Dan Lashbrook, 76 year-old master guitar modifier and set-up wizard, passed away suddenly on June 19 at his home in North Carolina. A self-proclaimed “guitar doc,” he spent almost four decades focused on improving the volume and tone of guitars and mandolins in groundbreaking, and sometimes controversial ways.
Born April 10, 1949 in Michigan, Dan married Wanda Corey in 1970 in Waterford, MI. A daughter, Amanda, was born later that year, and he relocated his young family to Eagle River, Alaska. The couple divorced the following year and Dan enlisted in the Army. After his service, he returned to Alaska.
Lashbrook started a job with Down Home Guitars in 1985. His desire was “to get a guitar to perform at banjo volume.” He made it his life work, improving volume and tone on acoustic instruments.
His daughter, Amanda Lashbrook-Hoggard, shared…
“He enjoyed hunting, fishing, and playing guitar!
My dad lived in Denver, Colorado for a short time in the late ’80s to the early ’90s; however, he didn’t enjoy his time there and eventually moved to Asheville, NC. Sometime around here I guess is when he started hot rodding guitars. While living in Asheville, he met Shirley Bryant and the two moved back to Shirley’s hometown of Marshall, NC. In Shirley, he found happiness and the two remained together until her passing in 2007.
He continued his work on guitars, and in early 2025 had just started talking about retirement once he finished ‘these last three guitars.’ With one of those guitars boxed and waiting for the FedEx pick-up, one in the workshop just getting started, and the third somewhere in the middle of the process, he went peacefully while napping on the sofa with his faithful furry friend, Ellie, at his side.”
Guitar guru, Bryan Sutton, shared memories of Dan Lashbrook.
“He came into my life at a time when I was a young teenager, and starting to really think about making a living playing guitar and focusing on the guitar. He brought such a passion for the instrument, in the playing and the sound in the set-up. It got me thinking about a lot of things that I continue to think about today as far as making the guitar sound as good as it can, even with some unconventional kind of ways of doing things.
We always had interesting conversations about players, and sound, and instruments, and just really getting deep inside the art and the craft of bluegrass guitar playing. I always think about him when I am playing a new guitar or trying to assess an old guitar. A lot of those thoughts for me were established in conversations with him about what was really important when it came to your playing and your sound. I rely a great deal on his philosophies.
When Dan moved into the Asheville area, he wasn’t just a guitar modifier. He became very much a part of the music community, playing in jams and making friends with local pickers.”
Dan was featured in the 1999 January/February issue of Flatpicking Guitar Magazine in an article written by Kenny and Amanda Smith. Quoting from their article, “…Many pickers start to look at making modifications to the guitar itself. This is the world where Dan Lashbrook lives…He has become quite famous for his unique and somewhat unorthodox methods of ‘hot rodding’ guitars.”
Kenny Smith shared his relationship with Lashbrook.
“I met Dan Lashbrook at one of the early Merle Watson festivals. This would have been around 1991. I noticed his guitar was modified a lot. It was a D-21 Martin and it sounded amazing! I started asking him questions about all the modifications on his guitar, and why it sounded so good.
I learned from that conversation Dan had moved from Alaska to Asheville, North Carolina. Dan also told me he used fossil ivory that came from a glacier in Alaska. He used this fossil ivory for the nut, saddle, and bridge pins. I was blown away at how this material sounded, and by Dan’s workmanship. It was unlike anything I had seen before. From that day, I started buying fossil ivory from Dan, and taking notes of anytime we would talk on the phone.
He helped me understand how to get the most sound out of a guitar, and his theories on how to take it to a new level. He was the kind of guy that was always thinking outside of the box to get the most sound out of a guitar. He would always have some new angle he was working on to maximize the tone and volume of the instrument.
My very first really good guitar was a 1993 Collings D-1 that Dan had owned and modified. It had every trick in the book and some of the most beautiful fossil ivory I’d ever seen. That guitar inspired me and allowed me to play at a much higher level than I had ever played.
Dan had a gift of reworking an ordinary guitar and making it extraordinary. Nothing was more satisfying to Dan than to take a guitar nobody wanted and make it into something that would absolutely sound as good as an instrument five times its worth!”
Lawrence Dillingham of Asheville assisted Lashbrook with his guitar work.
“He was a super nice guy, a dear friend, and an acoustical engineer. We’ve been pretty good friends for many years. I used to work for him. He’d work on my guitars and I’d go over and help him work on guitars.
Having lived in Michigan, he knew about hot rod cars. He knew how heads worked on motors. That’s where he got the idea about hot rodding guitars, figuring out that you could make them better than they were from the factory. He could really do it, too, with the finest materials.
He started experimenting, shaving braces for people. He studied the insides of old Martin guitars, and figured out that they had scalloped braces and learned how to do that. He’d take the bridge plate out and put a small bridge plate in them. He would take out popsicle bracing. He would make the bridges go all the way through like the old long slots.
He would compensate a saddle with a dremel tool and sharpen it to play exactly in tune. He could make a guitar play more in tune than anybody. He made custom bridges out of fossil ivory and manatee bone. Stuff that was rare materials. He had a miniature lathe that he would turn that stuff down by hand, drill a hole, and put an abalone dot. He was a master at doing all that stuff.
He would get blanks from the Indians that lived up in Alaska. According to him, it was legal for them to sell. People couldn’t just go there and get them, but the Indians could.
He also invented scalloping the top of the fingerboard of the guitar where it would vibrate better. He knew the upper end of the guitar couldn’t vibrate as good with the extra wood from the fingerboard. He also invented a tone bar to go inside the guitar like Stradivarius had done. It was like a sound post that went from side to side. He didn’t really ever want me to tell nobody about. It was like his secret weapon. After he invented that he stopped cutting out so much bracing after that.
He was an amazing person. He really knew what he was doing. He could make a guitar sound better than anybody, and play in tune better than anybody that I ever knew. He could get the sound out of them and that’s the main thing. He was a pretty neat guy.”
Gary Burnette of Bee-3 Vintage Guitars in Asheville validated Lashbrook’s work.
“He was a good friend. I’ve had him work on my guitars over the years, and he always did a good job. He loved what he was doing. He really enjoyed trying to improve guitars. He loved to see the smiles on people’s faces when they would hear their guitars come alive. And he always continued trying to learn. Dan’s going to be missed. I miss him.
We used to do music together years ago, picking, playing, and singing. We played together many times. We were jamming buddies and he loved to talk guitars. He would talk about his theories to produce sound in instruments, and from what I could gather, it really worked.”
Burnette recognized Lashbrook’s handiwork.
“You can tell the bridgework from the saddles and the bridge pins that he would make for guitars, and the kinds of nuts that he would put on the guitars. They were high quality, much better than would come from the factory.
I have guitars that he worked on over 20 years ago and everything is holding up great. He helped the sound of them. You would tell him what you wanted and that’s what he gave you.”
Grammy award-winning guitarist, Chris Sharp, related some personal history.
“I’ve known Dan since the ’90s when he first moved to Woodfin, NC, right outside of Asheville. I found out that he was setting up guitars in a way that was very novel. He was using fossilized ivory that came from Alaska which is widely used now in guitar set-ups. As far as I know, he’s the guy that brought it here.
He became the only guy that I ever took my guitars to have them set up whenever possible and any new guitar I would take to him immediately. I bought several guitars from him, including a D-16 (used in the O Brother, Where Art Thou sound track and his YouTube lessons). It’s on every record I did.
It was the very first guitar that I ever bought. It’s a funny story. We had played in jam sessions where I mostly played fiddle. I was looking at some Gibson guitars that a guy had. Dan found out about it and he called and said, ‘Don’t buy anything until you see this guitar I have first.’ So I went to his house and he had this 1989 D-16. I ended up buying it because it did sound amazing. I still have it. It is my favorite guitar for playing rhythm.
He’s had his hands on every instrument that I am involved with until now. He knew how to get tone out of guitars unlike anybody I’ve ever met. He wasn’t afraid to do things to guitars to get the tone out of them. That made him controversial. He set up my D-21, and that was the first video we made.
Dan has a lot of before and after videos on YouTube. Those videos came about because I needed to get my guitar set up, and he was trying to increase his footprint. So I made a trade with him. I created the YouTube channel and set up very scientific-type conditions where the microphones were placed exactly. We’d put tape on the floor and set up everything identically for the before and after videos. It was rigorously and methodically done to demonstrate what he could do to an instrument. He was very stoic and went into a very in-depth explanation of exactly what he did. It gives you an insight into his thinking process. We swapped out a series of those for a couple of set-ups he did for me.
Dan threw caution to the wind in favor of tone. You either loved what he did or you absolutely hated it. I’m in the camp of I loved what he did. I don’t care what the instrument is worth. I care what it does for me. For me, instruments are tools. I think Dan really understood that.”
Sharp is in discussion with Martin about the creation of a guitar based on Lashbrook’s designs.
“I sent pictures of my guitars (to Martin) and described exactly what I wanted. Those are modifications that he’s the only person I am aware of that makes. With his specs involved, the guitars would become something more than they are.”
Another North Carolina friend, Larry Hall, stated…
“Dan was absolutely incredible, with a genius mind. I had a ’56 D-18 that I found that had been in a doghouse for two years. It was in pieces and he put it together. It has been a monster. We became really good friends to the point that he would call me on a Friday night at 9:00 and say, ‘Larry, you just got to come over. I just got Lester’s old D-18 in. You’ve got to hear this thing!’ He played very well equally on guitar and mandolin. He was a good picker.”
Tim Stafford expressed his condolences.
“Dan had a real talent at getting sound out of just about any guitar. He had a system, and once he hot-rodded an old Guild guitar that sounded so good, I recorded several things with it. He will be missed.”
Jake Veneble of Colorado was another satisfied customer and friend. They talked often on the phone.
“Over the years, I have been blessed to call Dan Lashbrook a friend. His dad owned a ‘bluegrass bar’ in Michigan when he was a kid in the 1950s. He told many stories about seeing his dad play a Martin, and that being what made him want to be a musician.
I met Dan in 2013. A Martin Golden Era D-18 guitar I was interested in had been modified, and previously owned by him. I reached out directly to hear more about what had been changed. I wasn’t sure what changes needed to be made to a Martin. Shortly after acquiring the guitar, every other guitar my dad and uncles owned had received similar modifications – the tone and volume was undeniable. I am fortunate to own three previously Lashbrook-owned instruments: two Martins and a 1907 Gibson mandolin.
Dan’s main setup for a guitar involved installing Dunlop 6000 frets. He claimed these were the same frets Stevie Ray Vaughn as well as Brad Paisley uses in electric guitars. With the jumbo frets, you get a much taller nut and saddle. This makes the angle of the strings steeper thus increasing downward pressure on the nut and saddle.
Dan had a brilliant mathematical mind. He would get a guitar playing perfectly in phase at every fret. Some other modifications he had available if clients desired were decreasing height of the tuner post – again, this steepens the angle of the string from the nut. He would find ways to lighten tuners as well. [He was a] big fan of Waverlys as a starting point. Inside modifications included side reinforcements (mahogany and ebony strips to connect the back and front of guitar), as well as Dan’s guitar version of the sound post he took from violin design. It runs perpendicular to the finger board and floats just under and behind the bridge – attaching to the sides of the guitar.
One of the coolest modifications I saw Dan do was take many of the Lloyd Loar improvements to the mandolin and retrofit them to his 1907 F2 Gibson three-point mandolin. It may be the only 1907 Gibson mandolin with a floating fingerboard on the planet!
He was never stuck in his ways, always open minded and innovative. Perhaps more impressive was his willingness to share his ideas.
His guitar playing was very good as well, winning the Alaskan state flatpicking contest in the 1980s. He told me the best day of his life musically was when he played Ruins of Richmond on guitar for Norman Blake during a break at a Kaufman camp, and Norman said he wished he played it that well. He told Norman he would remember that as the best compliment until the day he passed.”
Dan’s daughter, Amanda, concluded, “All I know is he loved what he did, and he really loved making players fall in love with their guitars!”
A memorial service will be held at a future date.
R.I.P., Dan Lashbrook.
