Custom Guitars

This page takes you through a luthier’s journey of building world class guitars for exceptional musicians

Baxendale Mossman Custom Superlative – the WB Guitar

In October of 1974 while attending the University of Kansas, I left the university and began working at Mossman Guitars in Winfield, KS. Stuart Mossman had been building his guitars for about 5 or 6 years, and by the time I left I, was the shop foreman over the finishing and final assembly/set up department of the guitar factory. I originally worked for Mossman from October of 1974 until late 1976 when I moved to Kansas City and began working for Swift Music Repair. Eventually, I left there and went to work for Gruhn Guitars, in Nashville, restoring vintage guitars. During this period I spent a lot research time studying the bracing designs of the greatest pre-war Martin, Gibson, and Larson Brothers models and came up with my proprietary tuned scalloped bracing design that I used on this Mossman Custom Superlative model guitar and all the guitars I have built since then.
I am still using a variation of this design today on my new custom guitars as well as in our new remanufactured vintage guitars that are currently a large part of our business.
After I left Gruhn Guitars in 1983 I moved back to Winfield, KS. for a while and resumed working for Stuart Mossman where I showed him my new bracing design. He then used this bracing design in the last batch of guitars he built shortly before he retired in 1985.
In August of 1985, with the help of my family, I purchased Mossman Guitars from Stuart Mossman and moved the guitar factory from Winfield, Kansas to Dallas, Texas and began building Mossman Guitars. For the next five years, from 1985-1990 I built around 250 Mossman guitars including the Mossman Custom Superlative WB guitar.
Soon after I began building Mossman guitars in Dallas, I was commissioned by the Hard Rock Cafe to build two 34 foot long guitar shaped bars. One was a Stratocaster and the other was a Les Paul. Both were ten times actual size and all the hardware such as pickups, knobs, and frets were machined from solid brass.
Around this same time I was approached and commissioned by Danny Davenport, from Warner Brothers, to build the Mossman Custom Baxendale Superlative Guitar for use by Travis Tritt in the CMTV music video of his first #1 hit song “Country Club”. My design called the “Superlative” is a thin body dreadnought with a cutaway. The very first Superlative was a guitar I built for Carl Perkins. It was a black lacquered spruce top over rosewood sides and back. This Warner Brother’s model was the second Superlative guitar I had built that same year in 1986.
The Warner Brother’s Custom Mossman Superlative is a spruce top over maple sides and back. When this guitar was first commissioned it was going to be something a lot different than what it turned out to be. But after several months of back and forth between me and Danny Davenport over the design and inlays we came up with our design. John McGowan was a local artist in Dallas at the time and he was very interested in helping with the inlay and graphic design for the guitar. In the mid-80’s there was a movement toward a 50’s retro look in the Texas music scene with fashion and music trends. Rockabilly and Blues were having a
revival. One of the things we saw from the 50’s were guitars with tooled leather covers on them. Elvis had a Martin with a tooled leather cover sewed around the body. Buddy Holly had his famous J-45 with his hand tooled leather cover.
The top design was inspired by these tooled leather covers, but we didn’t want the leather to potentially dampen the sound, so we hand painted into the top lacquer instead. This painting as well as the scrimshaw rose engraved in the pickguard, headstock, and all of the other engraving was all done by hand.
The inlay design for the fingerboard was designed by John McGowan and was cut out and inlaid by Baxendale. There are close to 1000 pieces of pearl and abalone inlaid into this guitar. The abalone top border is one continuous inlay that goes around the body, fingerboard, and the soundhole without a break which is unique to this guitar. The body is only 1.750” deep at the heel yet the guitar has a big full sound due to the advanced tuned bracing that is the hallmark of guitars built by Scott Baxendale.
The guitar case is also custom made for this guitar. We took a old mink coat purchased from a second hand store and replaced the original lining in the case with the mink fur. The outside of the case was covered in leather with additional hand tooling.
This guitar took me over 400 hours to build.

Two custom guitars played by Jason Isbell and Browan Lollar circa 2009

“Snakes”, the guitar built for Patterson Hood of the Drive-By Truckers.

The Snake holes were inspired by the artist Wes Freed who did all of the DBTs album art and posters.

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Mick Jones from the Clash

The Cooleycaster, used by Mike Cooley of the Drive-By Truckers and Booker T. Jones from Booker T. and the MGs.

Will Sexton

This is Will Sexton, his brother Charlie Sexton played with Dylan for over 20 years. When I built this in the late 80’s Will had a band called Will & The Kill back then. The later pictures are from around 2017 in Athens. Originally the guitar was built at a time when both the Floyd Rose Tremolo and EMG pickups were the latest in guitar innovations. This guitar had both of those modern features.

Will had taken this guitar to a local Austin repair tech who ultimately disappeared along with the guitar. Eventually, it ended up in a Texas pawn shop and the owner contacted me around 2006 to find out some info on the guitar and I subsequently purchased it from him for $300.

When I saw Will in Athens he had no idea I had retrieved this guitar and at that time we decided to rework it since both the EMGs and the Floyd Rose were not things either of were still using. So, I took the guitar and reworked the body by filling all the cavities for the Floyd Rose and then switched to a vintage Tele style Bigsby tremolo and used a really cool vintage Teisco pickup in the neck position as its only pickup. I also refinished the body from Sonic Blue to Cadillac Green

Custom Semi-Hollow 335 Style Guitar

Augusta Masters Golf Guitar

This guitar was built for an avid golfer who loved playing at Augusta where they have the Masters. The side port is the green with the mother of pearl inlays represengint the sane traps from the Number 12 par 3 hole. Golfers almost always recognize that the sound port is that green. The only inlay in the fingerboard is the number 12 @ the 12th fret.

Luther Dickinson and the North Mississippi All Stars and his “Canjoe”