Custom guitars sprang from curiosity
It wasn’t long after Breton Hansen began playing the guitar that he decided he would build one of his own.
After some attempts at customizing and improving the first guitar he ever bought, a low-end model, he dove straight into a custom build of his own creation.
That was nearly 20 years ago and since then Hansen has greatly improved his skills, built many custom guitars for himself and other musicians and founded his own home-based company, Breton Guitar Co.
Hansen bought his first guitar while attending high school in St. George in 1995 and after returning to the same store to ask how to build one from scratch he was referred to another dealer from whom he ordered the parts needed.
“I kind of became a music store rat there,” said Hansen, who spent his weekends at the store and was soon helping with simple tasks like restrings.
After learning basic repairs and building a lot of confidence, Hansen was taken on as a full apprentice and continued working at the store after he graduated high school.
Throughout that time he learned as much as he could about guitar construction and began experimenting with his work. Faced with similar repairs again and again in the store, Hansen soon learned how to avoid such problems when selecting parts and building his own instruments.
He took a break from custom work to focus on playing in a band and then while studying sound engineering at Utah Valley University after moving to Orem in 2001.
During that time Hansen continued picking up valuable skills from his grandfather, with whom he was staying, such as machining. He also found work at Best of Music in Orem where he worked as a repair tech, eventually becoming a Fender certified technician.
After more customers began approaching him for modifications and custom work and with some encouragement from his wife Shelby, Hansen eventually founded Breton Guitar Co.
His first commission was more of a heavy modification done to what he calls a “junk guitar,” one that was quite broken and missing plenty of parts.
Being that this work was for a paying customer and not another friend, it was quite a nerve-racking experience. But one that ended well and provided a huge boost to his confidence.
Immediately after completing that project, the bass player in his band Creature Vs asked him to build a custom bass and Hansen was happy to oblige.
With many more requests coming in, Hansen soon outgrew his workspace in a spare bedroom at home and work began on building a workshop behind his garage.
“My wife was really excited about it because I was no longer in the house making noise and dropping epoxy on the floor,” Hansen said with a laugh.
This “man cave,” as Hansen calls it, is where he spends a good deal of his spare time working on a variety of projects that hang on the walls in various stages of completion.
Even some work from his day job at Best of Music ends up coming home with him where he has more space and tools to work with. And while the more complex work is done at home, he still recognizes the great benefit of working for a big customer base in a large store such as Best of Music.
“For one, it keeps me on my repair toes. I may get a 1991 Les Paul that needs to be restored, a Hofner copy that’s half gutted, or need to do basic maintenance on things.
“I sometimes go out and buy a broken guitar, looking for specific damage, so I can fix it,” Hansen said.
His most recent custom build came about when local musician Callie Moore, of the band My Fair Fiend, brought him two pieces of Purpleheart wood roughly shaped for a guitar body. She had no specific requests and gave Hansen free reign.
“That was awesome and scary at the same time,” said Hansen, who put a project of his own on the back burner and began drawing up plans.
The Purpleheart wood proved to be quite challenging to work with. For one, it was heavy and needed to be shaped, chambered and layered with maple wood.
It also changed colors as he worked with it so at one point in the build he had patches of ugly brown showing up throughout the natural purple.
As the exotic wood was rather expensive, Hansen stressed about ruining what he had been given.
“If I screw this up how can I replace this investment?” he remembered thinking.
Over nine months the project came together nicely and after doing a good deal of homework on finishing the Purpleheart wood, (some finishes will totally change the color of the wood which would ruin the beautiful color that inspired the project in the first place), Hansen delivered the completed guitar to an ecstatic Moore.
“He had a fun time building the anticipation and surprising me,” Moore said. “I didn’t know he made maple mounts for it or put a nice Purpleheart inlay on the 12th fret. And the color when it was finished and glossy was so much more breathtaking in person.”
It is always a bittersweet moment when Hansen, the craftsman, places the finished guitar into the hands of another musician such as Moore. While he’s parting with a beautiful and functional piece of art he’s designed, shaped, assembled and perfected over several months, Hansen knows it wouldn’t be complete unless put to use by a talented musician.
“Putting it in the hands of a great musician, for me, is exciting because I’ve given them the tool to create something awesome, he said. “I kind of feel like an enabler and it’s exciting to see someone really connect with the instruments I build.”
His passion for his craft, he admits, is borderline obsessive, sometimes keeping him up late at night as he scribbles down new designs in one of several sketch books. Hansen studies and performs his work with the same excitement he had when building his very first guitar nearly two decades ago, and juggling a full schedule with work, family and numerous projects is well worth it.
“No matter what I’m doing, I’m always going to have my company. [Even] if it’s just so I can justify having really cool tools, then that works for me,” Hansen laughed.
For more information on Breton Guitar Co. visit https://www.facebook.com/Breton.Guitar.Co
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