GUITARS
Beginning in the 1990s and known for founding and designing Birdsong Guitars (www.birdsongguitars.com) since 2004, which he still manages, Scott currently builds and offers “pocket basses” and a few guitars, from workshops set up around his travels.
The Harmony Hill is a beautiful single pickup rhythm machine or deep lead voice for jazz or wherever your sonic explorations take you.
The Juniper Ridge is a more stylized version of the Harmony Hill, similar to the Style B bass. (More info and some pics coming summer ‘24 on this new model)
The D’AQUILA guitars get their own page - these are the very high-end, ornate electric jazz solid bodies Scott has been prototyping and crafting on the side for decades. Now is the time.
Though some of the basses can be ordered, guitars are mostly crafted to Scott’s inspiration one at a time to be offered directly from this site and on the Reverb.com store. As always, STELLAR customer service and your satisfaction guaranteed!
HARMONY HILL model
JUNIPER RIDGE model (coming summer ‘24) A fancier bodied version of the Harmony Hill.
D’AQUILA guitars
J-1 in figured Texas escarpment cherry and ebony
D’AQUILA has its own page
ON GUITARS:
Guitars! The word still excites me 40+ years later. They’ve become my life, really - playing, repairing, modifying, and eventually building them. Walking into a guitar shop for me? Like Tommy Lee at the sorority bash. The lust is real. But over time they’ve become as much talisman as tool, and tools for much greater things than my own ticket out of my hometown and a way to feel like I belonged. Here are some firsts from the path and then some links… like all I share, it’s about inspiring you. If you’re called to music, make something happen. Give it space and feel it bloom - even if it isn’t destined to be your path.
My first electric guitar, a 1982 Cort Model X I got for Christmas. It was truly the first day of the rest of my life.
At 17 with the used BC Rich I scored not working out of some dude’s attic. I felt in its bevels that it was hand carved, and a lightbulb went off.
The Scottocaster, a 1988 Strat copy I bought new and began to modify. The first guitar I tinkered with - swapping necks and pickups, refinishing.
The first guitar I built that wasn’t just bolting together Strat parts. My taste of sawdust. Rough but a beginning - the Blues Dawg, from 1997.
And, the very first Birdsong. Not a bass! A guitar with a story, and where crudeness refined into craft, and a brand that would change my life.
(Coming links - this site is a work in progress, please keep checking in.)
Scott Guitars 1997-2000
The Guitars of John Kirtland 2002-2007
The Birdsong Guitars Story
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