In the guitar industry, hardworking and creative individuals have long created entrepreneurial opportunities beyond instrument building—an electrical engineer might turn to amplifier and pickup design, for instance, or a wood fanatic might become a tonewood supplier. Some have found success taking an even more unexpected route. Take Chuck Erikson—better known as the Duke of Pearl, a supplier of inlay material for instrument makers (dukeofpearl.com). Erikson’s career sourcing and grinding pearl and abalone from shells isn’t what most would call a glamour gig, yet few people in the guitar business have done more to help make guitars look glamorous. Over four decades, Erikson’s commitment to quality and his customers have made him a trusted and much-appreciated character in the acoustic guitar community.
A smart, principled, and resourceful businessman (he even successfully took up gold mining in the ’80s during a guitar industry downturn), Erikson also successfully walks the fine line between tradition and technology that’s tripped up many in the acoustic guitar trade. In addition to his work with traditional inlay materials, he is also one of the inventors of Abalam, a laminate shell material that has helped to evolve the art of inlay and enable inlay work on more affordable instruments.
Along with his wife, Cheryl (known, naturally, as the Duchess of Pearl), Erikson runs his company from Grass Valley, California, where I spoke to him by phone about how he found this niche in the guitar world.
The lutherie trade has changed a lot since you leaped into the fray in the early ’60s. What’s different?
ERIKSON Well, it was a lot more casual then. Back in ’63 I was a partner in a place called House of Banjos in Denver. I moved from taking lessons to making sandwich runs for the owners to doing repairs. In 1965 I went out to California and started a company called Erika Banjos, even though I’d never made a banjo in my life. I finally got one together using some off-the-shelf inlay and a neck another guy had built, and hung around backstage at the Ash Grove until I convinced someone to order a banjo from me. At that point I had to figure out how to make the thing [laughs].
It was a very backward approach to business. I didn’t really have a vision. I just knew I didn’t want to get a job. There was a folk music boom going on, and I got a lot of feedback that a good, cheap banjo would sell really well. Of course just as I got that going, the folk boom went bust. So I moved from production instruments to doing custom or repair work on existing instruments. I stayed flexible.
You have a knack for sniffing out a good opportunity.
ERIKSON When I was building instruments, I had a hard time sourcing good materials like pearl and tortoiseshell. So when I did find good stuff, I’d buy more than I needed, and then my friends who were West Coast luthiers would come to me for the stuff. Well, that led to an opportunity to buy a shell-grinding business from a guy who was getting out of it. So for $1,200 I got his grinding machine and a whole supply of shell, and I became a more reliable supplier for myself and other luthiers. As demand increased, it took me away from working with instruments, which I didn’t necessarily like. But it was a steady income that I couldn’t turn down.
How do you stay afloat in a niche market through all the booms and busts in the instrument industry?
ERIKSON I’ve always run my business on a cash basis and stayed out of debt—even things like a mortgage or vehicles. I own my inventory. So we can take a pretty big hit and weather harder times. I’ve been through a number of up and down cycles. But people aren’t going to stop making music in hard times. If you look at Harmony and Kay and the way they took off during the Great Depression, you can see how an instrument maker can adapt and succeed by tapping into new markets.
One effect of the changing business climate you’re talking about is increased competition.
ERIKSON I’ve been through those cycles before too. I remember an instance where a few guys came around the shop with an interest in how I was processing shell. I don’t have trade secrets, so I showed them how I got my supply, how I used the machines, and all the rest. Next thing I knew, these guys were in business, trying to undercut me, and I actually lost some customers.
The temptation is to start cutting prices and try to get people back that way. But I’ve just never wanted to get into price wars. And in the long run, the sacrifices we didn’t make for the sake of undercutting the next guy—fundamental things like making a really consistently high-quality product and getting our shipments to customers on time—brought those people back. My philosophy is if you make really good stuff, and have really hot service and solid customer support, you’ll build loyalty.
Erikson working on an inlay design. You’re also very adaptive and open when it comes to embracing new technology. Your laminated shell material, Abalam, is used widely among bigger manufacturers.
ERIKSON When the market for guitars picked up again in the late ’80s, I started working with shell suppliers in Korea. But because they work more with overlay [the process of cutting out a thin piece of abalone and applying it to a larger surface] rather than inlay, their quality standards were different. And when you do overlay, you can use these paper-thin pieces of shell that break much more easily when doing inlay work.
I went over to see if I could straighten out the problems we were having getting inlay-quality shell, and they had these big canvas bins completely filled with little bundles of paper-thin shell—like 8/1,000ths of an inch. I brought some home thinking I could find something to do with it. I sent some to Larry Sifel, who ran Pearl Works, and we came up with the idea of gluing stacks of them together with water-soluble glue, cutting the stacks with a CNC machine, and separating them by soaking out the glue. From there, we went on to patent the technique and sell uncut blanks.
It’s now ubiquitous in the industry, even among smaller makers. And I really think Abalam has helped sustain the market for pearl. It works well for larger manufacturers, because even though the laminate shell costs more, a shell installer can do, say, 15 or 20 soundhole inlays per hour instead of two. That model for saving time can work for a high-end custom builder too.
Can Abalam be used to create different types of inlays than could be done before?
ERIKSON As it turns out, folks have become good at working with laminated shell in ways that are impossible with solid shell—[creating] spiderweb-like things or cutting out a luthier’s signature just as fine as you would see it on paper.
When, as a customer or builder, you open yourself up to using all types of shell material, that opens up opportunities to do something special or more personal. We cut 20 types of shell now with 33 color choices. In the old days, we’d cut green, pink, and red abalone, and green snail, out of which you’d get maybe ten shell colors.
A lot of the inlay going around right now, we could have only dreamed about doing in the old days of exclusively solid shell. When you factor in the precision of CNC and the detail you can get out of the thin laminate shell, you just have a broader palette then ever before.
