About Don
President and C.E.O. of the world wide Donmo Corp.
Pic by Denys Finney
I started my musical career as a harmonica player at high school. My first band, The Mecca Powerhouse Five featured amongst other things, washtub bass, washboard, and the “Drainola”, a piece of plastic drain pipe played via a trombone mouthpiece. The bloke who played it had perfect pitch so we used to tune the guitars to the drain. For a while we had a jug player called Grogan but one night he passed out from hyperventilation and retired.
Our attempts to go electric were thwarted because no one was old enough to drive a car. The bass player bought an amp and we had to get it to our practice room some three or four kilometres away. We decided to push it through the streets on its castors. The roads were so rough that the speaker cabinet fell apart en route and so the washtub survived a little longer.
Music became the dominating influence in my life from then on. You can read and hear all about my musical career on my other site, HERE . As time went by I leaned more toward playing acoustic music which lead to my search for a metal bodied resonator guitar. They just weren’t available here in Adelaide in the days before Ebay and Asian mass production so I decided to try to make one. I’d always been handy with tools and my last hobby - grinding telescope mirrors and lenses - gave me confidence that I could make almost anything! There are no books, videos or classes on metal body guitar making so I had to start from scratch.
My first efforts involved the steel from the door of an old Volvo car but I soon realised it was way too heavy. I would lay awake at night thinking of ways to overcome difficulties and eventually got one guitar made well enough to string it up.
I made another, better, one and then one for a friend and now, eight years later, I don’t have time to do very much else. As of June 2007 I have made 195 guitars, 40 or so mandolins and nearly 50 ukes.
Because I use my own guitars in many different situations – solo, duo, band, amplified, acoustic, for recording, for busking – I get a chance to see how they perform in all conditions. (Some customers may be disturbed to hear that their guitar has been road tested at the local markets!)
I’m always looking for improvements in all areas of the instrument, especially the sound, and make time to experiment with new ideas.
My mandolin and my tricone pickup are a good examples of that and in the future I have many more to try.
Don
A road-testing session with Prawnhead a the Adelaide markets
Well - I didnt think it was playing that bad!