Thank you for taking the time to navigate through my site. I’d like to take a little time to let you know where I’ve come from as a guitar builder and where I hope to go in the future.

 

My journey into the music world started when I was 13 years old. I had always dreamed of being the next guitar hero but I never had the money to purchase everything necessary to get the dream going. One day by chance I inherited a Telecaster copy made by J.B.Player. At the time it didn’t have a bridge (which left a giant hole where it should have been.)

 

My mother graciously agreed to let me have it, likely figuring that I would never get it working. Much to her chagrin, I got a summer job mowing grass so I could fix it. That summer, my grandfather and I managed to repair it by filling in the hole with filler and mounting an LP style bridge/tail to it. Never mind the fact that the bridge was an inch to close to the 12th fret and never mind that neither one of us had any experience in guitar repair, it stands out as one of my fondest memories in my life. I hope I never forget the day these roots started to form in my mind. Well, needless to say, I played the heck out of that guitar and slowly learned of the mistakes we had made along the way. This only inspired me to get more guitars and fix them up.

After my summer job mowing lawns, I got a job working in retail! I had hit the big money! I spent just about all of it in the music store picking up beat up guitars so I could tear them apart and put them back together again.

 

During my high-school years I ended up being the go-to guy for all the local guitar heroes. When they broke it, I fixed it, rarely making any money in the process. I just loved the experience I was getting. I made several contacts in the area with local repair people. My life was guitar stores and pawnshops, searching for the lost soul.

 

My first build was for a project my junior year. I made a battle axe guitar, which by all accounts was horrible and unplayable. This is where Silkfire Musical Instruments was created, later legitimized into a corporation. I repaired and built guitars under that name until 2002. Throughout that time I mostly built with Acrylics which wasn’t widely being used. I still own the first prototype of the Ice-caster. It sounded good but weighed 17lbs. At the end of 2002, I sold the rights to my business to my partner and moved to Eastern Pa.

 

 At that point I took a long hiatus from building. This lasted for two years, when I was approached by a friend to repair his Ibanez XV500. I’m solely responsible for getting him back into recording his music and he is solely responsible for getting me back into the business. Thank you Mike!

 

I started up Zyon’s Dream Guitars as a labor of love to building and repairing instruments. It’s not a business and I’m not professionally building at this time because it’s easy to lose your passion when you’re worried about the bottom line. I opened this site as a way for me to catalogue my works and to have a place to keep everything organized. On here you will see guitars I’ve purchased, reviews of gear and guitars I’ve built and worked on over the years. Every guitar on this site represents a part of me and my growth as a Luthier.

 

I encourage you to take the time too look at my gallery and peruse some of the work I’ve done over the years. If you are interested in building guitars for yourself feel free to take advantage of the tutorials that I’ve posted and check back often as I regularly update and add new material to the site. I believe that custom built guitars are the wave of the future as everything in our lives becomes more mass produced and quality levels go down. If you can’t afford a custom built guitar then why not learn how to build one on your own? It’s a sure fire way to put a one of a kind custom built guitar into your hands at a price you can afford!

 

If you aren’t interested in building your own and you like my work E-Mail me. I’m sure we can work something out that will work in you budget. I just love building and making big profits is not a driving factor for me at this time. Right now I’m more interested in learning and perfecting my craft.

 

Thank you

                                                                                  Charles G. Silket Jr. (Zyon)