You would be hard pressed to find anybody involved in the Sacramento music scene who hasn’t heard of Brian Chris Rogers. OK, you may not have known his name, but you have most likely seen his face on stage, on TV or heard his voice on the radio. Brian is one of the finest multi-instrumentalists out there playing with the likes of Joe Kye, The J Band, Izabella, founding member of the “Best Jazz Group” SAMMIE winner four years running Four Guys From Reno, Massive Delicious, Bob’s Child, Justin Ferren, The Nibblers, Random Abiladeeze, The Toyes, and The Coalition. He’s been on stages opening up in front of thousands in rallies for Bernie Sanders. He’s toured the country in cars, vans and buses all in the pursuit of musical exploration, camaraderie, and sharing with others what he loves, making music.
In addition to his musical collaborations, Brian is also quite the accomplished solo artist. Being the passionate soul he is, his gear gets a full workout with each show he puts on. Whether it be his looping bass wizardry or his (very) percussive acoustic guitar chops; Brian puts his instruments thru their paces.
As far as I know he only as two stringed instruments; his Pedula bass and his Breedlove acoustic. If he has others, I’ve never seen em; not in my shop, or on stage, or whilst hangin with friends. I could be wrong, whatever….
Both of these guitars have been through the ringer. I’m not sure how many times I’ve replaced the output jack of the Pedula, but I have lost count. If memory serves, he got the Pedula right at the end of our senior year in high school or soon there afterwards. Most fretted instruments need a fret dressing here, a few fret levels there. And after 20-30 years you replace the frets. Not the case for the Pedula. I think it was about two years ago (ten years into it’s life) I gave it a re-fret, and it needed it…. And as is the case with most re-frets, a new nut was needed as well, bone for this one. The only other bit that needed replacing was the E string de-tuner, one of those fancy tuners with the lever that drops the low E to a D with a flip of a switch. Those are neato.
The Breedlove was a fun one to fix up. Brian’s playing style, as I stated before, is very percussive. Lots of using the guitar as a drum, creating loops and rhythms to play on top of. But years of beating upon his guitar soon started to show. First it was a big crack on the top. Then braces were falling off the top. Not cracked braces, or loose braces. Just straight up braces falling out of his guitar! At first I just fixed the crack in the top like I always do with some small cleats glued along the top. This was before braces started to fall out. When Brian told me about the brace, it wasn’t just the brace, it my cleats too! Dude works his guitars….
What I decided to do was basically “inlay” a piece of thin spruce in between the x braces, and the side of the guitar. There was another section I added spruce to in between an ex brace, lower face brace, and the side towards the butt end of the guitar. These are the points that he slams into the most. So I figured after one failed attempt at a repair, that these areas really need some reinforcement. It’s a fine line though from reinforcement to tone sucking piece of wood. It had to be thin enough, but strong. I sanded the spruce to .027″ thick and I oriented the grain to be perpendicular to the top.
I was (and am) really happy with the result. The spruce fit really nicely and it didn’t effect the tone at all.
I don’t know if this goes without saying, but the Breedlove’s frets, yeah I’ve messed with those a lot too. And now that I think about it, I made a new bone nut and saddle for the Breedlove too. I almost forgot….
Please do yourself a favor and check out Brian’s musical world. You will be very happy you did!
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