Walnut with Wheat Inlay by: Mark Goodson

Late April, early May 1981 I was reading the May issue of Guitar World and the feature article about Ted Newman Jones and his guitar shop. I noticed that Ted’s address was legible in on the shipping crate sitting on his work bench in one of the photos and decided I’d write to Ted and have him build me a guitar. I was 22, a senior in college, Lennon had just been murdered, I was writing two or three songs a week and pretty certain that my college degree would be worthless. I needed to prepare to be a rock star. I’d need a guitar worthy of my stardom.

So I wrote Ted, told him what I was thinking. He wrote back and said ‘sure.’ He listed the features the guitar could include: gold or chrome hardware, whammy bar or no, ebony or rosewood fingerboard, curly maple neck, choice of inlays, various woods, pickups, etc. He also explained that he was going to produce ten production models with serial numbers, cherry red and jet black. Did I want one of these? Also, he had plans to build some acoustics.

Fast forward to January/February 1982. I was living in the desert of Saudi Arabia, working (using my degree) as an agronomist for the King’s younger brother Muqrin tasked with growing wheat in the desert. I wrote back to Ted telling him I wanted the curly maple neck, hit choice of pickups, gold hardware, walnut top, no whammy bar, and whatever else. I asked him if he could do the fret inlays of wheat heads in gold.

Okay, he wrote back, the deal is $1,800. 900 up front, 900 FOB. 24k gold inlays of wheat heads. I sent him the bread.

Over the next year and half I’d keep in touch with Ted as well as I could considering I had no telephone in Saudi. I remember sending him a letter from Amsterdam with some Polaroid selfies. That must have been May 1982. He sent me some pictures of his friend holding up the guitar-in-construction at some point.

By late winter early spring 83/84 he wrote me that it was finished and ready to ship. I sent the check and had it shipped to my girlfriend in Pennsylvania. By mid-May I was on vacation and playing my Newman through a 15 watt amp and digging it.

Turns out I was able to make a living with my degree so I didn’t need to become a rock star after all. Things happens and here we are 35 years later.