The Georgia Pine Tulsa #1 was the first set of components that I tested on the newly finished tooling for my Tulsa model. I used pine because it is plentiful and easy to work. It’s not as rare (or costly) as the exotics from Central and South America, or the African woods I normally use, which is good when you are experimenting! I was intrigued by the light weight and buttery color, and decided to pair it with a hard maple neck just like Leo’s prototypes. Somehow it seemed fitting to lend Mike Eldred this guitar for the eastern leg of his tour.
Just for fun, I disguised the tooling holes on the back of the guitar with a pair of Levi’s buttons that I cut off of my shop workshirt! After decades of guitars being thrashed with “buckle rash” I though this one should have something to fight back with.
Read about the buttons here
Tulsa Georgia Pine No.1 Artist’s Proof
•Pine body with spalted maple top
• Maple neck 3 pc. stressed system
• Low mass double adjustable truss rod
• Ultra-fat “baseball bat” D-shape carve
• Brazilian rosewood fingerboard
• 25.5″ comensated scale
• 22 Jescar medium-wide frets
• Aluminum locking TonePros wrap bridge
• TonePros strip tuners
• 1-5/8″ bone nut
• Nitrocellulose French Polish Violin finish
• Southern Whiskey Burst (on the rocks)
• Pearl dot markers
• Drum case fiberboard back plates
• Genuine Levi’s button-fly back armor inlay
• Custom-wound Duncan Humbucker bridge pickup
• Prototype Double-D single coil neck pickup
• Cupcake and chicken-head knobs
• NOS 250kΩ USA pots CTS
• Orange Drop tone cap/treble bleed circuit
• lbs oz
• Tweed case
About the Artist’s Proof guitars.
Each of these instruments starts off as a completely freewheeling, let-my-instincts-rule sort of jam session. They are ideas I’ve toyed with, or suggested to clients before—and never followed through—until now.
They aren’t “stock” models, and they’re all different. Some utilize combinations of woods, hardware and electronics that I don’t really offer on the stock models. Normally, I have a small team helping me build the Dantzig models: Tulsa, Milano, Tupelo and Rialto, but this is a different thing altogether. I’m a lot more hands on, and honestly, it’s the closest you could get to one of my signature guitars without the signature.
Here are the first two Tulsa Artist’s Proof guitars in the finishing room.