Shop Truck Tribute Super Chiefs
Robert Kauer and his 1964 C10
In May of 2018 I lost the last of my grandparents and name sake of the Kauer clan, Bob Kauer. While not entirely unexpected, it was still a hard loss for myself and my family and the closing of that generation of family for us. When things settled out, I was lucky and honored to have inherited maybe my most favorite possession of his, his 1964 Chevrolet C10. This truck was extra sentimental to us as a family as not only did my dad grow up in this truck, he learned much of his mechanical ability working on it himself. A lot of our collective skill sets can trace themselves back to this truck (including one exceedingly long, hot drive from the Bay Area back home to Sacramento as a kid… in the summer in the middle of the bench seat! No AC, no Powersteering, no OD transmission…).
Bob Kauer- circa… we don’t actually know. He always looked exactly like this! (Probably early to mid 1990’s)
:slaps roof: this baby can hold so many guitars!
Max helping unload another lumber run.
I don’t think Grandpa Bob would have had any idea how useful that lumber rack would be!
In the last year and half since I’ve taken over stewardship, I haven’t done much other than maintenance (which is something Bob did to crazy degree! “CHECK THE LOG!”) and use the truck extensively for lumber runs, UPS runs etc. It’s been a great “shop truck” for the last year and a half! There was one thing that needed attention, the bed wood. It was starting to rot and was painted with some oddly heavy, horrible green… honestly I don’t know what. Enamel? Latex? God only knows. I decided to take a page from our accessory line and replace the bed making my own bamboo boards for it. Low and behold when I started to take the old wood out, some of the boards were still salvageable and they were actually made from Pine! An idea began to form in my head about putting this wood to use.
Always a fan of classic Gretsch’s I thought why not do a tribute to those Knotty Pine Roundup guitars complete with C10 themed inlays and other details. The plan was to build one for myself and one for my Dad as there would be no Kauer Guitars without him. Not just his experience, knowledge, wisdom, perseverance of owning his own business and starting our shop from the ground up. While we may have a Paul Sr / Jr relationship at times, I wouldn’t trade it for anything. I figured this would make a great tribute to The Truck and Grandpa Bob we could keep forever (and see from the living room!).
One of the most remarkable things about this pine was its 50 odd years of exposure to the elements left each piece with it’s own unique mineral and oil streaking! This is Dad’s Super Chief and it features TV Jones T-Armonds.
I was also facing a personal dilemma as this would be my third personal Super Chief. Generally as builders, I think we all know we can’t keep them all and I’ve always tried to keep it down to 1 of each model (and sometimes not even that)… but I LOVE Super Chief. I did some thinking and decided why not build mine as a 12 string. I absolutely loved the 12 string we did for Scott Holiday’s double neck Super Chief last year and then I could easily justify adding another one to the stable. This one features TV Jones Supertrons!
An homage to the Round Up Gretsch’s with their western motif inlays, we engraved in a series of items from the truck including the: hubcap, fender badge, air cleaner, bowtie emblem a grill logo (Dad’s has the actual grill). Also the Super Chief script on the pickguard font changed to match the Chevrolet valve cover font.
Because Dad and I share a shop it can be hard to build a guitar for him right in the open without him realizing it but the guys in the shop all did a great job of keeping this one’s eventual owner a surprize. We may have gone a bit out of our way to torture him a little and tell him it was already sold… It made for a most excellent Christmas gift along with a new shirt design “Kauer and Son’s Guitar Delivery” featuring a picture of the Shop Truck.
One thing missing, we also took Bob’s duty belt (he was a Police officer) and reworked it into a guitar strap to go with the guitar. I’ll amend this post when I remember to grab a picture of it!
Maybe it should be Kauer and Sons and Daughters! That’s Max with his Titan KR.5 he built 2 years ago and has been playing in Open E ever since. It’ll be time for Lucy to build her first one later this year!