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OCEANSIDE, CA — It's not uncommon for a life-changing event to inspire someone to start a business, but for Shawn and Sally Weimer, the founders of Oceanside-based Zoe Guitars it was about finding a new reason to live.
After the tragic death of their 12-year-old son Zach in 2008, Shawn sold his business and spent the next several years traveling the world with Sally doing humanitarian work in third-world countries searching for answers and a new purpose in life. They met so many people facing hunger, lack of jobs, sickness, and death just as they had. Shawn always took a guitar with him and found himself giving guitar lessons to the people who lived there, and in some cases would leave behind an instrument for an aspiring musician.
In 2015, they welcomed their first grandchild, Zoe. Having witnessed a new life being born in his family renewed Shawn’s desire to not only live but to thrive. This renewed energy and desire to create high-end, quality acoustic guitars led Shawn to the creation of Zoe Guitars.
Shawn has spent the last seven years creating one-of-a-kind guitars made from rare and exotic woods such as 50,000-year-old Cowry and Sitka dating back to 1400 B.C. also known as “sinker wood” that has been under water and covered in clay making them ever rare. Each guitar is unique and a work of art that will withstand several generations, making them more than just an instrument but also an heirloom.
This isn't as much a story about Zoe Guitars, as it is about the founders who transformed a personal tragedy into an inspiration that changed not just their own lives but touches countless others.
The Patch sat down with Shawn and Sally Weimer to get the inside story of how they took the worst tragedy a parent can imagine and made something beautiful out of it.
Can you tell our readers more about the journey from Zach to Zoe, as Sally refers to it?
You kind of get to a point where we didn't want it to be our identity anymore, but at some point, you need something to create a fire under you to quote-unquote "live again". And that's different timing for everybody. For us, it was just the right timing when our granddaughter was born. It was kind of like, there's still life to be lived here and I don't want to miss that in my own fog.
So what is a Luthier and what inspired you to become one?
It's a French word that literally means a maker of stringed instruments. So it could be a guitar, ukulele, mandolin, violin, cello or anything that's stringed.
Are you planning to do any other stringed instruments besides guitars?
I was gonna do electrics for awhile and then a ukulele but I got a buddy back in North Carolina and his ukulele's start at like $5000 or $6000 and I thought I just can't do that. Not for a tiny little four string. They're beautiful and they're worth it for someone that wants one, but there are so many specific tools that you need to build those and it's a whole other setup to do either electrics or ukuleles. While it seems like it would be similar, it's not. I'd love to make a Cello but it would probably be a 10-year learning experience and the amount of tools that you need just to make that one particular instrument is incredible.
So how are things going for Zoe Guitars?
Well, COVID didn't help! Not having musicians up on stage doesn't help a whole lot. Before it was having musicians on stage that created much of the interest.
Many guitar makers couldn't give them away until they had someone on stage playing them and then everyone wants one. I made a guitar for Drew Holcomb in Nashville before COVID hit and he played that guitar at the Ryman I think it was. I got a call the next day, Dude, I want that guitar! And that's the way it works. I want them to hear it and go, wow, that's a pretty good sound, I want that sound.
The most important thing is I don't want them to have something that they don't like. I don't want them to buy a guitar that's already built. I usually start by saying, well let's build what you want. I sit down with them for anywhere from at least a week to this last one was probably a month and a half where we went through all the questions that I needed answered.
This one I'm building right now is a memorial guitar for another guy who lost his son. And so it was not only a memorial guitar but one that he wants to pass down for generations. Every decision was carefully thought out. He wanted to be specific and wanted to know all the options and what he wanted it to represent and symbolize. I learned a lot through the process, but it took a while.
Many of the best types of wood for guitars are so scarce now. We're probably only four or five years away from running out of Sitka Spruce, which is sad. The important stuff is the old-growth woods and how to be sustainable. It's insane how light and how strong Sitka is.
This piece of Sitka spruce was carbon-dated. They think it was cut right around 1490, when Columbus was here and they think it started growing in like 1440 BC. It's a single piece of old-growth Sitka that you just can't get anymore. But it was only found in I think it was in the 1970s, they found it at the bottom of a river in Alaska where the old loggers were floating them down river and I guess something like one in 100 trees would sink and they didn't have the ways to bring it back up. So they just left them at the bottom of this river which was covered in clay and all kinds of stuff that perfectly preserved them for hundreds of years. Now they're pulling them up and they call it Sinker Wood and they're drying it instead of cutting old growth anymore. They're just pulling these old trees that have been laying at the bottom of these rivers for hundreds of years being preserved and making guitars out of them.
It's really about using what's been cut hundreds of years ago. Redwood is the same, you can't get it, but you can get sinker redwood. They think probably about 1800 went to the bottom of the river and now they're pulling them up with these big cranes and cutting them up to be able to build with it. Same thing with Brazilian Rosewood.
The cool thing now is that there are woods coming out of Africa that no one knew existed in the jungles over there. Now they're coming up with wood like Bubinga that's like concrete, so hard to get a scratch out of that. Over here is African Ribbon Striped Mahogany. So at the same time, were not able to get some types of wood, there's new stuff coming out that they never knew existed.
That's Flamed Maple also called Curly Maple, that's from Eastern Canada. I call it my SoCal Blonde.
Some of these guitars on display in the shop are demos, so they're lower in price but a custom guitar starts around $5000 depending on the kind of wood and other materials.
Just the inlay on the neck can put a guitar back a month just in production because of how much work it takes to lay the abalone or mother of pearl. Every single one is done by hand and I try to do everything as much as I possibly can by hand because otherwise, you can't call it hand-built.
These are not really guitars for you know, your teenager who just wants to learn to play. But as he grows up, starts to get a little bit better, starts to perform, that's when people are more interested in an heirloom for the family.
While Shawn spends his creative energy making guitars, Sally expresses her own art by creating one-of-a-kind hand-made ceramics under the brand name, Oceanside Ceramics.
Unlike the guitars that can take months to produce, Sally made a bowl for us from a lump of clay in about 10 minutes. It's truly a wonder to see art created from something as basic as clay.
The difficult choice was deciding which glaze to use that would highlight the original handmade look of the bowl, and waiting two weeks for it to cure. A tremendous thanks to Sally for bringing such beauty to life for us.
Zoe Guitars are designed and handcrafted by passionate luthier Shawn Weimer in his Southern California workshop. Each of his high-end creations is one-of-a-kind and made from rare and exotic woods that meet his very high standards. To Shawn, each new handmade acoustic guitar is in a very real sense a new life – built to draw its player into a new level of creativity and ability. These are Shawn’s dreams and what drives him in his workshop each day.
Sally also has her own business as a ceramic artist with her company Oceanside Ceramics. She works in the same space as Shawn and they both really enjoy spending time together creating.
For more information, visit www.zoe-guitars.com
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