months and after it was completed, I took the entire
guitar to G&W Guitarworks. They used to run a little
ad in The Recycler mag that said: ‘We Paint Guitars!’
“I laid it on the counter, and Lee Garver looked at
it and said: ‘Who did the inlay work?’ I said: ‘I did.
And I built the whole thing from scratch.’ Two hours
later, I left with a dozen necks and fretboards under
my arm to inlay, just like that. I suddenly had a side
gig doing inlay work.
“Because there were very few people in the
country that did it, let alone in Southern California,
so word got out quick. Next thing I know, I’m doing
stuff for Ibanez Custom Shop, Schecter Custom
Shop, anybody local. Yamaha has a custom shop
here, ESP, all the small little local custom shops.
And then around ’95 or ’96, I got my foot in the
door at the Fender Custom Shop and that was a
huge career change.”
Indeed. For more than two decades, Thorn, with
frequent assistance from his dad, who’d recently
retired, did all of the Fender Custom Shop’s custom
inlay work. The effort, along with the rest of the inlay
jobs coming in, necessitated him leaving his erstwhile
‘day job’ to take up inlay work full-time in 1999.
A year later, he officially launched Thorn Guitars,
with his own logo and all, and soon the full builds
came along at a pace to rival the inlay commissions.
FROM EXOTICS TO BOLT NECKS
As the predominant style of his early builds might
indicate, Thorn initially got a lot of his custom-guitar
commissions from players spinning off the popularity
of Paul Reed Smith. “It took off quick via the PRS
Forum, and then it segued into The Gear Page,” he
recalls. “Because my initial guitars were very PRS-
like in terms of being double-cut carved tops, lots of
inlay. I’m not even sure if the [PRS] Private Stock
program was around at that time, or if it was it was
very early and it gave a lot of guys the opportunity
to have something similar, yet fully custom. And that
was hot back then, too. Lots of inlay, and lots of exotic
woods. And I was doing wood P-90 covers and wood
bobbins, lots of details that either hadn’t been done
or were very rare to see.”
Such popularity can be perilous for a small shop,
though, and the time came when Thorn just
couldn’t keep up. In 2009, he took stock and found
himself back-ordered for 140 of his Artisan Master
guitars; maintaining the status quo simply wasn’t
feasible. “Every one of those on order was extremely
custom,” Thorn says, “and the lead time became
unpredictable. ‘Five years? 10 years? I don’t even
know, buddy!’ There was just no way to predict
how long it would take. ‘You’re guitar number 141
now, and guitar 137 has a huge aquarium inlay
theme, so...’”
The solution was the launch of his SoCal line,
which allowed Thorn to keep building new guitars,
and stay sane while still hammering away at the
pre-ordered Artisans. Rendered in four body styles,
including Telecaster, Stratocaster, and super-Strat-like
shapes plus his own original offset California
Special design, the SoCals were overtly more
Fender-inspired, in a range of single coil and
humbucker-loaded configurations. They were
built with bolt-neck construction, albeit with
Thorn’s own highly engineered ‘Precision Lock’
custom dovetail lap neck joint.
“There were no elaborate custom inlays,” says
Ron, “and they were essentially easier instruments to
build in that they’re not carve tops and there wasn’t
a whole lot of custom implementation. But, as you
can see if you look at the gallery, they started fairly
traditional, and of course [laughs] they start getting
a little more ‘out there’ and a little more elaborate.”FENDER CALLING
If it was at first daunting making the move from
being his own boss and building whatever style of
guitar he felt like, to being part of a world-striding
guitar powerhouse that mainly pushed out a limited
selection of core models, Thorn has nonetheless
been able to fully express himself creatively within
the Fender fold. Even beyond that, fans of his
previous work should be delighted by the extent toSHOP TALKGUITAR MAGAZINE 85