Guitar Guru

Story by Vickie McIntyre
Photography by Rob Kaufman

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While many view guitars as musical instruments, Bluffton luthier Brooks Cobb sees them as works of art.

Starting with a block of wood — anything from walnut to mahogany or maple — Cobb cuts and carves, whittles and sands, until his ¼-inch finely finessed fronts, backs and sides fit together “like a complicated box.”

And that’s only the beginning of the labor-intensive process of building a custom guitar.

“There are probably 150 hours on the build and finish,” he says of his unique hollow-body electric guitars that range in price from $9,000 to $15,000 if you prefer expensive wood like Hawaiian Koa.

His decision to become a luthier was a journey. So, too, was his transition to the Lowcountry.

“We started coming here in ’76 when I was like 1 (year old). My grandparents lived out on Sea Pines, and we spent our summers here,” Cobb recalls, detailing how his mom, sister, aunt and cousins used the Lowcountry as common ground to reunite each year.

The urge to move back to the area came after working eight years in Wisconsin and a couple of years in Alaska where Cobb trained and raced sled dogs during the winter, then switched to carpentry and guitar building over the summer.

“Alaska was a long way away,” he says about his move to Bluffton where his parents, as well as his sister and her family, now reside. “I saw them once a year for a week, and now I see them once a week for Sunday dinners together.”

His fascination with guitars stretches back to sixth-grade shop class at St. Edmund’s Academy in Pittsburgh, where he attended school from third to eighth grade. Under the direction of “Dr. J,” who according to Cobb was “cool and looked like a lumberjack with a beard,” he learned how to use hand tools and got an introduction to guitars at the same time.

“We had like 15 minutes before he’d show up for class, and he allowed us to play his guitar, which was a little four-string parlor guitar that he had crafted up,” Cobb recounts. “We learned to play a couple of quintessential sixth-grader, ‘80s songs like “Stairway to Heaven” and “Smoke on the Water.””

Cobb admits his playing was terrible at first because “his hands just didn’t get it,” but he loved the instrument and was intrigued that his teacher had built one from scrap wood.

By the time college rolled around, Cobb played guitar well enough that he toyed with majoring in music while attending Hobart College but changed his major to architecture and design when he realized he had little interest in classes like music theory and piano.

At heart he was an artist who loved to draw, paint, and create, especially with wood.

Thanks to professors who allowed him to design independent study courses that focused on woodworking and a realization that he couldn’t afford the guitar that he really wanted, Cobb built his first guitar for college credits, thus awakening a passion that would shape his life.

“I spent a summer in Burlington, Vermont, and reached out to a luthier who wasn’t expecting me, but who answered the 99 questions I had,” says Cobb. “It was a life-changing afternoon.”

What differentiates Cobb from giant manufacturers like Gibson and Fender?

“Custom guitars have more sound variation,” said Cobb, who operates Brooks Cobb Guitars from his shop in Bluffton. “I could build five with woods from the same tree and they’d all sound different because it’s done by hand.”

He also believes in using modern technology to correct the typical faults of manufactured guitars. While a Gibson Les Paul will eventually have problems at a certain juncture in the neck, Cobb corrects that defect by changing the direction of the grain of wood. He also adds carbon fiber alongside the truss rod which helps resist warping.

“Heirloom instruments are built to last,” he affirms, while acknowledging that his personal color aesthetics appear in the final stages of staining and sanding, a process that is repeated over and over until the instrument shines. “When it all comes together, it gives me a sense of accomplishment and inspiration for the next one.”

Adam Stasik, a musician from Ohio and band member of Central Flow, which plays up and down the East Coast, bought one of Cobb’s guitars a few years ago and has this to say: “It’s the best guitar I’ve ever played. Every time I pick it up it sounds so beautiful, even acoustically.”

Cobb, also well-known for his fret work, repairs electric and acoustic guitars and conducts classes on guitar building at his garage-like studio that’s hidden on a back road in Old Town.

His workspace – filled with posters of Led Zeppelin, Iron Maiden and Megadeth as well as an assortment of pirate flags (throwbacks to his Hilton Head summers when he felt like a character from Treasure Island) – is as unique as he is.

“It’s just play,” he laughs. “I like to think I’m in art school again, having fun and learning like I did back then.”

He’s equally lighthearted about selling his guitars.

“There’s the guys who act like you’re being fitted for a suit and then there’s the ones who invite you for a beer. I’m definitely the latter,” he grins.

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