A 1956 Fender Stratocaster on Lin Crowson's bench at Gruhn Guitars
The relationship between a player and their instrument is a very special part of making music. It can be surprisingly powerful to take an up-close look at the instruments that musicians use to express what’s difficult or impossible to express any other way. And you can get microdoses of that fascinating experience through two outstanding Instagram accounts maintained by Nashville guitar experts.
Lin Crowson (@i_got_broke_guitars) is a Louisiana native and a graduate of the Roberto-Venn School of Luthiery in Phoenix. He’s been repairing stringed instruments professionally for more than 20 years, and began working in the repair department at Music City’s world-famous Gruhn Guitars in 2007. He’s developed an extraordinarily detailed knowledge base through his work and thorough photo documentation of each job, with special insight into the original specifications of vintage instruments and a special interest in the ways players customize them.
On his profile, you’ll see guitars he’s prepping for sale at the store, glimpses of unique custom work (well-done and not-so-well-done) and behind-the-scenes views of how Crowson builds and repairs electric guitar pickups. You’ll also see other work he’s doing on his own time, and a few snapshots of his very cute dog, Lucy. He’s worked on plenty of stars’ guitars — Jack White’s blue Fender Telecaster (which Crowson customized) and Neil Young’s “Old Black” Gibson Les Paul among them — and occasionally, he might post a picture of one, with permission. But don’t expect him to identify them, or leak sensitive information.
“It’s about the guitar, it’s not about who owns it,” Crowson says. “People’s guitars are pretty intimate. People having pictures and knowledge, it’s kind of like having somebody’s X-rays. It’s like having somebody’s wife’s X-rays. I’m not giving those out!”
Meanwhile, flip through the profile of Dave Johnson (@scalemodelguitars), and you’ll almost surely see gear you recognize. But the situation is a bit different: He built most of it himself. Under the name Scale Model Guitars, Johnson has made instruments for JEFF the Brotherhood, Thelma and the Sleaze, Diarrhea Planet, Sturgill Simpson and Ian MacKaye, among others.
Johnson and his wife and bandmate Megan Rox (their dance-rock band is also called Scale Model) moved to Nashville from Chicago in 2009, about 10 years after he began to learn repair on the job at a music store while in college. He credits the Nashville music scene’s sense of community — including at the repair shops at Gruhn and Carter Vintage Guitars, where he has worked with and learned from world-class luthiers — with helping him take his business from side hustle to main gig.
Dave Johnson of Scale Model Guitars restores Billy Strings' "prison guitar"
When he’s not setting up or repairing clients’ guitars or building new ones in his home workshop, Johnson is teaching at Guitar Craft Academy. That work extends to two series of in-depth, step-by-step instructional posts that appeared on the Scale Model Instagram last year. The first follows the restoration of an electric guitar that bluegrass musician Billy Strings’ grandfather built in prison in the 1960s (recently featured in Fretboard Journal), and the other showcases Johnson’s process for building guitars from a clear plastic called Lucite. The response has encouraged him to keep it up.
“I have this knowledge, and I don’t just want to sit on it,” says Johnson. “You’ll hear people complaining about stuff [on the internet]. And I’m like, ‘Man, I’d like to use this in a totally different way, as a teaching tool.’ I’ve have several people comment on it who are like, ‘I don’t work on guitars, but I love reading those. It’s so cool to see how it’s done.’ I take enjoyment in that: ‘Oh wow, this is really cool. I have a little audience here.’ I’m going to use it for that instead.”
