Insider Spotlight: Luthier Alex Sorokin

From time-to-time, we’ll be showcasing the stories (and guitars) of fellow members of the Insider Community. Up first is Edmonton, Alberta-based electric guitar builder Alex Sorokin of Sorokin Guitars. Though building according to the historical framework of the 1950s, he’s not simply making replicas, he’s building, as he puts it, “a better mousetrap.” A part-time builder who builds what he wants, when he wants it, Sorokin’s name has spread quickly in the guitar world due in large part to his collaboration with fellow Canadian guitar hero Joey Landreth (who we recently filmed playing his Sorokin). We got to talk with Alex about that experience and how his intense love and appreciation for those coveted vintage guitars led him to build a surprisingly large following.

Fretboard Journal: What’s are you working on right now?

Alex Sorokin: First off, I’ll say I’m a pretty small operation. I do this as a part-time, scratch-and-itch-type thing, so I’m super selective about what I do, and I only do what I want to do. I don’t take orders or anything like that. I pretty much focus on McCarty-era solidbody guitars. Having said all that, I’m currently working on a ’57 Special style build, yellow, with a wrap tail, and I’m also working on a double-cut Junior in the same TV yellow. I also have a 1952 Les Paul Goldtop that was poorly converted back in the ’80s that I’ve been restoring back and refinishing and aging for a client, kind of bringing it back to its old glory. Then I’m just finishing up another Junior build for my dealer, Stang Guitars.

FJ: How did you get started building?

AS: Back in university, I worked at a local boutique guitar shop that’s now out of business, but they were known for vintage and high-end gear. Through shadowing their owner, who was a tech and repair person, I learned to maintain and service instruments and touchups and finish repair. I started to look further into potentially making my own stuff, and so I dove into forums and the internet ten or so years ago, really trying to self-educate, ask questions and make those online friendships. Then I put rubber-to-road around 2014 after about a decade worth of research and getting everything ready that I needed to make a shop. That took years. When my wife and I built a home, I was thinking, “I’m going to have a third car garage and make it with the right power coming in because one day it will happen.” But it was definitely a long process. It wasn’t just, “Ok, I’m going to build guitars today.” 

FJ: Can you tell us about your shop? Where’s it located?

AS: I’m in Edmonton, Alberta. I’m lucky to have that space attached to my home and to have a wife that supported the idea of building a home shop. So with the third car garage, I made sure to insulate it, get 220 power out there, and get it heated because right now it’s something like one degree Fahrenheit. It’s a super compact space, but it works for me. I have everything in there I need. I do all the finishing myself in the shop using a phone-booth style spray booth I built.

FJ: So you do all the finishing in the same shop?

AS: It’s all done in there, start-to-finish. For finishing, I use oil-based pore fillers and aniline dyes for coloring. My gold tops are done using a specific bronze powder/flake which I suspend in clear lacquer, as was done in the ’50s. I’ve been able to match the color by comparing test samples to real vintage gold tops, where the clear coats were missing, like under where the pick guard is attached. This allows me to aim for what the finish was actually like when new, then simulate what father time would do to the clear coats the past 60-plus years. The lacquer I use is nitrocellulose with no plasticizing agents added, which is what allows for the finish to naturally check (after some ‘shock-therapy’) as a vintage finish would. I also hand-buff my finishes to best control the desired patina I’m going for. I apply the aging/distressing in a way that mirrors that of vintage instruments that have come across my bench and those I own, always careful to not overdo it. One time, I took this sunburst guitar I built and literally sat it in a south-facing window for several weeks until I was satisfied with how it faded.

FJ: Do you have a particular philosophy about wood/materials or building as a whole?

AS: I’ve been pretty faithful to historical materials, especially in utilizing woods like mahogany and rosewood and ebony. I have experimented with more domestic woods just for the sake of doing it, just to see what comes out of it, but anything that I take all the way to the finish line and put together in a package is going to be pretty faithful and accurate. One of the main departures that I do consistently is that I’ll use cocobolo instead of something like Indian or Brazilian rosewood, and that came from having experimented with it and liking how it performed. It’s similar to rosewood in terms of its behavior, cocobolo is just a little oilier so you have to be careful with it when gluing. It all harkens back to theories that they used it in the ’50s and ’60s in Kalamazoo, so I went down that rabbit hole and liked what out I got out of it. Other people seemed to respond well to it, too. I have used Auburn rosewood as well, but it’s getting harder and harder to come by. Since I don’t do exact replicas, I find that I can get away with changing some things when I feel like trying something new. I’m just trying to build a better mousetrap, so to speak. I just want to do what is classic and timeless. The designs that inspire me most aren’t as old as those other designs, the F-5s and dreadnoughts, but I have a real passion and love of that postwar manufacturing approach to quality and consistency, not cutting any corners. My wife always jokes that I tend to “overcook” the details.

FJ: When did you first get into vintage guitars?

AS: Growing up, everybody wanted a Les Paul. As I spent time with these instruments in the store where I worked, my eyes were opened to what it was that professional players were so attracted to in these guitars, especially Juniors. I had the opportunity ten or fifteen years ago to come by a 1956 Junior, so I picked it up and was thrilled to finally own a ’50s Les Paul. At the time, I was playing in a band and I wanted to gig it just a little bit—it was my baby and I wanted some pictures with it, more out of vanity than anything. But I couldn’t put it down and it just cut through the mix so well and the mid-range just blew me away. Then I wanted a Junior in TV yellow because the one I had was a sunburst, but those TV Juniors are so cool. So I decided I’d try to build one for myself. That was my big mistake because everyone who played it thought it was killer, so I decided to keep making them in my own style. I overdid all the little nuances and put together a little package with each guitar just for the sake of fun. My buddy owned a guitar store here in town, Stang Guitars, and he said he would try selling them and see how it goes, and that’s how it went. 

FJ: What do you think is missing in new guitars that makes vintage instruments so special?

AS: There’s a lot of hyperbole that goes into this stuff. You hear a lot of people always talking about “old growth” and getting stuck on that idea, but I’ve never seen a fourteen-inch slab of mahogany that wasn’t old growth—the tree didn’t just happen overnight. At the end of the day, quality wood is what matters. Beyond that, assembly is key. My biggest area of focus in assembly is fretwork. I glue my frets in with fish glue like they did in the ’50s and I spend tons of time making sure the playability of the fretboard is perfect. With finishing, when you pick up the guitar, I want it to feel like a broken in pair of jeans. That’s why I always, at least slightly, do a little bit of distressing to the finishing, because often times that translates into a good feel guitar. You can’t have the best of both worlds, a mint condition guitar with an old-school, broken-in feel. My checking is authentic, not done with a razor blade or anything, and it always checks perpendicular to the length like the old guitars did. I pay a lot of attention to the glues I use. My buddy Tom Bartlett has had all these different glues analyzed and got all the answers himself. I’m really lucky to have those relationships and pick those brains and then just copy it. I’m not taking credit for coming up with any of it. I’m just standing on the shoulders of giants. When I’m building guitars, I’m just trying to build the best possible product I can. I want to make something I would want to own. So even with all the case candy and the little booklets I make to go with the guitars, it’s stuff I would like to see if I were buying a guitar. I let that be my north star. 

FJ: How did you and Joey Landreth come together for a custom build?

AS: That was a really special aligning of events. I was just becoming a big fan of Joey. I’d read somewhere that Carter Vintage had come into the very first Burst, so I checked their website and saw a bunch of demo videos Joey had done for them. I texted my buddy who owns Stang Guitars and was telling him all about Joey, telling him he needed to check him out. A few months later, that buddy of mine called and was like, “Joey’s here in the shop, he’s playing one of your guitars and really digging it.” I was like, “Get out of here. That’s so cool!” So Joey ended up giving us a couple of tickets to his show and we got to know him, which I thought was the coolest thing. About a year later, he got back in touch with me after doing some more demos for Carter and said he really wanted to work with me on something. He had played an all gold wraptail single cut and wanted something like that built for him. I don’t take orders, but that was just something that was too cool to pass up. I really respected him as a player, and we’ve developed a strong friendship since then. It’s one of those special builder-musician bonds. You’re going to see a few more things come from me for him.

FJ: Could you tell us more about that guitar you built for Joey?

AS: His biggest thing was that he loved the neck on that all-gold guitar he played and the overall vibe of it. Those all-gold guitars are pretty rare and he hadn’t seen one, so he loved that. Zach from Mythos Pedals was working at Carter at the time and he sent me some measurements and took some tracings of the neck. I cross referenced all that with a bunch of measurements I have—I’m a big geek, I have books of every guitar that’s come across my bench. But that was my starting point. Then I spent the better part of 2017 searching for the woods and all that.

Everything I buy is top quality, but I wanted to find him the best of the best. I found the most resonant and light piece of mahogany I could get my hands on. I just wanted to make sure it was going to be a guitar he wouldn’t want to put down. For people who might not know this about Joey, he tunes down to open C and uses 19-65 gauge strings, oftentimes flatwounds, sort of like a modified baritone set—they’re like piano strings. He has a very low nut action and higher tailpiece action. He told me he tends to fret out on the first few frets, especially on what would be the G string, and he was wondering if there was a way to fix that. So I drew something up on a napkin and said that if I just compound the nut slot so it’s more like a sixteen-inch radius and I set the action at the nut off the bottom of a radius gauge rather than indexing off the first fret like most techs would do, that would give me a flatter arc or line of best fit across those strings. That way it wouldn’t feel like the strings was pulling away from the slide, and, if anything, he might have to press a little bit harder to get the string to fret, but only fractionally. I said that worst case scenario, I can just lower the strings. But that all went into getting the playability just right. As soon as he grabbed it, he was like, “Oh, this is a game changer, this is what I need.” Then we’d go back and forth on electronics and stuff like that. He was just in town and I swapped out his pots for some more accurate tapered pots to the old central knobs, and he’s really digging that. Just lots of little stuff, little details. For the pickups, I worked with Jon Gundry at ThroBak to come up with something special for that guitar, too. 

FJ: Did you see a spike in people trying to get one of your guitars after Joey started touring with his?

AS: Exponentially! I can track on the website the hits and all that stuff, and that alone went crazy. Especially when he went on That Pedal Show with Kirk Fletcher. It went ten-fold on the traffic. I delivered the guitar for Joey in June when he played with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, and I was getting emails that day. People had posted some pictures of him on Instagram of his gear and all that. Like I said, I don’t take orders, but I have a contact box on my website, and people were flooding it trying to get one for themselves. I had to tell so many people that I just make what I feel like making, Joey’s just sort of the exception. People are usually pretty cool about it and understanding, even some bigger names who contacted me were just like, “Yeah, just let me know if that changes.” It’s pretty humbling to have that kind of demand.

FJ: You’ve mentioned that building guitars is pretty much a side project. What’s your day job? Do you ever think of going full time with it? 

AS: I’ve always worked in sales, corporate and business division sales. I’ve worked in IT sales and distributions, and I work in medical sales currently. But that’s what pays the bills, I’ve debated going the other way and building full-time, but I tried ramping up production once and it started to feel too much like work. It lost what I liked most about it. I’m fortunate enough to be able to do this on the side, so I want to be able to dedicate to every aspect of it and not feel like I need to just make something to make a profit off of it. I know that might be unique compared to how others have done things, but I like it that way.

FJ: You do a lot of repairs on the same guitars from which you draw a lot of inspiration for your own builds. Does each repair give you something new to think about in building your guitars?

AS: Definitely, in different aspects. Recently, it’s been the neck profiles especially and finding the ones that I like best and the neck angles and all that. I like to play around with all that and see what works for me. I’ve built Juniors with steeper or shallower neck angles, played around with pickup placement, really just taking all those factors in as to what sets those vintage guitars apart from modern builders. Even the really geeky stuff is cool to look at. I had a ’52 Trapeze Goldtop in for minor set up and fret work, so I took a look at everything, popped the hood, so to speak, and I saw a pretty rare hookup wire. It wasn’t all black like you’d normally find, it was orange. I’ve seen some blue hookup wires in the ’50s, but never orange, and I thought that was pretty hip. I mentioned it to my electronics supplier who does all my capacitors and grounding wire and all that, and he made some for me. Every pickup manufacturer I’ve worked with has been open to me sending them a roll of wire and using that when they make my pickups. It’s a geeky little detail that no one really sees, but those details for me are just so cool. I get a lot of inspiration from those little things. A friend of mine said he had a ’52 Les Paul that needed to be brought back and I was happy to work on that because it was such a cool guitar. I have a reverence for those instruments and always love to look closely at them.

FJ: Do you have a favorite guitar that’s crossed your bench?

AS: When I worked at the store, Avenue Guitars, I remember a lady brought in an acoustic guitar that looked like an old Martin, 00 or 000, slot head, gut strings, and it was stamped “Martin New York” inside. I was green enough that I figured it should have said Nazareth so it’s probably a fake, but decided to check it out anyway. So we went through everything and the owner of the store came in, and he’d seen everything under the sun, the kind of guy that forgets more than most people know, and he said it was the real deal. He’d only seen one before, but it was probably from the late 1800s. I was looking under the top and I found a really faint pencil mark that said “December 6, 1893” and I was like, geez. The lady who brought it in was going to donate it to Goodwill or something, and we told her it was probably worth several thousand dollars. It’s not as valuable as a pre-war steel string Martin, but still five, maybe six thousand dollars, and she couldn’t believe it. I was just in the back eating my crow. That’s one that always sticks out and reminds me not to judge a book by its cover.

FJ: Are there any upcoming projects that you’re particularly excited about?

AS: I’m going to be working on another guitar for Joey in the near future that you’ll start to see popping up on Instagram. I’m still sourcing product for that. When I originally sourced the mahogany for the Goldtop, I had enough for two bodies, so I picked the one for him and put the other aside, figuring I’d use if for a burst replica or something. He wanted to do that, too, and I told him we could have it made from the same wood as his first guitar, so he was into it! I’m also working on another guitar that’s unusual in that I’m doing it for a trade, which I never do. This guy had a ’55 Southern Jumbo that was just a cannon of a guitar, and I worked out a deal with him that I would build him a guitar in exchange for that. It’s going to be an all-black standard with a Bigsby and it’s going to be chambered. It’s not something I would normally do because it’s not conventional, but he gets away with it because he’s bringing a lot of guitar to the party. My wife told me not to go doing too many deals like that.

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