Rick Turner, icon of American guitar making, co-founded Alembic in 1970. He was heavily involved in the design and construction of Alembic instruments. In his custom guitar video, Rick talks about how he founded Turner Guitars in 1979 and joined Gibson in 1988, where he served as president of Gibson Labs West Coast Research and Development Division.

Rick Turner left the Gibson Guitar Company in 1992 and ran a guitar repair shop at Westwood Music in West Hollywood, where he developed piezo pickup designs, worked with Jackson Browne, David Crosby and others. Turner later co-founded Highlander Musical Audio, a maker of piezoelectric pickups for acoustic guitars. Rick Turner still designs and builds custom electric guitars for many professional musicians including Lindsey Buckingham, Ry Cooder, David Lindley, David Crosby, and Andy Summers. His current company is Renaissance Guitars which produces acoustic electric guitars and he teamed up with Seymour Duncan to form D-TAR.

Gourmet Guitar featured Ruck Turner as one of the most famous master luthiers and “inventors” in American guitar history. Based in Santa Cruz, CA, Rick has built custom electric guitars for some of the most successful guitarists of all time. Check out the custom guitar video of him as he talks about his role as one of the pioneers of the Grateful Dead sound.

His custom Model 1 electric guitar has written rock and pop history as the lead guitar for Lindsay Buckingham, who made it one of the cornerstones of the Fleetwood Mac sound. D from the Gibson Guitar Company. He designed the Chet Atkins model and was part of the Les Paul renaissance with Slash of Guns&Roses in the 1990s. See a piece of Rock’n Roll history and enjoy Rick, Henry Kaiser, Richard Glick and Bill Walker in his custom guitar videos to hear the story firsthand. He knows the influence of Howe-Orme guitars and space-age technology like graphite keys and ceramic frets on guitar making.