The FJ Visits: Earnest Instruments

October 21st, 2006

When Jason and I went to the Newport Guitar Festival a while ago, we took some time to visit a few New England luthiers. One of them was Joel Eckhaus, who builds ukes, tenor guitars, mandolins and steel guitars under the Earnest Instruments brand. Along with being a good builder, Joel is a fine player (he took lessons from ukulele legend Roy Smeck) and can play uke, mandolin and tenor guitar. That’s Joel on the left playing an old Epiphone that was the inspiration for his own Veronica model. The middle photo shows a unique Bourgeois cello guitar that Joel built while he was working there. The steel guitar on the right is loosely based on the old Rickenbacker Bakelite model, but Joel’s is made of wood.

The shots below are from Joel’s workshop. One of my favorite Earnest instruments is the Ceegar Box uke. As you can see in the second photo on the right, Joel has a good stock of “bodies” ready to go. I love poking around builder’s workshops because they always have such interesting piles of junk sitting around. Check out the pile of old horns in the photo on the photo in the bottom row. I e-mailed Joel about them and he said, “I’ve actually been playing around with some of those broken horns that I have in the box. Mark Tipton, who plays trumpet on my CD, came over and we played around with the horns for quite a while…ducktaping various combinations of horns, and slides, and tubes together. We got some interested sounds and shapes, almost like brass vivi-section or something. Mark actually played a solo on a valveless ductape-o-phonium tonight at a jam session.” As you can see in the last photo, a horn bell also makes a nice hat. Oh, and the CD Joel is referring to is Tarnished Reputation by Ukulele Eck and the Fabulous Lacklusters. I’m sure if you contact him, he’ll be happy to sell you one. I got to hear it while I was there and even though it doesn’t have, or maybe because it doesn’t have any valveless ductape-o-phonium on it, I thought it was really good.-MJS

Entry Filed under: Tenor Guitar, Ukulele, Guitar, Steel Guitar