Healy Guitars News

We finished up making a guitar for our friend Sander Weston recently who’s worked with us on and off over the years. When planning out the guitar he shared a photo of a Danelectro that had a really cool faded Orange satin finish and we mixed up some paint ourselves to match it.

We kept the beautiful Birdseye Maple neck natural with a TruOil finish, a nice contrast to the matte Creamsicle. This one’s a set-neck, glued in with hot hide glue.

The ivoroid binding on the neck and headstock really make that matching headstock pop and give a nice border on the Cocobolo. The cream acrylic guard has been a classic Healy feature from the start so it was an easy choice for this one. Under the silver foil pickup covers are a Suprocaster single coil in the bridge and a Guyatone style goldfoil in the neck.

Specs: 

-Body: Alder, chambered

-Neck: Birdseye Maple with Ivoroid Binding

-Fretboard: Cocobolo, 12” Radius, Clay dots, Ivoroid binding

-C shape 0.86-0.094”

-Scale: 25”

-Nut Width: 1.625”

-Finish: Matte waterbase poly in “Faded Orange” and Tru Oil neck

-Bridge: Mojoaxe CWT-A

-Tuners: Gotoh Aged Nickel staggered Safe-T-Post 

-Pickguard: Cream Acrylic

-Pickups: Gemini Pickups P-90 shape with Silver-foil. Guyatone neck pickup, Suprocaster bridge

-Electronics: @vintageinspiredpickups 250k pots, 3way toggle

-Weight: 7lbs

#healyguitars #healyhealer #waterbasefinish #oilbasefinish #offsetguitars

We recently completed the first Baritone Healer! It has a 28” scale length and is tuned B standard like all those lovely Danelectro’s out there. This is also the second Healer for our friend Andrew K. who was the first person to ask us to include a neck circuit like a Fender JM and an aluminum pickguard. For that commission I altered the design of the original Healer guard to fit the extra wiring and we’ve used it quite a few times since.

For this Healer we used a bookmatched Walnut top over a chambered Mahogany body. The neck is Mahogany with a Macassar Ebony headcap, fretboard, and back laminate. The pickguard is raw aluminum sanded to a fine satin sheen to better match up with the @masterybridge M7.2

The hard tail bridge allows for top loading strings or through the body. While stringing this one up I found that the tone of the low B and E strings was better strung from the top so it remains that way for now. Maybe it’s the strings, but it really made them ring more clearly, with better sustain too.

We used Jaguar pickups for the neck and middle positions like the classic Fender Bass VI. Then there’s a 12 pole alnico Humbucker under a JM cover in the bridge, all made by Jaime at The Creamery Pickups in the UK. The humbucker has an awesome cutting mid-range, and sounds great with either the middle, or neck pickup, thanks to the Blender pot in the third spot on the row of knobs. This pot allows you to truly BLEND the Neck pickup with the Bridge or Vice-Versa depending on where you are on the 5 way pickup selector. In positions 2 and 4 all 3 pickups are ON.

The neck circuit allows the neck pickup to be selected with the switch in the upper part of the pickguard. It has its own independent volume and tone when selected and automatically has a darker tone because of the 50k volume pot. I’ve always felt this is the “jazz” tone and the namesake of the Jazzmaster.

We continue to use water base finish on the majority of our guitars. The matte finish on the neck is very comfortable and smooth and doesn’t gloss up like even satin lacquer will over time. I dig the aesthetic too, some contrast between matte and gloss is pretty sweet. The body is gloss because that top deserves to shine. We look forward to making more baritone guitars in the future.

Just shipped out one of the coolest that we’ve ever made. This one’s going to Daisy Spencer who’s currently touring with Olivia Rodrigo… (you may have heard Olivia’s song “good 4 u” or “traitor” perhaps?)

Well Daisy ordered this one prior to getting the tour, and we’d be stoked to build it regardless, but it is a bit of icing on the cake for all involved. Congrats again Daisy!

So this Growler then… when we started talking Daisy wanted a surface finish like a hammered copper cup, the kind you drink a Moscow Mule out of. I’ve been messing with hammered paint textures but then I remembered that Lacewood already looks sort of hammered AND has a copper hue to it. So I procured a piece from @parkerville_wp in CT, re-sawed it for a book matched top, and here we are.

I added some copper metallic to the first coat of clear to give it a little shimmer too. Because of the grain orientation, when I resawed the wood for a book match top, the grain has a 3D quality with some real movement from the quartersawn middle to the wider edge.

Here are the specs: 25.5” scale, 1.625” nut, Macassar ebony fretboard and headcap, mahogany body and neck, white binding and purfling (which ends up tinted by the lacquer to warm things up) and parchment pickguard and backplates. The wonderful open top pickups are mini humbuckers made by @geminipickups mounted in P90 style rings. Wired up with @vintageinspiredpickups 550k potentiometers and a vintage .033 Erie cap. @mojoaxe_custom_guitar_parts wraparound bridge as most Growlers get. All aged or raw nickel parts.

We’re pleased as punch with this one. Can’t wait until it arrives to its new home, on the road with Daisy.

#healyguitars #healygrowler #lacewoodguitar #geminipickups