Fairbanks

Fairbanks Acoustic Guitars — New School Luthier, Old School Magic

Dale Fairbanks came to guitar building through an obsession with early American blues and ragtime, and the instruments the legendary players of that era actually used. A jazz trumpeter and saxophonist who studied at Berklee College of Music before spending years in coffee shops and Latin bands across southern New England, he bought a 1933 Gibson L-00 in his early twenties and it never left him. That guitar, with its dry, punchy, bark-and-sustain voice and its featherweight build, became his benchmark for everything he has built since. He studied, experimented, started over, and after ten trial-and-error instruments began selling his work around 2009. He has never been without an order since.

In 2019 Dale relocated from Connecticut to Burlington, Vermont, joining forces with Adam Buchwald under the Circle Strings roof alongside Allied Lutherie and the Iris production line. From that workshop he continues to build his fully custom Fairbanks instruments, one at a time, to the same uncompromising standard that earned him his reputation.

The Mojo Is Real

What Dale does better than almost anyone building today is capture that thing, the dry, fundamental, harmonically complex voice of the great pre-war Gibson flattops, without the headaches that come with eighty-year-old wood. The featherweight builds, unscalloped bracing, aniline sunburst finishes under shellac sealer and thin nitrocellulose, fire-stripe pickguards, Waverly tuners with ivoroid buttons, and bone nuts and saddles are not decorative choices. They are the result of years of reverse engineering the most revered acoustic guitars ever made, isolating what actually produces that sound, and building it new.

Player-friendly refinements run quietly through every instrument: better fretwork, improved neck geometry, two-way adjustable truss rods, and intonation corrections that vintage originals never had. You get the vintage tone without the vintage compromises.

The Models

F-20 — Modeled after Dale's personal 1936 Gibson L-00, the guitar that started it all. Small body, mahogany back and sides, red spruce top with unscalloped bracing, and a singing, deep, rich tone with bark, sustain, and sparkle in equal measure. The model most associated with the Fairbanks name and the one that first put him on the map nationally.

F-35 — Built in the spirit of the great pre-war J-35s, the F-35 is a slope-shoulder dreadnought with more power and projection than the F-20 while retaining the dry, fundamental voice that defines the Fairbanks sound. Available with red spruce or Adirondack spruce tops and a range of back and side wood options including Spanish cypress, mahogany, and rosewood.

F-45 — Fairbanks' tribute to the legendary Gibson J-45, built with an Adirondack spruce top, Honduras mahogany back and sides, aniline sunburst under shellac and nitrocellulose, and Waverly ivoroid button tuners. Described by one longtime dealer simply as an earthshaker.

Roy Smeck Model — A jumbo body guitar inspired by the legendary vaudeville and early recording guitarist Roy Smeck, featuring a red spruce top and vintage-correct appointments that make it one of the most distinctive and collectible models in the Fairbanks catalog.

Worth the Wait

Fairbanks instruments regularly sell for north of $5,000 and are built entirely to order with a wait of twelve months or more. Every specification, from neck profile and width to tonewoods, finish color, and inlay details, is determined through a direct conversation with Dale. The result is an instrument as personal as a fingerprint and as tonally alive as anything being built by anyone today.

Browse our available Fairbanks inventory, and reach out to get on the commission list.