Fairbanks guitars are built in Connecticut By Dale Johnson and they seek to catch the essence of the legendary American guitars of the 1920's and 1930's.  Dale has worked with noted Gibson and Larson Brothers afficianados and developed instruments that are very close in voice to the originals putting to bed the myth that age accounts for the bulk of the reason that these old, highly collectable guitars sound the way they sound. Age in guitars is something we at The Podium have long thought was overrated and we think this has been proved in working closely with builders like Martin starting with The Podium 50th Anniversity guitars, as well as with John Walker, Kevin Kopp, Charlie Hoffman and now with Dale Johnson of Fairbanks Guitars and that we have achieved excellent and counterintuitive results.

So how does this work? The Fairbanks f-30, their version of the 1934 Gibson Jumbo or "J" model was in fact dutifully copied from Dakota Dave Hull's original. Every inch of the top, every brace, every angle and virtually every dimension of every part was "blueprinted" to achieve a complete understanding of exactly what the old masters at Gibson did (at least with this instrument) and why and built like the originals with  animal hide glue.

The F-35 Fairbanks was developed in the same way using Paul Geremia's original J-35. Then these guitars were built, critiqued by Dave, Paul and The Podium and fine tuned to get them as close as possible to the originals.  The result is what we are offering below.

The result was a couple of great instruments despite the confusion resulting from Fairbanks listening to the other two dummies....just kidding, Paul.