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A Stringed Love - The Heart of Delmarva

July 29, 2021

It all started with a pure love for one stringed instrument. Andrew Trice has always loved music, especially playing it and specifically the guitar. He’s been playing it for over 30 years, having been on tour in the US and Europe. He’s played them, he’s fixed them, but it’s always been a dream to build his own. He’s a Cloud-Based Systems Architect for IBM by day. But two years ago, he started burning the midnight oil building custom-made guitars in his garage. “If I don’t start now, I never will,” Andrew remembers thinking.

Throughout the pandemic, working full-time and being home with his family everyday, he wanted something to do after the kids went to bed. In the last two years, Andrew has built five custom guitars, all commissioned except one. Each build takes two to three months to complete, as he takes every aspect of the construction into careful consideration. He even submitted one of his builds to The Great Guitar Build Off 20211, an online guitar building competition.

Andrew Trice Custom Guitars isn’t just local, it’s different. In the world of electric guitars, there are certainly some outstanding brand names — Fender, Paul Reed Smith, Gibson, Ibanez … The list goes on.

All these brands, including Trice’s, make great guitars. But there’s one difference. Those brands won’t be able to give you the choices you have with a local custom builder like Andrew Trice Custom Guitars. Large manufacturers, although providing custom-build options, won’t be able to build you an instrument that fits your eclectic, unique style and personality exactly. “I can’t build a Fender better than Fender, but I can build a high-quality instrument that can be highly customized, bettered from a standard build,” confirms Andrew.

"Wood" you like to know ... What goes into making a guitar?

Out of nerdy curiosity, I asked Andrew how much of a role does the quality and type of wood play in the sound of a guitar. In electric guitars, wood plays less of a role in determining the sound versus an acoustic guitar. Andrew focuses his builds on electric guitars now, but would love to begin building acoustics soon.

When it comes to wood, there are a lot of factors that determine the ultimate sound quality — moisture content, weight, density, transverse vibration, dense versus flex to name a few. “It’s a delicate balance between structure and being able to vibrate the way you want it to,” says Andrew.

Each piece of wood has a unique set of characteristics, like that of a human fingerprint. That wood’s character comes out in each build when you see the grain, colors and contrast emanating from the instrument. Sure you can paint it whatever color and design you want, but when the natural flair of the wood shines … it's ohh, so sweet!

A unique guitar calls for distinctive wood.

But Andrew doesn’t just use new pieces of wood for his builds. He loves to fashion guitars out of old hardwood furniture — the solid, reusable woods like mahogany, cherry and maple. Sometimes he uses cut-offs from local furniture makers. He’s also built custom guitars with wood from other instruments, like antique pianos. Recently Andrew was given a piano for free that was destined for the garbage dump. “After I built a guitar from it, the piano's former owner bought the guitar for her husband as a birthday present,” says Andrew. The cigar box style guitar he made from it … it’s pretty fly.

One unique design he’s worked on is an “epoxy river” guitar. Basically you carve out bad pieces of wood, where integrity could have been an issue, and fill them with epoxy, usually varying colors and quantities. If you’re into furniture making, they use the same concept there to make pretty rad coffee and dining tables.

His love for guitars is strong, but he also has a big heart for his community. He’s currently working on a guitar donation for a fundraiser for Habitat for Humanity coming up in February 2022.

Looking for something “uniquely you” that you can strum or pick on? Or maybe a memorable gift?

Commission a custom-built guitar from Andrew Trice Custom Guitars. Contact him by email at triceguitars@gmail.com. Be sure to follow him on Facebook. Find him on Instagram to follow along with his in-progress builds and check out some past builds.

Check out some of his build videos on YouTube!