THE ONES THAT GOT AWAY
LIMITED EDITION TAYLOR 214CE TONY HAWK ACOUSTIC GUITARS
This past month I was honored (EDIT: THIS WAS IN 2012) to work with Taylor Guitars to design five custom Tony Hawk guitars to be auctioned off to benefit the Tony Hawk Foundation. The idea was to take some of Tony's classic skateboard designs and adapt them to the top of the guitar. Then each guitar would be matched up with it's corresponding skateboard, and all would be signed by the skateboarding legend, Tony Hawk himself and auctioned to the highest bidders.
We did four different one-of-a-kind designs that were based on the Taylor 214CE model guitar. This is a beauty of a cutaway instrument with nice sounding electronics built in. These guitars were beautifully executed by the Taylor Custom Shop team, and the finish and detail on these was just gorgeous. Then, additionally, we did one more design that was adapted to the Taylor GS Mini model, and there were nine of those guitars produced. This design came out really well also. It's a more budget model instrument, so it didn't have the full gloss finish as the others, but it came out looking really cool. Maybe the best of the designs really.
The guitars were auctioned off at the Tony Hawk Foundation's Stand Up for Skateparks charity event, held each year in Beverly Hills, CA on Oct. 7th, 2012 and the proceeds went to help build skateparks in underprivileged areas here in the U.S. I couldn't have been more pleased with the way they came out, and the way they sound is just an added bonus...what great guitars! Thanks so much to everyone at Taylor Guitars for making this project happen. We may be making a couple of additional guitars, and if so, I am going to go film them being made and will share here with you.