12/4/10 Doug Large plays a ragtime Irving Berlin on a Bay State Ditson at his Re-Tunes Guitar Clinic.
10/22/10 Bay State Guitars Featured in The Fretboard Journal
An article on the resurrection of Bay State guitars appears in the Fall issue (Number 19) of The Freboard Journal, written by Ken Reback. Ken visited the factory this past February and did an extensive interview. He wrote a terrific article about the Bay State instruments and what we are trying to accomplish with the resurrection of the name. Highly recommended - get your copy today!
4/13/10 Brian Nogueira performing with his custom Bay State Excelsior
2/10/10 Winter Guitar Deliveries
Bay State Guitars just delivered five instruments to Re-Tunes. Two were immediately sold to waiting buyers!
2/1/10 De-damping of all Bay State Instruments
Bay State Guitars is pleased to announce that all of the Bay State instruments shipped after February 1, 2010 have been subjected to the Tonerite® 72 hour de-damping (play-in) process. The secret behind the ToneRite® device is its ability to continually produce and efficiently transfer vibrational energy into an instrument, safely recreating and magnifying the physics that occur naturally while playing. This stimulation produces a change to the integrated components within an instrument and increases their ability to resonate together as a whole. The result is added volume and instruments that are easier to play with a sound that is more full and balanced. Not only will your instrument sound better but the notes themselves will come easier, allowing you to play more difficult passages with less fatigue.
11/26/09 The Patriot Ledger followed up the video below with an article which appeared in the November 26, 2009 newspaper:
Retired lawyer revives Bay State Guitars
GARY HIGGINS/The Patriot Ledger
Sylvan Wells of Halifax is making Bay State brand guitars, nearly 100 years after the company stopped producing instruments.
Strumming an acoustic parlor guitar was one way to liven up an evening at home in the unplugged era before radio, TV and the Internet. In many homes, the instrument was a Bay State guitar built by John C. Haynes & Co. of Boston, then one of the nation’s pre-eminent instrument manufacturers.
Nearly a century after the company exited the guitar business, a recent transplant to Massachusetts is reviving the Bay State brand. Sylvan Wells of Halifax is making custom-made Bay State guitars and selling them at a Pembroke music shop and his Web site.
“The idea was: What if Bay State had not gone out of business in 1911?” Wells said. “What if they had continued? What would they be building today?”
A 63-year-old Daytona Beach native, Wells played guitar for The Nightcrawlers, a 1960s rock band that had a brush with fame with a Top 100 single, “Little Black Egg.”
The band members, all junior college students at the time, split up after graduation, and Wells hung up his Gibson and moved on to a different stage as a trial lawyer in the 1970s. But his rock background kept luring him back to music shops where he took an interest in guitar-making.
Largely self-taught, he’s built about 300 stringed instruments over the last three decades, a hobby that he’s had more time to pursue since his retirement six years ago. He saves his most unusual designs for national gatherings of custom guitar-makers, such as the model he crafted from a 2-by-10 from Home Depot. Wells said he let his instincts as a guitarist guide his design.
“I didn’t have any training the way people always did it through the millennium,” he said. “I looked at the guitar and said, ‘How can you build this properly? What are the things I hate as a player?’” Many guitars’ necks are glued to the body, causing the instrument to warp over time from the pressure exerted by the guitarist. Repairs can cost $1,000. Wells’ guitars have a mechanical neck joint for a quick and inexpensive repair job. Frets are recessed so they don’t irritate players’ fingers.
After he and his wife moved to Massachusetts in 2007, Wells’ thoughts turned to the history of Bay State Guitars, whose models he’d seen in second-hand shops. The instruments were manufactured by John C. Haynes & Co. from 1865 until 1911. Wells determined that no contemporary company was using the name and bought the rights to the Web site baystateguitar.com.
Wells has formed an association with Richard Eriksson, a retired engineer who opened a music shop called Re-Tunes in a Pembroke strip mall this year and agreed to become the exclusive local distributor of Bay State guitars.
“They’ll sit down and play one of those Bay States and they’re fascinated with how such a small guitar can have such big sound,” Ericksson said of his clientele.
Wells is selling his custom-built models at $3,000, a price that is designed to be competitive with mainstream competitors such as Martin Guitars. One of his first customers was Donnie Herron, a member of Bob Dylan’s band.
Wells is active in the community of luthiers, the term that refers to makers of stringed instruments, lecturing on the subject since 1992. Four times a year, he teaches a 10-day, one-on-one course on guitar-making, and he will offer a free clinic at Re-Tunes on Dec. 5. He’s noticed a surge of interest in recent years, comparing it to the build-your-own-amplifier craze of the 1960s.
Wells might never have pursued the craft if it wasn’t for the admonition of an Orlando guitar repairman who said a 10-year apprenticeship was needed to build a guitar. Wells bet him $20 it didn’t, then researched books on guitar-making and bought the raw materials from a New Hampshire luthier. “It was pretty crude but it played in tune, and that $2,000 investment got me my $20 back,” he said.
Steve Adams may be reached at sadams@ledger.com.
11/25/09 Boston.com and The Patriot-Ledger newspaper interviewed Luthier Sylvan Wells for a feature article on the revival of the Bay State guitar line shown above. In addition to the news article they also videoed Sylvan talking about the new line of Bay State Guitars. The video is featured below:
08/10/09 - Bay State is pleased to announce that Re-Tunes, 808 Washington Street, Pembroke, MA, 781-826-3632, is the exclusive dealer for the Bay State line of instruments in New England. Re-Tunes, although a relatively new retailer, has come to the business with an entirely new philosophy. Dick and Steve Eriksson, the owners, believe there is a real need for a store that handles higher end instruments for professional players. To that end, their store is stocked with very nice professional grade instruments. Bay State is proud to be a part of this endeavor! If you live in the New England area you need to visit the store! If you do not live in the area visit the store on the web at re-tunes.net.
