HYDERABAD: A musician’s gear is very dear to them and they cannot trust it with nothing less than the best. CE speaks to city-based craftsmen, who specialise in customising and repairing guitars and pedalboards. They tell us about their clients, their art and what keeps them ticking. If you want your guitar to sound like David Gilmour’s or Eddie Van Halen’s, Dolce Alexander is your man.
Dolce dons several hats — a certified luthier in probably the whole of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, sessions musician and music teacher, who has a teaching diploma from Singapore, he’s authorised by Yamaha India and Kepma Guitar China to repair guitars, but most importantly, he’s a physicist by heart. “I’ve studied physics and due to some medical condition, I could not continue with my profession as a physicist. Then, I got my second level diploma in music teaching from the Singapore National University. After returning from Singapore in 1999, I started teaching music,” he says.
In 2017, Dolce took a 15-day masterclass with luthier Auddie Dsouza in Mumbai. Auddie taught Dolce about the local names of the tools that were mentioned in the book. By using tools, Dolce made his first electric guitar under the guidance of Auddie. Apart from repairing guitars, Dolce also customises guitars. When it comes to acoustic guitars, Dolce can help you in installing pick-ups, replacing the bridge, altering the fret size or radius of the fingerboard, fixing a new neck, and changing the length of the guitar to change its scale. “And with electric guitars there are so many customisations, don’t even ask! From machine heads, bridges, to electronics; there is so much you can do,” says Dolce. When you want a particular tone, just go to Dolce and he will take care of it.
“Say you want your tone to sound like David Gilmour. First thing is to see what kind of a guitar he uses, its radius, the pick-ups, the electronics, and to find out what kind of phasers the signal passesthrough. All of these are taken care of by me. Pedals and amplifiers are undoubtedly important, but what you want to throw from the guitar is also very important,” says Dolce. Customising a guitar is experimentation, says Dolce. He will keep changing different values until his clients are satisfied by the tone they want.
Depending on the nature of customisations, Dolce may charge you anywhere from Rs 2,500 to 15,000. Carrying multiple pedals, taking ages to set up each one before a gig and worrying when one goes missing — does this sound like you? Then head over to Soundhammer Customs, who make customised pedalboards, which cost a fraction of the price of what you’d pay if you get them from outside India. The best part is that you can customise the pedalboard to your liking, according to the number of pedals you own and the ones you are anticipating.
A single sheet of high-grade aluminium is laser cut to transform into a sleek, lightweight pedalboard. Shilpa Sivakumaran, the founder of Soundhammer Customs, has always been interested in manufacturing and solving problems and hence started the company. A couple of years ago, after a chat with a musician friend, who told her how expensive it was to import pedalboards, Shilpa decided to try her hand at manufacturing pedalboards herself.
Two years later, she quit her job and pursued Soundhammer Customs full-time. “I am an architect by education and I have always worked in the manufacturing field. Designing and manufacturing has always been close to my heart, it’s been my passion. With Sounamer, it is the first time that I have built something from scratch,” says Shilpa. Depending on the size of the pedalboards, they can cost anywhere between Rs 3,000 to Rs 34,000. Apart from pedalboards, Soundhammer also makes flight and soft cases for guitars, drum shields for decibel control, and cajons.