The Sunnyvale Sun
Cover Story
Photograph by Jacqueline Ramseyer
Jeff Lee (left) and Waylon Ford, co-owners of Halo Custom Guitars, started their business with Lee's mother, Belinda, in 2000. Since then, Lee and Ford have created unique guitars, some of which depict macabre images popular with heavy metal rock bands and fans.
Guitar Men
Custom-made guitars have a touch of the macabre
By Erin Hussey
Waylon Ford and Jeff Lee, co-owners of the Cupertino-based company Halo Custom Guitars, Inc., believe that sleeping is something you do when you're dead.
"When you're young, you can afford not to sleep," says Ford, who is 30.
Ford knows a little about sleep deprivation. Not only does he design guitars, he's a family man and plays in five bands.
Lee, a 2003 Lynbrook High School graduate, is just as busy. When he is not sketching for or running Halo Guitars, he is at San Jose State University as a full-time business student. And he plays in a band.
"That's pretty much the secret to Halo's success. We just eat, drink and sleep Halo," says Lee.
Ford created Halo Guitars in 2000 with Lee's mother, Belinda. Lee was about 15 years old at the time.
The two men met while working at a microphone company. One evening, shortly before the company folded, the two were sitting around talking about what they wanted to do next.
The following day, Halo Guitars, Inc. was put into motion.
"We noticed that everyone in the guitar industry had been attacked by the green-eyed monster," says Ford. "Everyone was really greedy and were charging way too much for their guitars, so we had this dream to build guitars and bring them back with old school pricing."
The first couple of guitars Ford and Lee designed were pretty much like any other guitar available.
"When we started out, we were very basic, very simple, just like your standard norm," says Ford. "We didn't want to go too intense because when you are fresh on the market, you don't want to scare people away."
But sticking to the ordinary didn't last long.
Within the second year, Halo Guitars were becoming edgier, darker and in a league of their own.
"It's just personality," says Lee, as to why the company decided to venture toward the dark arts. "We're into it."
By 2004, Halo Guitars seemed to find its stride and today offers 15 electric guitars, five types of electric basses and a custom shop division that specializes in bringing dream guitars to reality. Each guitar, whether it's the Hellfire, Texas Renegade or the Fallen Angel, has a unique shape, body color and attitude.
"We aren't suits," Ford laughs.
"Before this haircut my hair was down to my butt and purple and black with dreadlocks. I've got tattoos and I wear combat boots, so I'm not your typical guy that wears a three-piece suitand is balding, with a little halo on his head."
The success of Halo Guitars also stems from increased popularity of the metal genre and death metal sub-genre over the past few years. With metal musicians singing about scorn, despair, death and Norse mythology, Halo Guitars are their brand of choice.
"Our strongest dealer that carries our instruments is in New York," says Ford. He estimates that about 98 percent of Halo Guitars' sales come from out of state.
"Metal used to be really big in the Bay Area. It's coming back, but it's not like it used to be."
Ford and Lee's inspiration for their guitar designs comes from a variety of places: bars, television shows or even while listening to a school lecture. Some of the guitars are created individually by Ford or Lee. But they collaborate in designing many of the guitars.
"He'll see something pinned on my wall, tear it down, take it home and start playing with it," says Ford.
All of the guitar designs are first hand-drawn with a pencil and paper. Once that's completed they are turned into digital blueprints for fabrication.
"Then at 4 o'clock in the morning I'll get a text message saying 'Hey check this out.' "
One of the custom shop-carved GVK guitars, for example, is made to look like rotting flesh. Ford attributes the inspiration of the design to watching too many CSI episodes while drinking. The Hellfire, a shiny black guitar with simple red outline was built as a dedication to a personal friend in the industry who died a couple years ago.
The Satyr is a favorite with both Lee and Ford because of its thick tone, clean sound and great balance. In fact it was finished by Ford's wife.
"I left it on the drawing table at home because I was stumped," remembers Ford. "The following day my wife had finished the drawing, and to date that is what we are using."
On average, Halo Guitars sells about 200 to 300 guitars per month in direct sales and 200 per month to dealers. That's a significant increase over the 200 they sold in the company's first year.
Some of their clients include Apiary, a San Jose-based band; the David Shankle Group; Dying Regret from San Francisco; Skin Lab, a more mainstream band that is featured on radio stations and MTV; and Bestial Devastation, a popular death metal band from Italy.
Their website, www.haloguitars.com, receives close to 10,000 hits per day.
But even with their huge success, Halo Guitars has remained committed to its original slogan: "Built by musicians, priced for musicians."
Ford says the company keeps the prices of its guitars down because, "we don't have a publicist, we don't place magazine ads, we don't do a lot of stuff that typical companies do."
The company does advertise and utlizes "street teams" of Halo guitar users and fans to keep the word alive via outlets such as MySpace. The Halo Gals, an organization of models, roller derby skaters and burlesque, fetish and sideshow performers, also do promotions in the form of calendars, concerts and billboards. This year the Gals, like the guitars, went global and can now be found in Europe.
Halo Guitars has about seven people in its Cupertino office and 55 people working in its overseas factory. A number of new projects are waiting in the wings.
"Any type of threaded or stringed instrument--banjos, violas, violins, ukuleles--is something we'd be looking to expand to," says Lee. They have already had orders for custom violins.
This January, Halo Guitars is looking to add five or six more electric guitar and basses to its series, a few acoustic versions, and custom-made ones that feature carved spider webs and snake eyes that light up.
They are also partnering with a heavy metal comic book company and will be painting some of the past cover art on the body of guitars.
Despite the blood, gore and darkness featured on Halo Guitars, the company also prides itself on having a softer side.
"We always do charities," says Ford.
Most recently, the company built a guitar for NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Budweiser that was auctioned off by a radio station to benefit the Make A Wish Foundation. It has also helped raise money for autism foundations and cancer fighting organizations.
"We also started planting trees for all of the guitars we make," says Ford. They have planted about 100 trees so far, mainly at an apple farm near San Luis Obispo.
"You get the blood, but you also get the cheer," says Ford.
For more information on Halo Guitars or to order a guitar, visit www.haloguitars.com.
