MH: Gene, tell us about your early musical influences, and your personal playing background.
GB: Born July 6th, '66 in the suburbs of Detroit, MI (Southgate). My parents were my first real influence. As early as I can remember we always had various types of instruments around the house that always seemed to hold my interest. I grew up with one younger and two older sisters. My older sisters were always keeping up with the current music and I would sneak into their room and spin as many records as I could. The Beach Boys, Guess Who, The Beatles, Alice Cooper, The Who, Rolling Stones, and then I pulled out two records that rocked my world, Led Zeppelin 4 (Black Dog) and the first Black Sabbath album.

I received my first acoustic guitar on my 7th birthday although I still had no direction in what to do with this thing, so I would serenade my girlfriend at the end of the block. Christmas, age 11, I received my first electric guitar, a Global single pickup with a Sears amplifier. My neighbor's mom gave guitar lessons at our local hockey rink and cost $10 for 10 lessons. There was a group of 10 to 20 of us learning 'Michael row your boat ashore', 'Jimmy crack corn' and more of those types of folk tunes.

Meanwhile a close friend of mine was learning all these KISS tunes from this guy we called "FUZZ". He was this white dude with the biggest Afro I had ever seen and played a White Gibson Flying V. Kiss became my next major influence and I had every square inch of my bedroom walls covered with them. From there, Aerosmith, Ozzy Osbourne, Hendrix, UFO, Scorpions, Uriah Heep, Frank Marino, AC/DC, Nazareth, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Rush, spawned my early teens. Ted Nugent's "Cat Scratch Fever" was the first song I ever figured out on my own and from there my ear was born.

We moved to Santa Maria, CA as I was just entering 11th grade ('82). Within 6 months I was back into a band and moving forward from where I had left off in Michigan. I met up with Jerry Coehlo, www.coelhomusic.com, who was the cat everyone went to for lessons. Jerry had graduated from GIT's very first class and was way up on jazz, theory and everything I was searching for and could never find. He opened my eyes to a whole New World of playing and fed me the tools I needed to really learn my fretboard and understand what I was doing. As soon as I graduated from high school ('84) I headed straight for Hollywood and GIT. This was one of the most memorable times of my life and really pulled me out of my shell. There were so many good players from students to teachers and everyone was constantly feeding off of each other.

After GIT I went on to write and publish my own instructional book and video, "Mean Gene's Insane Lead Guitar Manual". It consisted of 100 pages of what was the core basis of my playing to date. It's not a 'play this lick' type of book, it focuses on the fundamentals and understanding your fretboard. Covering the main variety of blues, pentatonic, chromatic, diatonic and harmonic minorscales, moving into and interpreting key signatures, how notes are stacked to create chords, plenty of drills, exercises, written and playing tests to make sure you're getting what you paid for. Plus a 2-hour video that takes you right through the book. It was filmed in my shred heyday and has the typical 80's grind tone but all in all any style player could learn quiet a bit from it, complete with on screen graphics and tablature. Bands I played in always performed around the local club scene and did the occasional Hollywood Strip gigs. I still play to this day with our current band called "The Wallshakers", the name says it all.

MH: Can you recall the first decent guitar you ever owned?
GB: In the 70's offshore guitars were not to the level they are today so most cheap guitars were very cheap and played like crap. I was taking these junkers, tearing them apart and building my own guitars with these parts. I was a huge fan of Flying V's and BC Rich Bich's, Joe Perry and that 10 string Bich rocked my world. So I was playing all these Frankenstein guitars until I was finally able to buy a black '78 Gibson Les Paul deluxe from a good friend of mine in '82.

MH: Can you recall the first guitar you modified or built?
GB: First guitar I built was in 7th grade and it was a take off of a Gibson SG. As kids we usually didn't have access to high dollar guitars to trace or knock off so we usually had to trace patterns from any copy we could find. The action was a mile high, I had placed the bridge just anywhere so it wouldn't tune to save your life. We had no jigs or templates so everything was hand routed, band sawed and sanded. It was soon sacrificed as part of my Halloween Kiss costume (Ace Frehley of course) and I taped all these firecrackers and bottle rockets to it and had a blast.

MH: Who or what influenced you early on to pursue guitar luthiering as a career?
GB: Most definitely my woodshop teachers in junior high and high school and my parents. That coupled with the infinite search for the ultimate tone in guitars, amps, accessories, one's own playing skills and the unfolding world of woodworking and its machinery. There wasn't much at all in the way of how to books back then so I had to learn by trial and error and hanging around
other music shops.

MH: What types of guitars did you appreciate as you decided to pursue this as a career?
GB: It varied as times, fads and icons changed. Seeing who many of my guitar heroes were Les Paul's, Flying V's, Explorers, SG's, hot rodded Strats, and some of the early BC Rich neck thru models pretty much shaped by early building stages. Once Jackson guitars hit and the whole mid 80's rock thing I started my first business under the early 'Mean Gene' brand name at age 19. My first 'Mean Genes' were being built in Huntsville, AL, while I worked for Robbins Music. There I gave a lot of private lessons, did sales in the guitar amps and effects department, performed all repairs and I built about 10 guitars while there. They were all different, from Tele's to neck thru Strat's, Explorers and other customer defined body shapes. Jack Robbins owner of Robbins Music was the first guy to give me a shot at being a repairman.

MH: Obviously your experience with both the Gibson and Fender Custom Shops was instrumental in branching out on your own. Tell us about your experience with both companies.
GB: I knew that to do anything musically I would need to get out of Santa Maria and get into the big cities. I went south on job hunts planning my escape from Santa Maria searching primarily for a building/repair position. I met up with Roger Giffin who had recently taken over as the sole employee and Master Builder for the Gibson West Custom Shop. Roger needed an apprentice and was waiting Gibson's approval to hire someone. Six months later I get called down to audition against six other hopefuls. Roger had each guy work a day separately and do a refret on some of the Gibson 2nds they would send him. This gave him a good "one on one day" to see how well we worked and if Roger could get along with this person for a long time. Six months later I get a call and Roger asking if I am still interested, I was packed and moved within a week. Roger became my main mentor for life and really inspired me with the detailed artistic work he did. We had bare necessity machinery and had to make all of our own templates, fixtures and specialty gizmos to pull off the wide variety of work we did. Our shop was located next to Gibson West Artist Relations in North Hollywood, CA. We naturally worked on many artist guitars and were also the local Gibson warranty shop and repaired any brand under the sun. We built about 12 to 20 guitars per year. Some guitars built from kits we would get from Gibson, others we built from scratch andwere usually things Gibson Nashville was not interested in building or had discontinued. We would build the raw guitar, ship them to Nashville where Tom Murphy would perform his magic and send them back to us for assembly.

Roger's clientele was primarily made up of pro players, touring acts, to local session players. This array of clients brought in only the best of vintage and high end gear from early Gibson 1900 to all Gibson acoustics, Mandola basses, Gibson Harp guitars, F5 mandolins and branched into Brazilian Rosewood Martins, vintage Fenders, Rickenbackers, Gretsch, Dobros, and all the modern stuff going on. At one time we had one Korina V and about 6 - '54 to '60 LP's all in for repairs to restorations belonging to Keith Richards, Jimmy Page, and various collectors or players.

1992 Gibson moved the shop into the old Burbank, CA. Tobias Bass factory where we had 7,000 sq. ft and still only 2 guys. The good thing was we had space beyond belief, spray booth, buffing wheels, offices, assembly room, wood shop, and case storage. The bad thing was we were doomed from lack of interest from Gibson Nashville. The building overhead killed us but then again we weren't allowed to hire any additional employees. The writing was on the wall although we had positions available at Gibson Nashville, but neither Roger or I was interested in relocating. I look back at my time spent with Gibson as a time of great detail learning, primarily in vintage gear.

Taking in heavy consideration where I just left I found growth and further education at the Fender Custom Shop while the GWCS was closed down roughly six months later. Where else better to go than a major icon in guitar history? John Page was the head of the Custom Shop at this time and is a man with great vision and pride with excellent people skills and he knows how to motivate and encourage others to grow. I was slowly being groomed to begin the first American 'Robben Ford Signature Series'. I worked with Robben and his tech Jeff Rivera for many years getting to know and understand what Robben likes, hears, feels and sees in his tone and guitars. I was only involved with the actual model construction for about one-year as I trained Greg Fessler to take over the position although I still catered to Robben often. Fender is best known for building Strats and Tele's. Their back orders were huge for one-off Master built guitars and they needed good builders. Jay Black "Senior Master Builder" became my second mentor in my building career. He was a very instrumental person in finding people within the shop that had building chops as well as the focus that kept each builder's guitars still perceived as Fenders. We were constantly dealing directly with the store dealers, end users, or endorsed artists and it was
very important to remember that everything we did had to be worthy of the Fender name and therefore required a very professional etiquette.

I seemed to live in the wacky world of orders where most everything had to be made by hand. As I graduated from Master Builder to Senior Master Builder I became more involved with the daily troubleshooting and training teams on short complex runs. I built a good amount of double necks and all very different from 6/12's, Bajo tenors, a Custom Tele neck thru that was a Thinline on the 12 and a solid body Floyd on the 6, Jaguars, Jazz Masters, and a hand full of 50's and 60's Jazz and P Basses. I also was very involved in the release of the C/S late 60's Big Peghead Strats, Rosewood Tele's, the Contemporary Carve Top Strats, the John Jorgenson Signature C/S Tele. There were so many good builders that we were constantly pushing each other for new ideas and it was a very exciting and inspirational time.

MH: What and when was the very first guitar built that showcased the Baker name on the headstock?
GB: I believe it was Dec '93, Serial #001, B1 25.5 scale, Tobacco Burst, Brazilian board, phat Quilt Top with 2 hums built in my partner/s garage (Gil Vasquez). I began with the 25.5 scale because no one was making a 25.5 scale LP style guitar. Ronnie Montrose swears by these monsters for their added tonal range, increased natural volume, lively harmonics overtones and
a neck pickup tone to die for. I have always thought most 24.625 scale model neck pickups were often muddy by nature, 25.5 scale models add a voice that's beautiful, clear and full.

MH: Tell us about the early days of starting Baker Guitars and when did you officially open as a company?
GB: I began taking night school while living in Riverside learning Computer Aided Drafting because I knew that by documenting all our designs we could quickly print blue prints to aid in build fixtures, guitars, electronic schematics and see problems before they happen. This would eventually play an important role in CNC machining, anything I can draw, 2 or 3 dimensionally, I can get our Haas VF-4 Vertical Mill to chop up anything from wood, plastic, shell materials to steel.

We officially opened as a business in January '97. We began in Gil's one car garage, then a year later upgraded to a two-car garage. From there we detailed out the garage attic, built a 10x12 shed on the side of the house to handle the overflow and went as far as occupying two local storage lockers before we finally uprooted and headed back to Santa Maria. Prior to moving I had brought Gil and his family up to see the Santa Maria area and if it was somewhere they would like to live. Now that they're here we can't get rid of them.

The move to Santa Maria (April '99) and getting our first shop setup (May 5th '99) was near hell. We sold our house in Riverside, cashed in the majority of my Fender 401K and let it all ride on the shop. We held the official grand opening of the shop on July 6 '99 (my birthday). The first year, there were just the three of us in a 1475 sq. ft building, throughout 2000 we hired an additional 3 people to handle the level of production to support our overhead. Then tragedy strikes and our first CNC machine we purchased became a big lemon. It was breaking down every other month and would be down for 5 weeks at a time and we had to go back to hand building. It was under warranty but a warranty is only as good as the company behind it. After 6 or 7 major breakdowns we returned the machine to the manufacturer and found our current Haas VF-4 machine which has been a jewel ever since.

Expansion set in January 2001, as we needed to bring the paint department closer to us. With the high level of perfection we surround and pride ourselves on, we needed to create an environment well suited for paint. We took on an additional 1475 sq. ft. building adjoining our current woodshop and installed 2 - 10' x 12' spray booths to allow us color in booth one and clear coats in the second.... to be continued.

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