Woody Phifer's Quest to Build the Perfect Guitar

When the veteran luthier Sherwood Phifer goes out to hear live music, he hears elements of the guitar that the vast majority of even the most serious audiophiles could never pick up on. An amateur guitarist himself, Phifer has been building high-end customized instruments for roughly 45 years, so when he listens, he’s not hearing a performance merely as a fan or a fellow musician but also as one of the most respected luthiers in the country.   “Sometimes I hear a really phenomenal guitar player, but at the same time I can hear, ‘Oh, he’s fretting out, he needs a fret job,’” says Phifer. “What jumps out at me is tonality: note presence, note duration, sustain…Often, I can say, ‘He’s got great chops, but the instrument is not speaking well enough for him.’”  Phifer, who goes by the name Woody, has been making instruments that speak for some of the most highly accomplished musicians in rock and jazz for nearly a half-century. He has built guitars and basses for rock luminaries like Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley, Rick Derringer, Todd Rundgren, and Johnny and Edgar Winter; jazz legends like George Benson and Ronny Jordan; and session pros like Will Lee and David Spinozza. At the moment, he’s in the process of developing guitars for more contemporary artists like Yasiin Bey and Wyclef Jean.     “They’re like jewels,” says Benson, a longtime friend who has played Phifer’s guitars throughout his career. “They’re very special, and they’re not ordinary guitars. When you play a Woody guitar or see one, you can see the special efforts he puts into the instruments…They are special instruments that I think will be valuable years from now, because they are so unique.”  Phifer has worked for himself since the Seventies, building his entire business on word of mouth without any degree of support from large guitar manufacturers like Gibson or Fender. He’ll spend months working on a single guitar at a time at his upstate New York workshop, and it’ll sometimes take him years to perfect a new Phifer Guitars model, which often ends up quite different from the cheaper, mass-produced alternatives.  “People look at [my] instruments and the first thing they say is, ‘Oh, that doesn’t look like what I’m accustomed to.’ I say, ‘Try it,’” says Phifer. “I take the best I can gather from conversations with a variety of rock and jazz players, and I turn it into something that doesn’t resemble what you’re accustomed to seeing…Most of my stuff involves a departure from the norm.”  Phifer became interested in guitar craftsmanship at a young age as a child. By the time he was four years old, he was building toys, and when he first came across a guitar later in his childhood, he became fascinated with the instrument. “I just wanted to know, ‘How does it work?’” he says. “And then the next question was, ‘How can I make one?’”  In his teenage years, Phifer built his own replica Telecaster modeled after a guitar his friend had lent him. “Unbeknownst to him, I took the Telecaster apart a