Holter Custom Pickguards, with Taylor Mullins

Transcript lightly edited for readability — filler and camera-switching trimmed, product and proper-name spellings corrected (the auto-captions heard “Halter Pickards” and “Shape Loco”). The host is Dave Staudte of NB Guitar Repair — 24 years at Taylor Guitars, most of them in the repair department; other members are named where clear.

00:06 — Meet Taylor

Dave Staudte (host): Welcome to the interview with Taylor Mullins of Holter Pickguards, owner-operated in Chattanooga, Tennessee — and 100% acoustic pickguards, right?

Taylor Mullins (guest): Right now, yes. I don’t know if I’ll venture into electric. Just sticking with acoustic.

00:47 — The template library

Taylor: When I got started, people all over the guitar forums sent me templates — paper tracings or original guards — and over the years a lot of them just gave them to me. When I launched the website three or four years ago I had to decide: six or eight standard templates, or upload everything I’d acquired. I went with everything; there are very few template sites out there, and maybe it helps somebody. I also have my own Holter line of templates aimed at luthiers and builders — standard OM, 000, dreadnought shapes in rosette diameters from about 4½ to 5½ inches. Every template is a simple CAD drawing with a scale box: print it, check the box hasn’t been shrunk by “fit to page,” cut it out, lay it on the guitar. They’re all free. They exist so the order comes out right — customers can pull measurements out of nowhere, so I spend a lot of time pointing them back to the template.

05:26 — Materials, finishes, the code

Taylor: Everything is celluloid, about .030–.035", except the cream, white, and black, which are PVC. A couple of years ago people started asking for satin, relic, or matte guards, so I added finishes — and now I get more satin and relic orders than gloss. Choose material, finish, adhesive, right- or left-handed, add to cart. And for luthiers and builders: coupon code LUTHIER20, 20% off, unlimited.

07:46 — Builders and the big guards

Taylor: Right when I got going, Rockbridge reached out, and a week later Keith Urban needed guards on one of his; I’ve also made them for Dave Matthews’ guitar player and quite a few builders. The full Everly Brothers double guards just went up three weeks ago — those take time, and you have to watch the radius: on some the guard covers the inner ring of the rosette, on others it hugs the outer ring. With a custom order you get unlimited PDF revisions, and on batwings or Lester Flatt-style guards it has to butt the fretboard, the rosette, and the bridge perfectly. Those don’t fit on a letter-size sheet — it’s a two-part PDF taped together, and some customers will mail me the guitar.

10:42 — Why not just use a factory guard

Dave: Look at how the edges are rounded over and polished. I’ve done the Martin repair where you flow out the top because the old guard was stuck to the wood, and then you stick a brand-new Martin guard on a thirty-year-old guitar and it looks like one new tire on a car. You have to round the edges, maybe distress it. For ninety bucks it’s not worth my time — it’s easier to call Taylor. I made hundreds of guards by hand in Taylor’s repair department for two decades and never thought twice about slapping a new one on. In the repair world now, it needs to look like it’s been there all along.

Dave: One of my first five customers in 2023 told me: if you ever need a pickguard, Holter. I bookmarked it and figured I could make my own — until a Collings CJ came in with no guard and I clicked on a photo and thought, that’s not a teardrop, and I can’t pull that rosette radius out of a picture. Taylor said he hadn’t started making that one yet but had a template — and sent it, free. And then there’s what Gibson is putting on guitars now — Taylor coined it: flubber. They curl up, the clear coat peels; I’ve had several sent to me. My customer was thrilled to get it off.

14:52 — Origin story

Taylor: I started playing in college at Georgia Southern, near Savannah — singer-songwriter stuff, harmonica duo, four or five nights a week; it took me six years to finish the degree. Then a production company out of Philadelphia, touring and a couple of albums, until about thirty. Moved back to Chattanooga, married, and a few years later twin boys — and formula costs money. About then I was trying to make a guard for an old Takamine I played that had a Willie Nelson-style hole in it. Everything I bought on eBay was pixelated, unbeveled, or the radius was off, and I’m an OCD kind of guy, so I went down the rabbit hole and found Chris at LMI and started ordering sheets. It took months to get that Takamine guard right, then it was fun — a D-28 template, then standard shapes on the Martin forum. My wife found me wet-sanding in the kitchen with guards everywhere. It paid for diapers. For about six years I did it all by hand: trace, cut with sharp scissors, shape with pipe couplings for the diameters, a little 45 on the edge, wet sand.

18:10 — The CNC

Taylor: Five years ago I got a Shapeoko — the biggest one they offered, a Black Friday deal around $1,700, assembled it myself. It’s a do-it-yourself machine; it gets the shapes close, but it’s just a router bit, so every guard is still hand-finished and hand-beveled. Software is Carbide Create for importing the DXF files and nesting, Carbide Motion to run it — all free as long as I’ve used it. Material comes in 24-by-54-inch sheets; I nest half a sheet at a time. Hold-down is a double-sided tape I found on Amazon — SpecTape — onto an MDF spoil board; once the board gets grooved enough that the tape stops holding, I screw on a new one rather than surface it. Cutter is a 1/16" down-spiral, offset to the outside. I tried a 45° bit to pre-bevel, but if the depth is a hair off you’re eating material. Off the machine, I true diameters against AutoCAD-generated circles in 64ths and the pipe couplings, and dial each guard in with sandpaper until it fits the template and, most importantly, the ring.

27:16 — Offsets and vintage footprints

Taylor: Most modern templates are offset about a 16th everywhere except the radius — room for cleanup, and to cover a tan line. Vintage templates are trickier: the customer either wants an oversized guard slapped over the top or one that drops into the original footprint on the raw wood. Paper templates have a lot of room for error, so on the vintage models I keep updating from originals — if a ’74 D-28 doesn’t fit, I ask for the original guard, and sometimes I flatten it, clean it, put new adhesive on it and send it back: this is the original, keep it with the guitar. Three, four, five revisions sometimes. When the customer sends the photo of it dropped in perfectly, I know I’ve got a good template for everyone after them. Some builders fill the raw wood with shellac to level it with the lacquer first, then go a hair oversized — that’s fine too, but dropping it back in looks so much better.

32:44 — The material

Taylor: The relic finish is really a satin with light scratches — not the Martin Authentic strip of perfect scratches. People are asking for heavier; I’ve debated lacquering and checking some. All my celluloid comes with a thin clear coat top and bottom, maybe .005"; the theory is it limits shrinkage — we’ll know in twenty or thirty years, but everything so far has held up, and it bevels and polishes beautifully, unlike the warped, dull, machine-scratched eBay sheets I started with. To my knowledge it’s all Italian — (Dave: because of the eyeglass acetate industry; Taylor Guitars buys its “Italian acrylic” there too.) Black, cream, and white are laminated PVC at .030"; I priced black celluloid and it was night and day. Laminated PVC polishes three times faster than unlaminated, and the luthiers doing ’70s Martins in black satin and relic love it — but I’d love real black celluloid.

Dave: Is a material run still about ten grand? Taylor: It’s gone up — seventeen to twenty depending on size. And black is three or four orders a month. Everything else is celluloid.

38:57 — LMI and Deep Maroon

Taylor: I was buying all my material from Chris Herrod at LMI, talking him into bulk discounts, when he emailed: we’ve got about fifteen pieces left and we’ve been sitting on it a while. Panic mode — I took all fifteen, and talked Chris into letting me split LMI’s next run. Chris and Natalie at LMI let me design that material, based on a ’50s D-28 guard somebody lent me — that’s my Deep Maroon, close to what Martin uses today and very like ’50s Gibson. When LMI closed, Chris cut me a deal on the rest. I couldn’t have afforded even a split order without them. (Dave: Chris is in this group — he’ll reconnect you.)

43:05 — Fire Stripe and the sample loop

Taylor: I had a Fire Stripe material made too, also from Italy, and I’m working on the faded light-brown vintage tortoise the Martin restorers want. It’s slow: Fire Stripe took almost two years, sample after sample, and the samples come from a small batch while the production batch can come out different — the first Fire Stripe run did, and we started over. Some guys are pouring their own tortoise with resins; Pre-War Guitars does it very well, but my buddy says you fight bubbles and imperfections, and to me it doesn’t have the look of celluloid.

46:03 — Phone templates and the sanding cone

Member: Have you looked at phone-camera tools to avoid the mailing back and forth — a ruler in the photo as a scale reference?

Taylor: I’ve talked about it with an engineer friend — even a quarter on the top as the reference, or hovering the phone to preview a Deep Maroon OM on your guitar. I don’t know where to start.

James Rodman (member): That’s so easy it hurts my heart. Get with me after — I pay a hundred a month for a genie now; it’ll be done in an hour. Ruler in the photo, scan, into CAD, 3D-print a thin skin for two cents, mail it: a perfectly accurate template, no scissors.

Dave: And Frank Ford’s sanding cone for the drill press — the one on frets.com — I can print one for you. It chucks up and there’s even a PDF to cut the sandpaper. Taylor: I saw that years ago and thought, I need that. I still true diameters on pipe couplings an electrician friend gave me. Dave: Black carbon fiber, and I’ll pay the shipping.

51:09 — Adhesive

Taylor: 3M 467MP, two mils, after a long rabbit hole. The 468MP is four mils — a little more goo — and I use it when a customer is dropping a guard straight into a raw-wood vintage footprint without shellacking first. A 12-inch by 60-yard roll is around two hundred dollars from an adhesive supplier who found me on the Martin forum; Amazon has pre-cut sheets, and Uline sells it but it’s expensive. It holds — getting a guard back off is a booger.

53:36 — Removal and install

Taylor: The only trouble I’ve heard of: a couple of guys with a certain Eastman finish pulled up wood removing the original. Otherwise fine. Dave: Cedar tops — Taylor 514ce owners yank the guard and rip finish and splinters all the way to the bridge. Heat gun, spatula, naphtha, slow. Taylor: People will send me an original that arrives looking like a potato chip — no heat. I send removal and install instructions: the tape-hinge method, line it up, tape one edge, practice flipping it in, then peel and lay it down. The worst is when they put it on crooked and post the photo saying “I advertised for you.” I just make them a new one.

58:15 — Shop tour

Taylor: Here’s the spoil board and the tape. When I went full-time I hit a five- or six-week backlog and it stressed me out; it’s about two weeks now. So I started a ready-to-order section — eight materials, four finishes, ships same day: a Martin 000-13 in Deep Maroon, a J-185 in Subtle Red satin. This is Fire Stripe, still wearing its clear film; a Tiger Stripe like Gibson’s; an old dark brown with more amber than the Deep Maroon; Amber Speck, an oddball with great character that I show the Tony Rice-guard people. And the latest: a ’30s Martin guard I borrowed — curled, tip broken off — to get new material made. The sample came back and the color is very close. A couple of small changes and it goes into production, usually eight or nine months after approval.

1:07:47 — Pricing and custom work

Taylor: Guards start at $94, OMs a little less, and LUTHIER20 brings it to about $75. I’ve never had to refund anybody who was unhappy — I’ve screwed up plenty and made it right. You’re working with me: call, text, we’ll get the template figured out. Custom orders run about $150–160 for a dreadnought, batwings more, because a custom can be ten emails or fifty before templates and materials are dialed in. But if you send me an original for a template I don’t have, I waive the custom fee — you’re doing me a favor.

Dave: For that Collings CJ, Collings quoted $180 — they pull a guy off the line to make one. For ninety, I don’t need a discount; I’d pay over a hundred. Taylor: I want the small builders — that’s the market I’m after.

1:12:43 — What’s next

Taylor: No dove-style etched guards yet, though I get asked. About 25 truss rod covers are going up within the month — same materials and finishes, beveled or straight-cut. More ready-to-order guards. A newsletter signup gets 15% off a first order, but you all should use LUTHIER20. I’ve been full-time three months. Dave: When you launch that ’30s material you’ll be printing money — and Steve Gilchrist had picks made with his lifetime ivoroid run; that ’30s stuff would make a crazy pick.

Taylor: On transparency: someone puts Deep Maroon on a black top and it disappears. I spray the back with StewMac ColorTone tinted lacquer — blonde to block transparency, an amber-brass sunburst tone to knock the red down toward brown — as soon as it comes off the CNC. I’ve tried recreating the finished-with-the-guard-on darkening of a J-45 from underneath; can’t do it backwards yet.

Dave: Would you portion out a group buy on black celluloid, or the vintage brown? Taylor: Absolutely. So many people have helped with material — offering ’30s Martin guards just to help — and I’ll return the favor. Dave: Ian’s connected to George Gruhn and TJ Thompson, and even Bob Taylor would be interested — those are the people with the money to go in. Ian: Those people acknowledge my existence and tolerate my behavior.

1:22:44 — Taylor’s first pickguards

Dave: The very first Taylor pickguards weren’t what you see today — this short, squatty one is an ’82, Lemon Grove. Quarter-inch phenolic; you scribed around it with an ice pick and snapped it like glass, then refined it. This even older second shape nearly touches the bridge and was always in the way of structural work. The original teardrop was a Larry Breedlove design from the ’80s. If I can get those templates from the factory, I will. Taylor: The whole library came from customers kind enough to lend originals — I’ll gladly return the favor. If you need me: [email protected] and my cell are at the bottom of the website. Call, email, text.