Paul Waller: the master craftsman making guitars for Keith Richards, Bono and more
When discussing our favourite musicians, the specific guitars they use rarely come up. This isn’t due to a lack of interest but rather because we often don’t know the full backstory of their instruments or have access to information about their origins. Of course, there are exceptions to the rule, but for the most part, the industry’s unsung heroes remain shrouded in mystery. Meet Fender Master Builder Paul Waller.
For most musicians, instruments are more than mere commodities. They’re integral parts of the ensemble, entities in their own right that can feel as alive as the musicians playing them. A guitar, for example, is often a cherished and respected musical partner, without which many musicians would feel lost.
Waller knows this better than anybody. “Building someone’s favourite guitar is what we aspire to do on a regular basis,” he tells me. “So if we can do that, it makes us feel really, really good.” As one of the world’s leading guitar makers, it’s safe to say that Waller knows all too well what it’s like to be at the crux of the industry’s engine.
Most musicians and music lovers develop an appreciation for musical instruments the more they delve into the craftsmanship behind their favourite players, but Waller knew his calling from a young age. “[I’ve been interested] since I was a kid, growing up working in the garage with dad and doing a lot of woodworking,” he tells Far Out. As he got older, his interests grew stronger, and he started to take more of an active role in following his dream.
“When I went to high school, they still had shop classes where you could either work on cars or machinery. The one that I fell in love with was woodshop, which I thought was great,” he recalled. His love for woodshop pivoted somewhat in freshman year when he had his sights set on creating a guitar. “Everybody else was making clocks and picture frames,” he muses, “And here I am, walking around with this guitar.”
Although, at that time, it was easy to brand such an interest as an addiction, his interest only grew more and more robust, and soon enough, he was taking studio sound recording classes. However, this purposeful sway into the musical direction wasn’t just incidental; Waller had always known he wanted to work in the music industry.
“I love it so much,” Waller said, a fact made clear when asked about some of his favourite genres. “Oh, boy, I’m all over the place,” he laughs. “I like all kinds of weird stuff. Not so much pop music, but I appreciate some of the musicians that create that music. I’m a bass player, so I’ve always kind of been in the more funk and stuff because it’s it’s very bass-driven.”
Discussing the music he grew up on, he adds, “I grew up around a lot of heavier music, so I have this eclectic taste in all this stuff, even jazz.”
While enjoying each and every piece of music that touched his soul, Waller continued to follow his dream, officially beginning his journey in his early 20s. “I found this school in Arizona,” he said, recalling his time at Roberto-Venn School of Luthiery in Phoenix. “I saw that the new semester was starting on my 21st birthday,” he continued. “I thought, ‘I’ve gotta do that’, so I saved up a bunch of money and quit college. When I went out to Arizona, I lived there for six months, took the course, came home, and then started working for small companies for a couple of years until I got a job at Fender in 2003.”
During his first couple of years at Fender, Waller worked closely with master arch-top craftsman Bob Benedetto, which led him to become immersed in the many aspects of building techniques from the Master Builders. After a seven-year apprenticeship, Waller became a Master Builder in 2010. Naturally, therefore, this was one of his biggest career milestones.
“That’s the biggest standout for me,” Waller says, noting his promotion. Something that he continues to be proud of, however, is also the trust he built along the way. “Even early on in my apprenticeship, you know, once you, once you do the job long enough, Master Builders know that they can just walk up and hand you something and know that you’re going to do it properly without instruction. That’s when you know you’ve kind of made it in terms of: I’m here to stay.”
Along with the copious amounts of rewards, there’s one thing that remains mysterious about Waller’s job, and that’s how on earth he copes with it all. The job is always a busy one no matter the level, but as a Master Builder, Waller’s role includes a delicate balancing act and not a whole lot of downtime. While incorporating technical skill, creativity, client communication, and what seems like a seemingly endless list of administrative tasks, Waller’s job requires a lot of juggling, coordinating different stages of the build process, and meeting tight deadlines.
For this reason, it seems necessary to ask about the rollout of his day-to-day tasks. “The process is very tricky,” Waller explains. “It’s all about being organised and bringing all that stuff together at the end and then saying, ‘Yeah, I can get that done in time for you.’ Right now, I’m supposed to be prepping to go to a show in London, in the first week of June. In the background, I’ve had to get all that stuff done for the guitars. On top of that, it’s springtime, and a lot of bands are touring. So there’s a lot of demand right now for new guitars.”
As a ship that’s “always moving”, Waller explains that “you have to come in with a good attitude and be on your A-game” so that everything gets done in time. Sometimes, especially for those just starting out, there’s a misconception about the simplicity of everything that’s involved in the job. Waller knows the intricacy of such a workload, but sometimes, the newcomers experience a somewhat hard-hitting wake-up call.
At the same time, there’s much more to it than having the appropriate skill set. As Waller explains: “You also have to be able to juggle your schedule and turn on a dime, and know that, ‘Oh, I better get this done because it has to go to paint and then it has to dry for two weeks.'” In the back of his mind, at all times, he explains, is the three-month lead time on all activities.
“That’s what it all boils down to,” he says, “because the process is around three months. On the longer end of the timeline, it can be done sooner, but there have to be a lot of things that happened to make that work sooner. And so I know that everything that I’m working on right now is this part of a three-month process.”
Despite being in an endless loop of what Waller calls “cat herding”, one thing that the job never is, though, is boring. After all, the beauty of the music industry is that its technology is always evolving. “Sometimes we find better tools, or somebody else will come up with a better way of doing something,” Waller explains. “We have a great process, and usually the new machinery that comes in helps us with it, but there’s so much handwork that it’s just a matter of doing it a lot of times.”
Amid the hustle and bustle, there are always going to be standouts, especially when you’re working with some of the biggest names in the business. Throughout his career, Waller has made guitars for some of the most renowned players, including The Rolling Stones’ Keith Richards and Queens of the Stone Age’s Troy Van Leeuwen. “I’ve been working with Keith for probably around 13 years now,” Waller says. “Any time they go out on the road, there’s usually a need for new stuff, but one of the more famous guitars he owns and plays quite regularly is a black double-bound Telecaster.”
The name of this indisputably cool guitar? It’s called ‘Substantial Damage’ because “that’s the song that it wrote and recorded”. Naturally, this was also a huge ‘pinch me’ moment for Waller, who can forevermore say that he was the proud creator of one of Richards’ most played and cherished instruments. “That was a very, very powerful moment for me,” Waller beams. “It’s something that I’ll never forget.”
Another delicious anecdote is creating a guitar for Leeuwen, who Waller says he’s a “big fan of”. After writing an album some eight years ago, the band needed a double-neck guitar for a song they were going to play in heavy rotation on their forthcoming tour. “I thought, ‘Wow, this is cool.’ Not only am I making a double neck guitar, which is fantastic because it’s elaborate and gaudy, but it’s also for a band that I really, really liked.”
A couple of years ago, Waller enjoyed making the band another guitar as a backup. “That was a really fun project,” Waller recalled. “Because, again, he needed something that didn’t exist, that wasn’t readily available, and it had to do a certain function. And really, when you think about the fact that that guitar was only made to play, like, two songs, that’s kind of kind of a neat thing.”
Although these stories form a large portion of the job’s enjoyment, it is, of course, all about livelihood, not just for Waller but for the people he makes the instruments for. After all, guitars are often as important to some musicians as their band members, so they have to be made with love and care, alongside being made by someone who has a monumental amount of know-how.
And, if a guitar becomes someone’s all-time favourite instrument, “that makes us feel really, really good,” Waller admits. Even better, he explains, if the guitars get their own names. “Any time that we build a guitar, and it makes its way and gets a nickname, becoming part of the rotation and a family member, that’s a huge bow to us for what we do,” he says.
“It doesn’t always work,” he explains, “but when it does, it’s very, very rewarding. It’s like a child that you get to see grow up and be successful. Once it all comes together, then it’s kind of it’s almost fate. If you know everything is working well and the guitar sounds good, everything’s functioning properly, then it can be a magical moment.”
