. But people
last. When the recession hit in 2008, however, just six started asking and there wasn’t a lot else to do.
months after he and his wife Theresa had bought a “It sounds like such a terrible way to get into it! I
house, Kauer went back to work full time at his dad’s started getting more serious and that’s when I found
shop, while Theresa pressed forward with her own out there was a boutique industry. I went to NAMM
teaching qualification. As cabinetry work slowed in and a friend told me I should go and introduce myself
the trough of the recession, guitar making stepped in to Nik Huber and Juha Ruokangas. I talked to Nik on
as a means of filling the downtime and bringing some the first day and I remember thinking, ‘Those things
surplus income. cost four grand and they’re all sold on the first day’.
120
