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Sweet Licks Custom Guitars, has added a new series of custom guitars made from the wood of a 153 year old Brothel. The brothel was built in 1856 in Jackson, California, to serve the rapidly growing number of gold rush miners there. The brothel and a storefront on the old Main Street in Jackson, has recently changed ownership, and the new owner – just the second owner in all those years – was looking to get rid of the wood for a remodel. Sweet Licks guitar owner, Brian Woeller, found out about the wood with the notorious history, and bought up enough planks from the brothel to make a limited number of electric guitars from the old wood.
In the article, The last brothel in Calaveras County, the author states that prostitution was legal in Jackson, California until 1954, when the States Attorney General finally shut down the last remaining brothels.
“I found out about the brothel wood in an old mining town in California, and thought that would make a very unique series of the coolest custom guitars,” states Brian Woeller, creator of Sweet Licks Custom Guitars. “I flew to California to see the wood, and it was perfect. The seller and I took the wood to his family’s nearby ranch, where we cut it down to the size we needed and put them on a pallet to ship back to Florida. I carried some boards back with me on the plane. They were quite the conversation pieces,” Woeller says, “Later, while getting the boards planed and ready for routing the shape, we kept hitting little nails in the wood with the blades. The girls used to hang fabric off the old nails to decorate their rooms. We use some of those nails we pulled out to adhere the nameplate on the guitar cases.”
Electric guitars are typically made from multiple pieces of wood that are glued together and planed to a body block, which is then cut out to whatever shape is desired. The Sweet Licks Brothel Series guitars are also made this way. They are stained a transparent crimson red color with a high gloss finish.
“Besides the wood having a very colorful past, the guitars are beautiful and very well made” says musician Frank Ramirez, “I’ve owned a lot of collectible guitars, from a lot of boutique builders, but none have such a story as this does.”
For more information on Sweet Licks Custom Guitars or the Brothel Series guitar, please go to http://SweetLicksGuitars.com.
Release ID: 88932885