The next time you find yourself in the market for a high-end, boutique electric guitar — as we all sometimes do, right? — resist the urge to run to Reverb.com or gallop to Guitar Center. You might find what you’re looking for here in Central Arkansas.
Dave Fry, a Hot Springs native, has been handbuilding guitars in Arkansas under the Fry Guitars moniker since 2010 and created axes for a number of notable players, including Brian Venable of Lucero; Will Johnson of Jason Isbell’s band, the 400 Unit; and Chris Turpin of the duo Ida Mae.
“My guitars are just different,” Fry said. “You can work directly with me when you’re designing a guitar, which is fun. You pick all your colors, your parts.”
Upon entering his home workshop in Alexander, it’s immediately clear that Fry doesn’t mess around when it comes to guitar building — or to dreaming up new designs. The shop is clean and comfortable, and feels more like an artist’s studio than a wood shop. Woodworking machines, shelves of various tonewoods and batches of guitar parts line the walls, sharing space with a large couch where Fry can play his creations. A framed Stereolab poster hangs above a vintage skateboard leaned against the wall, which Fry rolls around on in his shop when he needs to think.
“I love the craft of it,” Fry said. “I love the design aspect of it, the rock and roll of it. But then, I also love the mathematics of it. You can’t really move certain things, so there’s a baseplate you kind of build from.”
Fry’s bread and butter is funky, retro-style electric guitars that hark back to the budget instruments you might find in the pages of an old Sears catalog, but tricked out with modern hardware and constructed with an attention to detail that comes from decades of experience as a luthier.
“Vintage guitars inspire me. Old Danelectros. Old Silvertone guitars. Department store guitars, I guess,” Fry said.
“I’m a little more accountable to my customers because I know them,” Fry said. “When you know someone and you talk with them, your instruments have to be perfect.”
After he graduated from the Roberto-Venn School of Luthiery in Phoenix in 2000, Fry apprenticed for a few years under Terry McInturff — a North Carolina luthier whose instruments have found homes with Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck. Fry went on to work for Modulus Graphite, a company known for building guitars and basses for Bob Weir and Phil Lesh of the Grateful Dead, and the short-lived RKS Guitars, co-founded by Dave Mason of Traffic, in Southern California.
“At a factory or at another person’s guitar company you learn so much, but it’s on their instruments,” Fry said. “Their instruments are fantastic. I own one of probably every guitar company I’ve worked at. I love the instruments but I still wanted to do my own thing.”
Fry moved back home to Hot Springs after his time as a company man and opened the first Fry Guitars shop there.
“I love Arkansas. It’s a great secret little spot,” Fry said.
Fry ran the Hot Springs store for a few years before relocating to Little Rock, where he had a guitar showroom and hosted concerts.
“We had a lot of people come through the store and play a little tiny desk concert thing,” Fry said. “It was awesome and we did it for years. I’m currently looking for a place to have that again.”
Now, Fry works out of his home workshop and ships guitars directly to clients and stores, like Cottonwood Music Emporium in Costa Mesa, California.
“A lot of my customers are musicians around the country. We work by phone and I ship guitars to wherever,” Fry said. “Some of my customers are local. A bunch in Arkansas, a bunch in North Arkansas.”
Fry said sustainability is important to him as a guitar builder and he often employs alternative building materials like Formica, a high-pressure laminate material most often used for countertops, which some luthiers and guitar companies have taken a liking to.
He steers clear of tonewood species like Brazilian rosewood that are endangered due to overharvesting. “I don’t use Brazilian rosewood unless it’s vintage vintage — off an old piano or something,” Fry said.
“I use a lot of domestic woods. I use alder. I use maple,” Fry said. “Everything I use is absolutely [eco-]conscious.”
In 2021, Fry built a guitar out of reclaimed Douglas fir wood from a building teardown in the Argenta District in North Little Rock.
“That was a good guitar, really resonant,” Fry said. “The wood’s fantastic.”
Fry uses standard woodworking tools to construct his guitars and said a typical order could take him about six months to complete.
“If you can make a cabinet with it, I’ve got it,” Fry said. “The main tool I use is called a pin router and it’s the same tools Gibson and Fender made guitars with in the ’50s.”
“I make all my bulk parts on that and everything from that point … is finessed by hand,” Fry said.
Reach Fry Guitars at dave@fryguitarsusa.com, on Instagram @fryguitars or at its website, fryguitars.com.