David Heitzman, Luthier

I am a third generation professional wood worker, I believe that it is actually a part of my genetics.

The first guitar that I built was a 12-string teardrop shaped hollow body electric; I was 14 years old. My second guitar was actually pretty good. It was a Vox Phantom copy in1964 and made the case, a tube amplifier and matching speaker cabinet to go with it. I have been building guitars ever since.

I was mentored by a world class harpsichord maker (Charles “Chuck” Davis)who happened to live close by.  And at 16, I built a clavichord (a baroque keyboard instrument) that won Best of Show at the Southern California Exposition. Two years later, I built a harpsichord from scratch with “Chuck’s” guidance, and its sale price paid for a full year of my college education. I continued to refine my guitar building skills with a Fender Engineer who live near to me.

In 1969, I entered the California State University at Chico’s Industrial Arts Wood Technology program and later graduated with honors. At the time, I was the sole guitar repair tech in the largest music store North of Sacramento. While there I repaired thousands of guitars and paid for 100% of my college education and living expenses. While in Chico, I studied classical guitar construction  from Art Overholtzer1.

In the 1970s, I taught Acoustic Guitar Construction at CSU Chico as an upper division course in Industrial Technology and also as an Adult Education program.

I worked at American Dream guitars2 in Lemon Grove, California, for a time. From 1978 to 1984, a former student ( Lane Moller) and I teamed up to start and run a guitar building company, which enjoyed good sales and endorsements.  It was taken down by an unrelated lawsuit. I left guitar making as a full time vocation for 23 years.

In 1997 my shop burned to the ground just after I came back to working full time as a luthier.

My repair services are available at  both music stores in Napa, California.

I have designed and developed four  guitar models unique to me,  two of these are presented on this web site.. I have built and played guitars for the last 49 years and they remain my passion. I am not a guitar snob.

The photos on this page are examples of my work from the 1960s and early 70s.

1 Grand Champion winner of the 1969 International Violin and Guitar Makers Association and author of Classic Guitar Making.

2 The Dream, as people soon came to call it, was founded in San Diego in 1970 by brothers Sam and Gene Radding. It began as a combination retail store and instrument-building workshop to sell the guitars and dulcimers that Sam had been building. Sam set it up as a cooperative and hired luthiers who worked as independent contractors building guitars based on Radding’s designs. Some well-known guitar brands started here.