Goodall Guitars

James, Jean, and Luke in front of the new shop

Hi everyone, I wanted to say thank you to everyone who visited us at the Healdsburg Guitar Festival two weekends ago. I personally enjoyed the show more than NAMM, it’s so much more relaxing and builder oriented. My family and I are looking forward to re-entering the under 100 builders arena again after 17 years in Kailua Kona and I appreciate the warm response we received at the festival. It’s great to be closer to the events, festivals and players than we were in Hawaii.

I’m going to post a few photos from the trip, and I’ll add more once I get them off of the camera.

Great live music at Tom Ribbecke's guitar makers party

An archtop guitar cake that a local company made for Tom

My dad and I had the privilege of meeting a fantastic musician named Julian Lage, who stopped by our booth with his dad Mario. Julian is 21 and already performing with some of the world’s greatest names in jazz music. It was great to hear him play the traditional brazilian dreadnaught we brought to the show, which he loved, and he also obliged me by playing our classical model as well. After hearing him play and talking with him at the show I was really impressed, he’s a really friendly and humble guy and he plays amazingly. You should check out his web site and listen to his most recent album Sounding Point on iTunes.

Julian Lage playing our palo escrito Classical with port orford cedar top

James Julian and Luke

We also had a visit from my dads old friends Wayne Charvel of Wayne Guitars who was with visiting the show with his son Michael. It was great to meet them and we really enjoyed hearing how they are doing these days.

Luke and James Goodall with Wayne and Michael Charvel

Hello everyone, I’d like to share with you an update of what has been going on at Goodall Guitars since last the first post. First off, the reason for the absence of active posting to this blog since early July is due to the challenge and enormity of the project we have been working on. I’m going to do my best to explain what this project has been like, so that some light can be shed on the reason for our extended downtime from production since late last year.

My Dad and I have been hard at work renovating and designing a workspace that, while around half the size of our previous shop, will continue to provide us with the same ease of workflow that our previous location in Kailua Kona Hawaii had afforded us for the sixteen years that we occupied the space. When I came to work full time with my dad after I graduated high school in 2004, he had already fine tuned the layout of the shop to suit the needs of every operation with tools and benches. All of the jigs and fixtures had their place, every hand tool had a perch or pocket or shelf where it would reside to be at hand when the process needed. It took me a while to realize it, but it was quite elegant the way that every station was laid out with electrical and dust collection pipes and compressor lines in just the right place.

When we left Kona for Fort Bragg, Goodall Guitars as we know it required four completely full forty-foot shipping containers. We found ourselves with a need to abandon work benches, some less required tools, and even some of the lowest grade woods that we had on hand to lighten our load. It was an incredibly monumental challenge to simply pack the containers tightly.

Unloading a Container

The Early Shop

Grinding the Floor

Leveling the Floor

Installing the Flooring

Since the move, my dad and I have been working together to rebuild this new shop to exceed the previous shop, complete with dry wall, painting, electrical, etc. Our new shop is a real blessing, I really appreciate having it, however it certainly did need a lot of work to get to where we are today. Flooring was laid, new rooms required for dehumidification were built, mezzanines were needed for the storage of items used infrequently. The size and shape of this new workspace has required us to entirely re-think the previous, well oiled, implementation of workflow and even work benches had to be rebuilt since we did not have room to ship the old ones. Nearly every workflow and layout has had to be re-imagined and designed to suit our needs due to size and shape differences, it’s like starting all over again and has been a very real challenge.

Insulating the Ceiling

Building the Dehumidification Room

Installing 3-Phase Electricity

This entire move has signaled a shift in the way we are treating our workspace. We know that if we skip over something now, it very likely will not get done at all in the near future, and we want this new shop to be a space that will not only be pleasant to work in, but also something that you, the enthusiast, will enjoy seeing should you visit us someday.

With this in mind, we laid flooring, built workbenches, painted everything to match and be pleasing to the eye, and set aside space to have a gallery showcasing not only our woodcraft but also my father’s passion for photography. This shop has shaped up to be what it could not be in our previous location for various reasons and while it is not quite complete, it is nearing a finish date and we feel we have put together something special for ourselves and for you all.

Coating Workbenches

Our Future Gallery

This entire move and process of rebuilding has definitely been the most difficult task I have ever embarked on, but it is exciting. The promise of completion is so close I feel I can almost touch it and I can’t describe how much I have missed building a Goodall guitar. I have a passion for what my dad has been perfecting for the past thirty-seven years with my mom at the business end and my dad at the artisan end. I look forward to serving you in the future, through our network of dealers, for a very long time. Thanks for stopping by, and keep an eye out for our next update.

Shop Back View

Shop Front View

In January, 2009 Goodall Guitars moved back to Fort Bragg, California. Fort Bragg, a small remote town on the northern California Mendocino coast is quite welcoming to artisans like ourselves. We purchased a workshop in town where our son, Luke Goodall and I will continue to build our fine instruments on a smaller scale. Jean Goodall, my wife will continue to administrate the office, sales and purchasing.

I began making guitars in San Diego, California in 1972. Jean and I moved to Fort Bragg in 1984 where we resided until 1992. Then our family was in Kailua Kona, Hawaii from 1992 to 2008.

There are many reasons for our move. While we will miss the comfortable weather, warm ocean and many close friends in Hawaii, and even though the weather is cooler here, we love this area. It is an extremely beautiful location with a rugged scenic seacoast, amidst the redwood forest. This area inspires my artistic pursuits of painting seascapes and photography.

It was time for a change of lifestyle so now in the new shop it is our desire to focus on our craft. It suits my personality to work with beautiful woods to produce a fine handcrafted guitar. I want to see Luke succeed in the years to come so together we will build Goodall guitars.

This blog will be updated with more information regarding this event in the future. I will be posting photographs of the progress and updates here as well. Stay tuned, and thanks for visiting us online.