We’re a small American company dedicated to creating the world's finest feeling, playing and sounding electric guitars, period!

Born out of Tom's garage in mid 1980's Southern California, Anderson Guitarworks has since been producing what some have called, "The best guitars on the planet." From humble beginnings to our current state of the art facility, we stay dedicated to the tradition and progress of electric guitar design.

The process begins with the creation of the most precise and comfortable bodies and necks possible. We accomplish this by choosing only the finest and most beautiful woods from select lumber mills. Our design and manufacturing process utilizes the best of both old and new world craftsmanship. Ground breaking CAD technology is used to achieve the most exacting tolerances found in the guitar industry, while the fine detail woodwork and beautiful finish sanding are done by the hands of a master.

To best compliment and allow you to further fine tune the sound of your guitar, we offer many models of pickups. They are all designed and wound in our own pickup shop for optimum tone. And you could also call the excellence of our internal wiring a work of art. Our gorgeous paint jobs are done using a revolutionary new ultra violet light curing process that was pioneered here. It allows the instruments full tonal potential to be uninhibited while setting a new level of beauty for our guitars.

The final process is the coming together of all these precision parts in just the right way to enable each and every guitar to achieve its maximum playability and sound. What does this all mean? It means a guitar of unparalleled quality, and no matter which model of you choose, you are getting that same level of excellence. Our models vary only in their look, wood choice and sonic character. We offer this variety so you can choose an instrument that will bring out your personal best!

Build your own Anderson guitar
estimate -+4-6months

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PAINT
Frets
Pickups
Anderson Wedge
The Buzz Feiten

We offer hundreds of colors and finish options:

Our gorgeous paint jobs are done using a revolutionary ultraviolet light curing process that was pioneered here at Anderson Guitarworks. This allows the instrument's full tonal potential to be unimpeded while still showing off with show stopping beauty. And how does this happen?

Paint is meticulously applied: a proprietary ultraviolet light process that always yields an ultra thin and breathable finish so the instrument's resonance is never impaired but always imparted.All our finishes are as breathable and as resonant (or more so) than the best of the best of the legendary nitro cellous lacquer finishes, without the intrinsic drying problems of lacquer.

Proof of this can be heard in the vibrance of the instrument. One strum unplugged tells the whole story: loud, rich, full and ringing. Nothing rings out like an Anderson Guitar, plugged or unplugged.

checkout finishes here

( Note: Medium-Jumbo formerly known as Low-Rise, and Tall-Thin formerly known as Medium)

Why Stainless Steel frets?
The playing difference of Stainless Steel frets is astronomically good. It is as though we secretly polish your frets for you every night while you sleep—always slick, fast and easy, every time you take it out of the case.

The result of the stainless steel fret that we use (not to be confused with some others) is silky smooth string bends and liquid smooth vibrato. To play them is to feel like your technique and touch have improved. (Not kidding about that.)

After being tested and tested again and retested on 12,000 (plus) guitars. Love them. We have been using them on all of our guitars since 2002.

Sonically they are so similar to nickel-silver frets that our official position is that there is no discernible difference in tone. But…when listening super-carefully in a controlled environment where a change in fret material is the only variable present, some players have noted that Stainless Steel frets can sound a bit more stout and full than the nickel-silver frets they replaced—as if a bit more string sound is transmitted deeper into the wood.

Your experience will certainly be elevated playability with every ounce of wonderful tone at your fingertips.

We’ve been making pickups even longer than guitars!

As Tom recalled in Premier Guitar, July 2010:

"The first year, 1984, I ran the company from my garage, and the plan was to just make bodies and necks. I wasn’t planning on being a guitar manufacturer. What fed our family that first year was that Schecter Japan needed American-made pickups. The American Schecter factory closed a few months after I left, and nobody knew how to make pickups. Schecter Japan contacted me and we sat down at Carl’s Jr. and made a deal for me to make them 300 Strat pickups. I set up a little pickup-making shop in the kitchen of our house. After I got through making necks and bodies in our garage during the day, we sat up making pickups every night. That first year we lived on those pickups, and we still make them to this day."

Highest quality parts available

Hand made in our pickup shop:

We use the highest quality parts and cutting edge technology, along with vintage winding machines and techniques. Yes, in addition to electric guitars, we make the best electric guitar pickups in the world as well!

All pickups come wired with leads that can be soldered into any guitar.

See full line of pickups here

Anderson Guitarworks has always been known for attention to every aspect of guitar building, including an extremely precise and tight fitting traditional 4-bolt neck joint, featuring our own contoured heel design for increased upper register playability and comfort.

But now appearing on all our guitars, with the exception of the Crowdster, is an Anderson addition to guitar tradition with the introduction of a new neck joint that seems to be held together by only two bolts. But things are not as they first appear. Known as the A-Wedgie, this neck joint is a dynamic leap forward in how a body and neck come together to form the whole.

The force that binds the neck to its body is an all new neck to body union known as the A-Wedgie neck joint. This exclusive Anderson designed, A-shaped architecture is completely revolutionary to the electric guitar industry. A fully enclosed neck joint (not open on any side but completely surrounded on all sides by body wood) is, technically speaking, a 3-dimensional trapezoidal wedge . It is this 3-dimensional trapezoidal wedge (the A-Wedgie) structure itself that completely locks the body to the neck. Traditional neck bolts are no longer needed to keep the neck from shifting laterally (sideways).

What this means to the guitar player is a neck that can never move out of perfect alignment, while still maintaining a constant pressure union for the ultimate in sonic transfer between body and neck. And, with a larger contact surface than previous neck joints, more sound is undoubtedly invited to travel throughout the length of the instrument.

Since the entire responsibility for immovably unifying this type of neck joint falls squarely onto the shoulders of the advanced structure of the joint itself, two machine screws, located at the sveltely sculpted neck heel, are way more than overkill for keeping it all together.

The Buzz Feiten designed tempered tuning system allows our guitars to play more in tune than you have ever heard before!

As we all have experienced, a guitar is not an instrument that can play perfectly in tune. When we intonate and tune a normal guitar, even when using a very accurate tuner, we find that chords, especially, don't sound very in tune. For instance, play a C chord and the 3rd might sound sharp. Play a D chord and the F# is really off. G may sound pretty good but an E chord's G# note is very off. Go up the neck and play a D shape on the 9th fret(an A chord) and it really beats. Does this sound familiar? So for the sake of illustration, let's say that a regular guitar plays about 80% in tune.

Tempered tuning is primarily a visually undetectable structural neck change in combination with slightly altered bridge intonation offsets. Chords sound much more in tune. When you listen very carefully you can hear little to no out of tune notes in chords and very little to no beating. In fact, if you don't listen extremely carefully you may think that it is perfect, however nothing is perfect and we figure if a normal guitar is approximately 80% in tune then Tempered Tuning is about 95% in tune.

Every player here at Anderson is now using Tempered Tuning and is completely convinced that it is a marked improvement. As Tom himself says, "it changed my life." It spoils you and you want every guitar you play to tune like this.

So, why not let Anderson Guitarworks and Tempered Tuning spoil your life too?

We’re a small American company dedicated to creating the world's finest feeling, playing and sounding electric guitars, period!

Build your own Anderson guitarestimate -+4-6months

We offer hundreds of colors and finish options:

We’ve been making pickups even longer than guitars!

Build your own Anderson guitar
estimate -+4-6months

Tom Anderson Drop Top Classic Hollow Key Lime to Bora Surf * 02-23-26A *

Tom Anderson Drop Top Classic Hollow Key Lime to Bora Surf * 02-23-26A *

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