Goodall Guitars

Goodall Guitars started on January 3, 1972, in James Goodall's San Diego home — a self-taught seascape painter who, by his own account, "woke up one morning in 1972 with an obsession to make and play a musical instrument." With no woodworking background and no guitar-construction books yet in print, he traded one of his oil paintings for the tonewoods, borrowed a table saw and bandsaw, and spent three months building a curly maple jumbo with Mexican mother-of-pearl inlay. He bought his materials from a small Lemon Grove, CA shop called American Dream Guitar — which would later be bought by two of its employees, Bob Taylor and Kurt Listug, and renamed Taylor Guitars. Goodall has been at it for fifty-plus years since. The shop has stayed small and family-run. James designs each model shape himself; son Luke, who started sweeping the floor as a kid, has been building full-time since 2004 — between them, more than seventy-six years of luthier experience. Jean Goodall, who joined in 1982, runs the business side. The catalog covers thirteen body sizes across five series, with thirty-plus tonewood species available — customers who visit the Sparta, Tennessee shop can pick the back-and-side combination in person. Every instrument is designed for an individual player and hand-built by James and Luke. The Goodall design philosophy is openly restrained. James writes about wanting his guitars to read like master-built violins — elegant proportions executed with precision, no extravagant cosmetic flair, the natural beauty of the woods doing the talking. The instruments have earned their reputation slowly, their credibility spreading through player-to-player word-of-mouth more than industry marketing. The shop builds slowly enough that buyers tend to know what they're getting before they call, and patient enough to design each instrument for its eventual owner rather than for the showroom.