Cindy Guitars Transforms Wood From Churches Into Powerful Instruments
But don’t fret—you can still play like the devil.
A custom-order Lilac and Red Sparkle J Model from Cindy Guitars.
Photographer: Heami Lee for Bloomberg Businessweek; Prop Stylist: Rebecca Bartoshesky
The blues are not learned in a monastery, Keith Richards once noted. And yet for instruments by Cindy Guitars, the materials may have come from a church. Cindy Hulej, who works out of Rick Kelly’s Carmine Street Guitars in New York City, produces bespoke axes out of pine, maple, and oak planks that are reclaimed from some of the city’s holiest institutions—Trinity Church near Wall Street, a Serbian Orthodox cathedral in the Flatiron District—as well as less-hallowed ground such as the Chelsea Hotel and McGurk’s Suicide Hall saloon.
• When hunting for a custom guitar maker, personality is paramount. John Suhr, who founded Suhr Guitars in Lake Elsinore, Calif., in 1997, learned his trade in Fender’s specialization shop. He bases his electric Signature Series guitars on traditional Stratocasters, Telecasters, and Jazzmasters, but spins them into exquisite one-offs. They can cost $3,495.