Colorado Guitar Show & Custom Luthier Expo 2023

Duane M. Evarts at the ribbon cutting ceremony of the very first Douglas County Guitar Show, conducted on Saturday, July 27th 2013, at the Lutheran High School in Parker, CO

HowWeGotHere!

By Duane M Evarts - Organizer, Colorado Guitar Show & Custom Luthier Expo

In August of 2012, I stopped at a garage sale near my house while on the way to work. As I was browsing, a sweet lady asked... “Do you see anything you like, sonny?” I kindly replied that I often stop at garage sales looking for guitars, amps and other music related items, and that it didn’t look like she had what I would like or could use.

Colorado only to find there hadn’t been any guitar shows in over a decade. So I thought… why not start some sort of local “musician’s swap meet”; then I could display these guitars and share Ted McCarty’s story.

Finally, I found a venue at the Lutheran High School in Parker, CO and proceeded to market what I called the “Douglas County Guitar Show”.

She then said... “I have some guitars in my basement, would you like to see them?” At this point all I could imagine was a couple of cheap guitars that she tried to give her grandkids which they wouldn’t even take home. But I said... “Sure let’s go have a look”. It wasn’t long before I realized I would be “very” late getting to work that morning.

What I discovered stored in her basement were pristine pieces of guitar history. She had three of five missing McCarty model guitars that had been custom built, hand-signed by Paul Reed Smith and given by the PRS factory to Ted McCarty as gifts. The story of Ted McCarty and his place in guitar history is detailed in the next article. If you’re not familiar with Ted McCarty, Google his name. After making an offer that she could not refuse, I became the adoptive parent to priceless, never been played, museum-quality instruments.

I had no idea exactly what I was going to do with these guitars! But I knew I didn’t want to let them just sit in my basement as had been done before.

Guitar Show with her Vintage Voltage Expo. We tried for two years to make this mega event happen, but under the Covid lockdown restrictions of 2020-2021, it simply did not happen.

In 2022, we finally conducted our first combined Guitar Show and Vintage Voltage Expo. It was such massive success, I cannot imagine organizing a Guitar Show without the Vintage Voltage Expo!

Researched and compiled from many sources by Duane M. Evarts

Theodore Milson “Ted” McCarty was a native of Somerset, Kentucky. His mother passed away when he was three years old and was raised by a great Aunt and Uncle.

The future guitar designer and builder graduated in 1933 with a degree in commercial engineering from the University of Cincinnati.

During World War II, Ted was an engineering designer for the Army. Although an engineer by trade, he was a music fan by nature.

After the war, Ted McCarty began his career working for the Rudolph Wurlitzer Company as an accountant and businessman staying there for twelve years. Responsibilities involved overseeing real estate affairs, retail stores and manufacturing facilities for organs, jukeboxes and other musical instruments.

Despite the appearance of Gibson Guitar’s success after World War II, it was not good enough for Maurice (M.H.) Berlin, the founder of CMI (Chicago Musical Instruments) which held controlling interest in Gibson Guitars.

Early in 1948, Mr. Berlin got a phone call from Bill Gretsch, President of the Gretsch Musical Instrument Company. Gretsch was about to have lunch with his friend Ted McCarty, who had just left the Wurlitzer Company and thought that with McCarty’s experience on the business side of musical instruments, he could help Berlin assess the problems at Gibson Guitars.

Mr. Berlin asked Ted to go to Kalamazoo, Michigan

to take a look at the Gibson Company. Ted reported back that Gibson Guitars was simply too top-heavy in management. He was then asked to take over Gibson but he was reluctant to uproot his family from the comfort of his home near Chicago and relocate to Kalamazoo, Michigan.

However, Ted McCarty was quite intrigued by the opportunity to use his engineering degree in a business environment for the first time in his career. He eventually accepted Mr. Berlin’s offer to become the Vice President and one year later was named President and General Manager of the Gibson Guitar Company.

As the head of Gibson, Ted McCarty was instrumental at breathing new life into the guitar market with innovative body shapes and groundbreaking hardware and electronic designs. With the new solid-body guitars, he realized instruments could be built in any shape or size without compromising tone. He then pushed his

to pursuing new designs. The fruits of these forays by Ted McCarty at the Gibson Factory resulted in angular designs which became legendary instruments! The music world was shocked in 1958 at the NAMM show with the unveiling of the radically new Explorer and Flying V designs .

But angular solid-body electric guitar designs weren't Ted McCarty's only claim to fame. His team was also responsible for the Les Paul, Byrdland and ES-335, as well as the acoustic Hummingbird and Dove models. In 1952, McCarty was granted a patent for the Tune-O-Matic Bridge, a design that is still a mainstay of Gibson Guitars. He was also involved in the development of the stop bar tailpiece.

These achievements were all foreshadowed by the development of a pickup/pickguard attachment that allowed an archtop guitar to be electrified without modifying the acoustic tone. This design became known as the "McCarty Unit."

Aside from these design and hardware innovations, one of the greatest inventions to ever grace a guitar was achieved at the Gibson Company. Under the guidance of Ted McCarty, Seth Lover designed the twin-coil humbucking pickup.

Using the humbucker, guitarists now had access to fatter tones with a quieter, hum-free operation. Under McCarty's leadership, Gibson Guitars saw record profits and growth. But more importantly, the strides made by McCarty and his team forever changed the look and sound of Rock n' Roll.

On January 16th, 1992 Ted McCarty was inducted into Guitar Center Hollywood’s ROCKWALK “Hall of Fame” for his designs of some of the world’s most recognizable guitars.

During the McCarty era at Gibson Guitars, also known as Gibson’s “Golden Years”, Ted’s friend Paul Bigsby, inventor of the Bigsby Vibrato Tailpiece, asked Ted if he had any interest in buying the Bigsby Company. The deal was inked in 1966. Ted McCarty then resigned from the Gibson Company and became the Owner/CEO of Bigsby until 1996.

Sometime in the mid-1990’s, Ted’s wife had passed away and his overall health was in such decline that he needed someone to cook, clean and take him to and from his Bigsby factory. He basically needed a full-time attendant accompanying him anywhere he needed to go.

Enter MabelAnn Sherrill... She was born on a farm in the San Luis Valley in Southern Colorado living a simple life with her brother and sisters. She was divorced with two young children to raise by herself. She started selling Avon products and later got a job at a daycare center until her kids were on their own.

Then one day, MabelAnn’s brother said… “Go take care of Mr. McCarty." You see, MabelAnn’s brother had married Ted McCarty’s daughter making MabelAnn a sister-in-law.

In her own words... “I just took care of Mr. McCarty! I’d take him back and forth to work, do the shopping, cooking and cleaning. And he also liked to go for rides. I’d put him in the car and we’d just go for a ride here and there.” -

MableAnn Sherrill

MableAnn escorted Mr. McCarty through NAMM shows and would take him to visit Paul Reed Smith at his home and the PRS factory. Paul Reed Smith had sought out Ted McCarty while he was still at the Bigsby Company after researching several guitar patents bearing his name.

Their relationship became one of mentor and student as Paul gleaned as much knowledge as he could from this aging musical instrument design

master .

Ted's involvement, as a consultant to PRS Guitars during the last ten years of his life, resulted in Smith naming the PRS McCarty Series after Ted as a tribute, since there had never been a guitar that bore McCarty’s name.

When Ted became sick in 2000, Paul Reed Smith commissioned five guitars to be built and given to Ted as a thank you for his help over the years. Three hollow body guitars and two solid-body guitars, representing the various McCarty influenced PRS designs, were built between late December 2000 and January 2001. Each one was hand-signed by Paul and also say “Custom Built for Ted McCarty” on the back of the headstock.

Shortly before Ted’s passing on April 1, 2001, McCarty gave those five guitars to MableAnn as a thank you for all her years of dedicated service.

MableAnn sold the two solid-body guitars to a PRS factory representative. One of those guitars was later acquired by a private collector in Colorado.

In 2012, MableAnn sold the three hollow body guitars to me, Duane M Evarts. In 2015, I purchased that second solid body guitar from the PRS factory representative.

All five of those collectible “McCarty” guitars were