Yahoo Autos Factory Tune: Detroit Guitar Maker Uses Wood Reclaimed from Chevrolet Truck Plant
Were it not for the Motor City, the Boston-based J. Geils Band’s classic “Detroit Breakdown” (recorded live at Detroit’s Cinderella Ballroom, natch) with its classic line, Doin’ the Detroit breakdown, oh the Motor City shakedown, would never have entered the popular lexicon; “Mustang Sally” might never have gotten into gear if Bonny “Sir Mack” Rice hadn’t left his native Mississippi for the streets of Detroit; Kiss would have had no place to lose their minds, and the MC5, well, they would have been SOL. Yet for all the prose and verses, few have come as close to fundamentally bonding the city’s vehicular and music traditions as the recent collaboration between Chevrolet Trucks and Wallace Detroit Guitars.
To hear Mark Wallace, founder of Wallace Detroit Guitars, tell it, “Detroit has always been about making things and about making music.” To combine them, he started crafting guitars out of materials reclaimed from landmark buildings across the city, including the Conner Avenue Cadillac stamping plant. In November 2017, at the 51st Annual Country Music Association (CMA) Awards, Wallace gifted an electric guitar to Chevrolet to honor the centennial of Chevrolet Trucks. Constructed with wood from the Detroit Fire Department’s former headquarters, the instrument was autographed by numerous artists before being auctioned to benefit a charity.
Inspired by the success of the charity one-off, the pair decided to team up again for a limited run of 100th-anniversary guitars built from long-grain maple sourced from the workbenches of Chevrolet’s Fort Wayne, Indiana, facility, where the Silverado and the GMC Sierra are assembled. (While the trucks may not be assembled within the city limits, GM’s corporate world headquarters sits front and center on Detroit’s riverfront. Trucks are also currently built at GM’s storied Flint, Michigan, plant, which potentially could provide additional opportunities to harvest stock, although Wallace did not comment to confirm our suggestion.) Interest in the guitars among current and past Chevrolet employees is high, says Wallace: “Some of these people spend a good portion of their lives in a facility, and to be able to take home a functional piece of art and potential heirloom crafted from the very essence of it is a special opportunity.”
In addition to the cachet factor, Wallace says the old-growth stock from factory workbenches possesses a density and grain quality not readily available from freshly harvested wood today; the unique patterns produced by the bonded stock construction speak for themselves. The oil-finished necks are from newer wood for the sake of consistency and feature a rosewood fingerboard. Rendered in Wallace’s Wallacaster body shape, the guitar’s special features include a clear high-gloss lacquer finish, a Chevrolet Centennial Blue pick guard, and hand-wound pickups, with the neck-position pickup handcrafted to resemble the iconic Heritage bow-tie emblem. Wallace says the front pickup is crafted to be similar in design and mission to that of a Gibson P90. The initial run will be limited to 25 examples.
Visiting Wallace at his historic Detroit home presented the opportunity to sample a few Wallacasters of various construction. Despite Chevrolet’s involvement and the truck centennial that is the commemorative mission of the instrument, we resisted the urge to strum out a hackneyed version of Bob Seger’s “Like a Rock,” instead moving directly to the Stooges catalog to noodle on classics like “TV Eye” and “Search and Destroy” before summoning the twin axe-wielding spirits of the MC5’s spirits of Fred “Sonic” Smith and Brother Wayne Kramer for some maximum Motor City riffage. And we’d be lying if we said we didn’t pluck at least a few notes of “Detroit Rock City.”
How does it handle? The neck is on the large side, with a flat fingerboard and a rounded profile not unlike that of a vintage Les Paul Jr., and the body does its version of the Telecaster thing, settling in naturally and offering a flexible and functional palette adaptable to nearly any genre of music.
Centennial C/K: Chevrolet Pickups Blends Old with New, Is Rad
Century Mark: Chevrolet Marks Truck Centennial with Special Editions
Research Chevrolet Silverado 1500: Reviews, News, Photos, Prices, and More
Michigan native Wallace, who is also the president and chief executive officer of the Detroit RiverFront Conservancy, is clearly passionate about his city and embodies the new wave of optimism in and around Detroit. The Chevrolet Truck 100th Anniversary guitars will be offered at the General Motors store in Detroit’s Renaissance Center and on GM’s website and catalog, as well as via the Wallace Detroit Guitar website, where they are featured alongside the maker’s other instruments.
('You Might Also Like',)
