Electric Guitars, Basses and Mandolins
by Michael Stevens, Alpine, Texas
Preface: THE 1979 DALLAS GUITAR SHOW
Michael attended his first Dallas guitar show in 1979 and recalls, “There were thirteen booths and I was the only non-retail vintage dealer. I guess they let me in because they figured if they pissed me off, I wouldn’t work on their guitars!” [laughs] A year earlier, the very first Dallas guitar show was a similarly modest affair. In 1978, the Greater Southwest Vintage Guitar Show (as it was officially called then) attracted ten exhibitors, and they leased booth space either to show off, or sell their prized vintage guitars.
At the time of writing [2018] and forty years after the event began, the rebranded Dallas International Guitar Festival now spans 140,000 square feet of display space at Dallas Market Hall. Today the event attracts guitar dealers, manufacturers, collectors, music enthusiasts, and a number of celebrities. As he explains, the connection with the Greater Southwest Vintage Guitar Show turned out to be far more beneficial for Michael than he could have ever expected, “I got the [Fender Custom Shop] job because of my vintage affiliation with Dallas guitar show.” As it became established, dealers from all over the country began to attend the event. International visitors also started to show up and when the Japanese media took an interest, a number of articles featuring Michael and some other vintage guitar dealers and aficionados began to appear in popular guitar magazines. It was because of this media coverage that Michael’s work gained the attention of the folks at Fender. The talented luthier with a growing reputation was just what Fender needed at the time, and so in 1986 Michael says he was made an offer that was too good to turn down.
THE BEGINNING OF THE FENDER CUSTOM SHOP
When Michael started at Fender in December 1986, Eric Johnson was already one of his customers. Consequently, Fender sent Michael “boxes of stuff” while he was still in Austin, so the new employee could get some guitars ready for Eric and set them up exactly the way the artist wanted. As a result of his connection with Eric and because of the impending trade show Michael points out, “So I was on the payroll a little bit before even that. By the time we hit the trade show with Eric, I had two guitars that he could play up on stage and suited him perfectly.” Michael adds that he had refretted the new guitars, and set them up to meet Eric Johnson’s preferences. Michael moved to California in order to set up the Fender Custom Shop and carry out his responsibilities as the senior design engineer. John Page joined him as design engineer and Michael guesses John benefited from some of the knowledge he brought to the table, especially in relation to the vintage side of things. The vintage specialist emphasizes he also learned from John, “He taught me a lot about other things; the goings on [a reference to how the organization worked and operated], and I’d never had a set of dial calipers in my life until I got to Fender.” John also began to take an interest in the guitars that Michael had been putting together and displaying at the shop. Michael appreciates the various items he had on display “may have looked like weird shit to corporate guys,” but points out the dedicated guitar builders who worked there appreciated it because that’s what they loved. He says guitar players would come in and spend half the time looking at that stuff, before getting down to the business of talking about the guitar they wanted built for them, “Because they’re guitar freaks. So that was my part. I was not there very long; four years almost to the day.”
During those early Custom Shop days Michael was kept busy building one-off instruments and working on various projects for customers that included Eric Clapton, and Yngwie Malmsteen. Later he worked on guitars for plenty of other well-known artists including Robert Cray, Danny Gatton, Buddy Guy, and Arlen Roth. One of his subsequent projects involved making a new neck for James Burton’s Paisley Tele. In the late 1980s, Michael was busy setting up the LJ project, and he had Scott Buehl and John English working with him. The Custom Shop LJ model is unique because it’s the only Fender guitar to be built from the blueprint and refined in-house, that does not have Fender on the peghead. Apart from being special because it bears the name Stevens on the headstock, its creator believes the LJ is also the first carved top solid body guitar and the first set-neck model that Fender ever did.
LIVING AND WORKING IN PARADISE
Back in the early 1990s, the time was right for Michael to open his own shop again. Since then, the outstanding master guitar builder has developed a range of models under his own name including the LJ, the Classic, the Neo Classic, and the intriguingly named Les Plank. He also builds unique custom instruments to order, shipping them worldwide to their lucky and eternally grateful owners from his Stevens Electrical Instruments workshop. The fascinating and talented luthier is happy to be living and working in his own territory, doing things his way in his own personal paradise.
Gary Davies | Author & Publisher of ANNIVERSARY STRAT