In a business that is dominated by a handful of large companies, it is often difficult for a small-scale guitar maker to find their niche and maintain a foothold in this very competitive marketplace. Throughout the years, private luthiers and small-scale guitar manufacturers have come and gone, often being gobbled up by their larger, more lucrative competitors.
While many of their peers are left by the wayside, there are always a few small-scale luthiers that manage to find a special place in the hearts and minds of guitarists.
One of the newest luthiers on the block is Mollenhauer Guitars based out of California’s high desert. With a focus on producing high-quality, low cost guitars, the guys at Mollenhauer are quickly making a name for themselves among players and collectors alike.
Led by founder Michael Mollenhauer, the company is building on a long musical family tradition while focusing on furthering their reputation within the small-scale guitar manufacturing community.
Mollenhauer’s goal of producing quality built, low-cost, guitars is a welcomed addition to the small-scale guitar manufacturing sector. While many small scale-guitar makers produce very high-quality instruments, they often come with a high-quality price. On the other side of the coin, many low-priced “introductory” guitars are more affordable, especially for beginning players, but they are often poorly built and set up, often leading to frustration and disillusion for the owner. By offering their customers a well built guitar at an entry-level price, Mollenhauer’s guitars are not only fun and easy to play, but the price bracket for these quality instruments will be a good fit for players of all levels, especially in these tough economic times.
With their custom shop in full gear, their Touring and Master class guitars hitting the market and a new series of instructional and behind the scenes videos up on their website, Mollenhauer is setting their sites set on expanding their role in the market and furthering their goal of bringing well-built instruments to their customers at an affordable price.
Matthew Warnock: Where is the Mollenhauer guitar headquarters located?
Michael Mollenhauer: We’re in a town called Victorville, California, which is kind of in the high desert of Southern California. We’re about two hours from L.A and forty-five minutes from Rancho Cucamonga if you remember that from the old Bugs Bunny cartoons. Laughs
Matt: You come from a long line of Mollenhauer musicians, most of whom were violinists and composers. Can you give us a little back drop on your family’s musical history?
Michael: Well, there’s a long tradition in my family of composing and performing. My great-grandfather Edward, who came to America from Germany, started the Boston Conservatory of music. He and my grandfather, William F.T., were extremely prolific classical musicians in the late 18 and early 1900s. They travelled all over the world, they were kind of the rock stars of their age. They had groupies and everything, which we don’t really associate with classical musicians today.
In fact, it wasn’t uncommon for people to show up at my parents house, even up to a few years ago, who would ask my dad, “Are you Raphael Mollenhauer and was your father William F.T. Mollenhauer?” After he told them yes they would go on to inform him that years ago my grandfather had had a one-night stand or something with this person’s mother and that they were the result. So these love children would appear every now and again as a result of my grandfather’s escapades back when he was touring. Both of these guys were wild men back in their day.
Matt: Did you ever play violin when you were younger?
Michael I was actually being groomed at one point to be the next great violinist in the Mollenhauer family. That worked out fine for a while until I discovered Rock n Roll and I said “Screw this.” I then switched from violin to drums, for which my aunt almost disowned me. From there I embarked on a very strange career in music.
I toured England for a few years in a band called Family Album for which I played stand-up bass, acoustic guitar and sang. I put myself through college playing music. I’ve done studio work and reading gigs, all sorts of stuff. I had planned on staying in the music industry for a while, but after I got married I realized that it was going to be too hard on my family and so I got out of it. I also got tired of playing with people who were drunk or stoned all the time, and mostly incompetent, so I bought some recording equipment and now I play when I want to and make the music that I want to.
Matt: And how did all of this lead to you becoming a guitar manufacturer?
Michael About four years ago I had the bug to go out and buy a brand new cherry sunburst Les Paul. So my wife and I went down to Guitar Center and they had one on sale for around four-thousand bucks. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to spend the money but it was funny because my wife was trying to talk me into it.
Matt: We should all be so lucky!
Michael Right. So I pulled the thing down, played it and it played like crap. The guys in the store had all sorts of excuses for the lack of playability that it was just out of the box, the intonation wasn’t set yet, the strings weren’t set to the right height etc. It was horrible. I thought, for that kind of money the guitar should be ready to play right off the wall. They offered to have their tech set it up for me but that it would take ten days and cost another three hundred dollars. At that point I got pissed off and I walked out. But it made me think that there should be a better way to do this.
A couple of months later I had the opportunity to start my own guitar company and so I decided to build fifty guitars. I would sell most of them, but I would keep a few for myself to play. So if you break it down I started the company as a means to get free, well-built, guitars.
Those first-fifty guitars sold quickly and they received a great response from the buyers, so by popular demand I began making more guitars and it just snowballed from there. So now I have this whole business and it all started because I wanted a guitar that didn’t suck.
Matt: Have you found a way to fix the problems you encountered with the Les Paul as far as your factory set-up goes?
Michael: Every guitar that leaves the shop, before it’s delivered to the customer, I play it first. If it sucks I give it back to Chris or Mark, our luthier’s, and tell them that the strings are too high or whatever, and it gets fixed. Every guitar has its own nuances so I actually play every guitar we make to ensure that it plays right, right out of the box.
Once it plays right and feels good to me, and I’m not imposing my tastes on people but I feel I know how a guitar should feel, if it passes my standards than it goes out the door. If not, it goes back to the shop to be tweaked before shipping it out to the customer. We guarantee that every guitar is ready to play as soon as the customer receives it. They don’t have to wait to get it set up, they don’t have to pay any extra money to get it ready. They can play it and have it feel good right out of the box.
Matt: Mollenhauer guitars, every model, comes in two levels of classes, the Touring class and the Master class. Can you talk about the difference between the two classes of guitars that you offer?
Michael The two levels, the Touring and the Master class, are designed to allow more people to enter the marketplace and still have a good guitar. Both classes are the exact same guitar in terms of the body and the neck, so they have good bones, the wood is the same so there’s no difference there. The difference is in terms of the pick-ups, the components, and the hardware that we put on it.
The Touring class is for someone who wants a good guitar but they don’t want to spend over a thousand dollars. The retail listed on our site is more than that but nobody ever pays that, we always work it down for them. Also, for the Touring class we do a special fret job so that they are a little easier to play, especially for people who may be just starting out on the instrument.
It’s also good for students. One thing we’ve found in our experience is that many students quit playing after a short while because they are fighting the guitar and can’t get a good sound out of it no matter what they do. The guitar that they bought has high action, the intonation is funny, and it’s just hard to play.
We design our guitars so that beginners don’t have to fight their instrument, the instrument is designed to let them focus on learning to play without the guitar being an obstacle. This way, beginning students will have a more positive experience and hopefully this will lead to them sticking with the guitar longer.
Matt: Since both classes have the same body and neck are people able to “upgrade” their guitars from the Touring to the Master class by switching out the lower-priced hardware for the more expensive components?
Michael Absolutely. If someone finds that they are progressing on the instrument and are ready to move up to a professional level guitar, they don’t have to buy a whole new instrument. They can simply upgrade the components on their Touring class, keeping the neck and body the same, and voila, they have a Master class guitar without spending the money for a whole new instrument.
It would not be a good investment to do this with one of the cheaper, starter models that people find at Wal-Mart or somewhere. People who buy those guitars have to buy a whole new guitar when they feel they are ready to upgrade to a better instrument, which is not the case when they buy one of our guitars.
Matt: Can you talk a bit about the components that you use for the Masters class guitars?
Michael The Master class is the best of everything, all American everything. All American pots, all American hardware. We generally put Sperzel or Grover tuners on these guitars and unless otherwise requested we’ll put either Lollar or Vintage Vibe pick-ups on these guitars. We also do the Master class fret job on those guitars which is pretty amazing.
Every single fret is beveled, rounded and polished by hand by Chris Peterson who is our master luthier and who is absolutely amazing. We also allow people to request the gauge of string they want and the string height they prefer, which is an option that is available for both the Touring and Master class guitars at no extra charge.
Matt: You also offer customized guitars for your customers, can you talk about those guitars a little bit?
Michael: Our custom guitars start completely from scratch and are designed to fit the exact wants and needs of the customer. We start with a piece of wood, the customer can pick any wood that they want for any part of the guitar, and we design the shape of the guitar to anything that the customer wants. These guitars are one-hundred percent customized by the customer, including all of the components.
We have a conference call with me, the customer and Chris Paterson, where we get all the specs and design ideas down on paper. From there we draw up a design for them and then go back and forth a bit to ensure that the customer is totally satisfied before we start building the guitar. This ensures that the customer gets the exact guitar that they had in mind without the delay that other custom shops have. We can turn a guitar around in about three months from start to finish, which is a much shorter turn around time than many of our competitors.
Matt: How many guitars do you make in a particular series? Since you’re not a production style builder do you keep your runs smaller as compared to larger makers?
Michael: I make very limited runs of any guitar we produce. I might only make six or twelve guitars for a particular series. As well, every guitar is numbered to indentify the year it was made, the series it comes from, the number for that guitar and the total number of guitars made in that series. That helps to make the guitars collectible, as well as playable. We also include a certificate of authenticity that I sign, which we include with the guitar that tells the customer exactly how many guitars were in that series. This helps to keep the value of the guitar in tact and ensures that over time the value of their guitar will hopefully increase.
Matt: Aside from showcasing your guitars and basses you also have a section on your website that has videos which give people advice on keeping their guitars in shape, as well as providing behind the scenes looks at your building process. Are this video series going to continue and if so what can people expect from your upcoming videos?
Michael: The video section is something new and people can expect these to continue. Some of the videos feature, and will continue to feature, our celebrity endorsees demonstrating our guitars. We have people up there like Paul Kingery from Three Dog Night, who did a couple of great videos demonstrating the different tones that he gets from his Mollenhauer guitar. As for the demonstration videos we have two reasons for doing these.
The first is that we want our customers to see all the care and attention that goes into making their guitars, so that they are comfortable that we are providing their guitars with the care and attention they need. We are also trying to provide people with solid, well-informed, information and advice on how to properly take care of their instruments.
Some people may not know how to properly string their guitars so that the strings don’t slip and fall out of tune, so we’ve provided a video to help people with this and other related maintenance problems. We’ve got more videos in the works and are continuing to develop this section of the site as a resource for our customers and for anyone who just wants to check out what we’re doing over at Mollenhauer guitars.
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Related Link
www.mollenhauerguitars.com
