Saunders

[RichardUpland]

Hi Richard,
I just got back online here at TalkBass and caught up with this thread. Thanks for you recollections of John. The times I would visit him, he was always alone -- i.e. no one else at the house -- but he did talk about people he knew. I don't remember him mentioning you specifically, but he also may never have mentioned me to you. Like you, I never got to see him actually working on the body, nor actually painting -- but I think that was because he was very safety conscious -- and also the workspace for those tasks was limited. He did show me his circuit boards and we talked about refinements, which is why I knew a lot about them.

I don't get to Upland itself much, but I have a few friends near there still. So maybe I will drive by his house some time and take a picture to post. (But I'm sure Zillow or Google Maps has those online too.)
Mark

You are welcome, and like you, when I was there, there was no one at the house as far as I knew, and other than the few times I mentioned, I don't remember him talking about anyone else, he seemed pretty strict about having me get my a## to work and not wasting time LOL. I don't remember how he and I got on the subject of the weed that I mentioned in my story, it was a long time ago and my memory has always been a little iffy, and it is not getting any better with age LOL. Since you knew him well, did he actually have any boobie traps in his back yard or was he just keeping me scared to stay away from his stash ? LOL. So, anyways, it is cool to see interest in a guy and his guitars that I barely knew for a short time back then. I don't play bass, it was just that sanding job in the news paper that I replied to way back then as a kid but It is kind of cool that I had a small part in it, but who really knows how many I prepped/sanded and how many he did himself, or how many other people he hired back then to do the same thing. I don't even remember how I started posting about this 12 years ago in 2013 on Harmony Central, LOL, I was probably sitting around one day and wondering if his guitars ever became famous and I did a Google search and ran across that Harmony Central post if I had to guess. OK, I am rambling now.... Have a great day -Richard

 

[JIO]

Just for the heck of it, and so those interested don't have to jump to another website I thought I would paste a copy of my original post at HarmonyCentral from back in 2013 right here....

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Posted August 1, 2013

I see this question/message is kind of old, I hope someone is around to read it still. I may have some info on the Saunders Guitar Builder you are asking about. I hope it is of some use...

This is going to be a kind of story about an almost forgoten part of my life (only because I am getting old and I have had 2 strokes and 1 heart attack thus far).

My name is Richard and I used to live in Upland California back in the 1980's. I don't recall the exact year but I am 100% that it had to be no earlier than1982 and no later than1984 and I was between the ages of 17-19.

I responded to an ad in the local paper for a part time job. The job was working part time for about 7 dollars an hour, which was great for my age and that year, and it was cash. I only worked a few evenings a week, but it was great part time money for me.

The job was working for a man named "John Saunders" he also lived in Upland in a small neighborhood just west of 8th street & Euclid Ave. I don't know the address and I am not 100% sure if I could pick the correct house or street anymore, but it is a possibility. If I ever get that way again. I currently live about 60 miles from Upland.

The job was sanding guitar bodies that John said he made himself. (I specifically wrote "said he made himself" because I never saw john make anything.) Don't get me wrong, I am NOT calling him a liar, he was just very secretive most of the time... Not all the time... haha, but most of the time. There were many times I asked him information about his guitars and he was very firm about never answering any of them. I guess you just had to be there. It was like he was working on a secret government project.

There were times I had asked if I could watch him cut them out, or paint them, or even assemble them, and he would never let me watch anything. I had to show up at a very specific time in the evenings. It was almost never the same time or same days of the week. I would never know when I was working again until I was leaving, then he would tell me when to show up again...

When I would show up, there would be guitar bodies hanging up in his garage ready for me to sand. He was Very Very particular about the sanding process. Some of the time the bodies were raw wood, other times they were painted. I very rarely ever saw a neck, and never saw any of the other hardware. I am guessing it was in the house. I am using the word "sand" loosely. What I mean by sand is... If the bodies were raw wood and rough I actually had to sand them from coarse to fine and have them ready for paint. If they were painted already, I had to use different grades of "scotch brite" pads on them, to get them ready for another coat of paint. All sanding was done by hand, and even at only 17 or so years old, I remember how beautiful and pefectly smooth his paint was. I remember how proud he was to have the "Saunders" name for his guitars.

At the time he seemed like a very strange guy, He would rush me to the garage and then disappear into his house, only coming out to check on my process once in a while. Now that I am older, I still think he was a bit strange, but so am I, and if he ever got rich, then he would be Eccentric right?

I worked with him for only a few months probably on about 20 or so guitars, both Bass and 6 string. John did tell me that he was a Bass player, but I never heard him play. I only worked with him those few months because I had a job opportunity in Colorado with my brother and I moved there.

Just before I moved, there was the one and only time John was open with me, I think it was when I told him I smoke weed. We sat down and smoked a joint and he told me some crazy stories about a trap in his back yard he made with a 2x4 and nails and how he had found it one day, it had been tripped and he said it was covered in blood. He then explained that it was to protect his Pot Plants... Later that week, he gave me a whole plant that had been cut and dried and it filled an entire grocery bag. He never showed me his actual plants or growing area or the trap, but I can promise you (and so can my friends) that I did have a grocery bad full of pot... We smoked it all.... LOL We had so much, we actually would use a small BBQ in the middle of the room, pile it up and let it burn, and then smolder, and everyone in the room would be wasted... I know someone in Upland still remembers those few days... I don't know who though... I don't remember who was there... HAHAHA

This was about 1982 or so, I was about 18, and he looked to be about 40. When he was telling me about the 2x4 trap, he said it was similar to traps he made in the war, so I am guessing Vietnam. I was young, his age could have been anywhere from 35-50. But I never tried goind in his backyard that's for sure!

I only lasted 6 months is Colorado and then I came back to Upland. So I went back to my old day job, and I stopped by John's to see if I could work on Guitars again. He said he had quit building guitars and I remember he was very very excited, even exstatic about some type of electronic device he created that he said was going to make him RICH. He even invited me in to show it to me. I remember not having a clue as to what it was. He tried explaining it to me, but I still didn't get what it was. I don't think it had anything to do with guitars or music.

I remember being confused about how someone so particular about his guitar building could just walk away from it. But that is what he did as far as I know.

I asked him for some more pot, but he didn't give me any... LOL

That was the last time I ever saw or talked to John Saunders.

If you do the math based on my assumption of his age at that time, he could be anywhere between 65 and 80 years old now

I tried to look up any John Saunders with guitars on the web today, I didn't find John, bit I did find a "Paul" Saunders in Canada that builds custom guitars.. His website says he has been making guitars since 1979... Maybe it is him and he moved to Canada... Maybe my memory has faded and his name was Paul, and not John. I really think it was John, but anyways, you can check out this guys site and ask him if he ever lived in Upland California. By the way, this site is almost all acoustic guitars and all the ones I worked on back in the 80's were solid body electric. Sorry, after all these 30 years I don't remember what he looked like enough to tell if this is him or not.

Link Removed UPDATE: I called this guy, it is NOT him.

I hope this information has helped someone in some way to find Saunders Guitars from the early 80's in California. If not, I hope it was at least entertaining.

Final words: Anyone that really wants to find the Saunders that built the custom guitars back in the early 80's in California should have enough info from my post to find him. There are so many websites that you can pay a few bucks and they give you anyones personal history. From my post you can guess his age and address enough to find him on one of those sites. He lived just west of 8th street and Euclid Avenue in the city of Upland California, 91786 in 1982. If I ever drive down to that area again I will drive thru that neighborhood and try to remember the house and get the address, and then I will update this post. Until then, Good Luck

UPDATED......

UPDATED......

I figured out more info searching on the web:

John H. Saunders

351 Orchard Ln

Upland, CA 91786 ?

worked at these places:

Oxford International Proteus Biomed

Advanced Technical Aerojet

DRS Sensors

Technipower Hewlett Packard

Abbott Labs

Ditech Networks

Epri

Glentek

Swr Engineering

Tyco Electronics

Chaffey High School

Tobias Guitars

Aerojet Azusa CA

Aerojet ElectroSystems

Hughes Aircraft

This has to be the guy..... although I doubt he still lives at that address....

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Wow - thanks for this back-story Richard. Eccentric people are the most interesting, and being an artist/musician I can attest to knowing many people in that category. Considering his resume, he sounds like sort of a brainiac who was also some sort of musician (who played bass) - maybe he was in an undercover band!

I recently did another face-lift on my Saundersbird -

 

[RichardUpland]

Wow - thanks for this back-story Richard. Eccentric people are the most interesting, and being an artist/musician I can attest to knowing many people in that category. Considering his resume, he sounds like sort of a brainiac who was also some sort of musician (who played bass) - maybe he was in an undercover band!

I recently did another face-lift on my Saundersbird -

View attachment 7342900 View attachment 7342901

Like I said, I am not a bass player, but I do fiddle with regular guitars, and that Bird of yours is Beautiful.

 

[JIO]

...and just for the record..,(hey, it's my thread etc... ) my own relationship with the term "weird" vs "eccentric" goes something like this - artists, good or bad, famous or unknown... are all 100% eccentric. You can bank on that. "Weird" is used in two ways; as an endearing tease with family & friends.., and unfortunately what we are currently dealing with in our society. (let's leave it at that, tb rules etc) After learning John Sanders background - he is 100% an eccentric. Note that that has nothing to do with money. Innovator Ken Parker just passed away and died in debt! He too was eccentric, for him in that he did everything he did at 11. That's not weird - that is a man who knows his goals and stops short of nothing to achieve those goals.

Weird is used a lot in daly life and comedy. (light-fun) The term eccentric gets bastardized... but I have to stop there as I have strong feelings about 'why", and the weight of it's designation. (I could write a book about "eccentric")

 

[RichardUpland]

...and just for the record..,(hey, it's my thread etc... ) my own relationship with the term "weird" vs "eccentric" goes something like this - artists, good or bad, famous or unknown... are all 100% eccentric. You can bank on that. "Weird" is used in two ways; as an endearing tease with family & friends.., and unfortunately what we are currently dealing with in our society. (let's leave it at that, tb rules etc) After learning John Sanders background - he is 100% an eccentric. Note that that has nothing to do with money. Innovator Ken Parker just passed away and died in debt! He too was eccentric, for him in that he did everything he did at 11. That's not weird - that is a man who knows his goals and stops short of nothing to achieve those goals.

Weird is used a lot in daly life and comedy. (light-fun) The term eccentric gets bastardized... but I have to stop there as I have strong feelings about 'why", and the weight of it's designation. (I could write a book about "eccentric")

LOL

 

[JIO]

Like I said, I am not a bass player, but I do fiddle with regular guitars, and that Bird of yours is Beautiful.

Thanks! I design/make custom basses but the Saundersbird is in my personal collection. I created it years ago starting with a used Epi T-bird body. I wanted a graphite neck for it but bought the NOS Saunders instead. It has Wilkinson hum-buckers and I made it string-thru using the Hipshot Supertone aluminum bridge. It originally had a generic 9v pre, but I later loaded an early '90s Fender/Kubicki 9v pre and did some "lightening". (chambering...)

I recorded using it - it kicks serious ass.

 

[bikeplate]

Ive got a Saunders neck. Brand new condition. Frets installed and gloss finish. Never drilled for tuners. I was told Jackson/Charvel made them for him. If u look it over it looks very much like a Charvel early 80s neck. 1 5/8 nut. Forgot I had it till I read this thread. Plan on building a bass around it but every body Ive matched it to doesnt quite fit. Fender spec neck pockets are too wide

 

[JIO]

Ive got a Saunders neck. Brand new condition. Frets installed and gloss finish. Never drilled for tuners. I was told Jackson/Charvel made them for him. If u look it over it looks very much like a Charvel early 80s neck. 1 5/8 nut. Forgot I had it till I read this thread. Plan on building a bass around it but every body Ive matched it to doesnt quite fit. Fender spec neck pockets are too wide

Awesome - great quality those necks. And you're an early tb member! (2001!) Post a pic, I want to see if it has crazy grain pattern like mine. First time I've heard of a Jackson/Charvel connection, only a FCS connection - either is possible and way pre internet so rumors were the norm then. A couple posters on this thread worked for him but expressed that he was a secretive guy.

 

[bikeplate]

Here it is. I sanded the gloss off the face of the headstock years back. Nevr drilled for tuners or heel drilled for installing. And no nut! Nice piece but no crazy figure in the maple

 

[JIO]

Here it is. I sanded the gloss off the face of the headstock years back. Nevr drilled for tuners or heel drilled for installing. And no nut! Nice piece but no crazy figure in the maple

Mine wasn't drilled for neck-screws but the hs post holes were drilled. Don't recall any numbers stamped on the heel of mine.

 

[bikeplate]

What brand and model tuners did u use on yours?

 

[JIO]

What brand and model tuners did u use on yours?

They are late '80s Fender small-plate clovers. You can find new ones like them on eBay. Fender or Gotoh.

 

[Mark34]

Last rooms I saw John was in '81, more than forty years ago. If I remember, I had some cheap, small format film cartridge camera. I wasn't into creating photo album that (nor now). So if I have any pictures, it will be a process of digging through prints from that time. (Not likely to happen any time soon -- but if I do, I'll post them.)

I do not own a bass today. I have an acoustic and a hollow body electric guitar. I found this site because I was interested in finding one of John's basses. It might be a long (and perhaps futile) hunt. Thanks for explanation of I and II. I will keep that in mind as I look for an alternative in the meantime.

Well, I finally found some pictures of John in his home workshop and paint booth....

 

[JIO]

Well, I finally found some pictures of John in his home workshop and paint booth....

Awesome Mark! Thanks for posting - the name now has a face... at least part of a face!

 

[Mark34]

I did some touch-up to the first picture. John is in the back of the garage/workshop, just behind some nearly finished bass guitars. On the right side, there are necks and bodies waiting to be painted. His "paint booth" is behind him to the left.