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that into an interesting hobby. He has only been playing
84
guitar for about a year, but his love of creating
new things drove him to further pursue the craft.
“I’m better at building the guitar than playing it.
I’ve always tried to pick up on it, and my family
is very musical, but I never caught on when I was
younger,” he says. “But, my love for building keeps
me designing and making new ones.”
Warner began building guitars after reaching out
to Michael Breedlove of MGB Guitars in Tampa.
Breedlove is a distributor for guitar parts and helped
Warner as a mentor of sorts.
Breedlove liked the guitars Warner was building
and helped him get two of the guitars into the
National Blues Museum in St. Louis, Missouri, a
nonprofit that explores and preserves the historic
significance of the genre.
The first guitar of Warner’s to make it into the
museum was his “D-Day Guitar,” which he created
in honor of the 75th anniversary of D-Day and dedicated
to the U.S. Navy SEAL Underwater Demolition
Teams, which were garrisoned in Fort Pierce and
Maui. The body of the guitar is made of a silver machine
gun ammo box from the World War II era.
“I like building the tuner knobs of the guitars out
of .45 casings or the backing plates out of old coins.
But some of the pick-ups and other electrical components
I take off of old guitars or buy from MGB,”
Warner says.
Warner normally has about five to six donor guitars
lying around in his shop that he uses for parts.
Many of the guitars were given to him by friends, so
he can modify them as he pleases.
“You go by scales when you’re building these.
There’s 25 and ¼, 24 and ¾ scale. There’s bass guitars,
short-scale guitars, fretless,” he says. “So, I’m
always trying to build different ones.”
The second guitar that he got into the National
Blues Museum was a guitar made from a Humo
Cigar Box his late Uncle Joe collected. Warner built it
in honor of his life.
He also enjoys building ukuleles and has made
some for his fiancée, Michelle Anzola.
“I like to describe the sound as if Metallica moved
to Hawaii,” Warner says with a laugh.
Warner has a way of looking at something ordinary
and making it into something unique and useful
that sounds great.
“Right now, I’m working on about 10 guitars and
four ukuleles. I’m also building an upright bass
made out of a boat horn and it stands at about 4 feet
tall,” he says. “It’s pretty funky and it will be the first
bass that I’ve made.”
As if Warner did not already have enough of his
free-time accounted for, he also volunteers his craft
to help Eagle Scouts with their final projects at the
National Navy UDT-SEAL Museum in Fort Pierce.
He heads restoration and maintenance efforts on the
old boats and submarines kept at the museum.
“It’s not work if you love what you do. If I’m working
on boats every day, then it can afford me to play
with guitars and volunteer, too,” Warner says with
a smile.
Eagle Scouts Bertie Azqueta, 13, and Aidan Little, 16, work on the restoration of a
Vietnam War-era submarine. Warner volunteers at the National Navy UDT-SEAL
Museum heading local Eagle Scouts’ service projects.
Warner keeps his studio full of odds and ends and guitars donated by his friends to
use for his projects. He likes to make things unique and useful.