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Tommy Castro was our first endorser for Strobel Guitars in 2009. We started out to make the best “travel” guitars, with “travel” in quotes. The goal was to create a great playing, good sounding guitar that would be easy for traveling. Tommy received an early Custom Rambler® Professional Electric Travel Guitar, in the days before we introduced the Rambler® Classic. Our relationship with Tommy was helped along by our good friend Darlene Lopez, Artist Relations manager.
 Custom Ramblers 2009 |
 Tommy picked the RubyBurst |
 Wailing with Terry Hanck |
We recently caught up with Tommy at the Funky Biscuit to show him our new Rambler® STROBELCASTER™ Professional Electric Travel Guitar. Here are a few words he had to say…
During his performance, Tommy played some songs with the new STROBELCASTER™ Professional Electric Travel Guitar. The first video is a Blues Jam showcasing the great sounds Tommy gets from his guitar. This STROBELCASTER™ is outfitted with Zexcoil pickups from Scott Lawing, and they sound fantastic! The second video is Tommy and the Pain Killers playing “Nasty Habits”, where he is joined by Blues great, Matt Schofield. Pictures below courtesy of Jay Skolnick, resident photographer at the Funky Biscuit.
 Rocking with STROBELCASTER Plus |
 Tommy with new STROBELCASTER |
 Tommy gets inspired |
Tommy normally plays a Black Rambler® STROBELCASTER™ Standard travel guitar with a slight modification. He wanted a Black guitar with a Rosewood fret board. Our “Blackie” model normally comes with a Maple fretboard. No problem to trade necks with our interchangeable detachable neck design. We swapped out the Maple fret board neck for one of our STROBELCASTER™ Rosewood necks. He takes her out on the road, and has sends us videos jammin’ in the van while travelling to gigs. Other pro players endorsing our STROBELCASTER™ travel guitars are Elliott Randall and Jeff Pevar – more about them in a future article.
 Black SC Standard |
 SC in Computer Bag |
 STROBELCASTER in White |
 STRAT Jack on White SC |
Tommy’s Story…
Over the course of his four-decade career, Castro has played thousands of shows to thousands of fans, packing dance floors, always leaving them screaming for more. He has released 14 albums filled with original blues, soul and West Coast rock, each one standing alone. Hailing from the San Francisco area, Castro, along with his band, The Painkillers (currently featuring bassist Randy McDonald, keyboardist Michael Emerson and drummer Bowen Brown), play music that is guaranteed to fire up fans and leave critics searching for new words of praise. Billboard says the band plays “irresistible contemporary blues-rock” with “street-level grit and soul.” Now, with Method To My Madness, the group turns the intensity up another notch.
Born in San Jose, California in 1955, Tommy Castro first picked up a guitar at age 10. He fell under the spell of Eric Clapton, Elvin Bishop, Mike Bloomfield and other blues rock players. As he got older, Castro discovered the blues guitar work of Muddy Waters, B.B. King, Freddie King, Buddy Guy, Elmore James and the deep-rooted soul of singers like Ray Charles, Wilson Pickett and James Brown. By his 20s he was playing in a variety of San Francisco-area blues and soul bands.
Castro formed The Painkillers in 2012, creating a lean, mean four-piece lineup. Fueled by Tommy’s voice and guitar plus bass, drums and keyboards, the band released “The Devil You Know” in 2014, winning over hordes of new fans. Castro stripped his music down to its raw essence with the band hammering their point home on the bandstand. Jambands says, “Tommy Castro And The Painkillers are a crackling, stripped-down band with plenty of grit and a rocking soul.” We couldn’t agree more…
It has been a pleasure working with Tommy over the years, his input was instrumental in the design of the new Rambler® STROBELCASTER™ Travel Guitar, helping us create one of the best “travel” guitars on the market. We put the quotes around “travel” because the Rambler portable guitar is much more than your typical travel guitar. Big Sound from a Small Guitar!! Check out more of Tommy’s videos on the Strobel Guitars YouTube Channel…
Strobel Guitars Custom Shop has created a new model in our Rambler® Professional Electric Travel Guitar portfolio. We are often asked by our jazz playing customers if we could create a hollow version of our Rambler® Custom travel guitar. I started thinking about this seriously after meeting with Tony DiCaprio in New York City about 2 years ago. Tony owns a Rambler Classic Travel Guitar and is a prolific jazz player, teacher and author. He played guitar with Elvis Presley’s band in Las Vegas (you can hear a fan yell out on Elvis’s Las Vegas recordings – “play it Tony”!). We thought the new Hollowbody Rambler® Portable Guitar should keep the same shape and detachable neck attributes as the Rambler® Custom travel guitar. Maybe use a Mahogany body with a Maple top and bottom – similar to a Gibson ES-175…
We started with a nice Mahogany body blank glued to a Flamey Maple top and used the same body outline as our Custom Rambler® Electric Travel Guitar. We made a new template with a ¼” smaller outline as a guide to route out the body. This created thin Mahogany rims for the sides of the portable guitar. The pickup route needed be as close to the neck as possible to create that ES-175 sound. We made sure to leave wood for mounting the bridge attaching the neck. The back is another piece of Flamey Maple about ¼” think and shaped to match the body outline. Now we had to figure out how to make the f-holes…
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| Rims with bridge / neck blocks | Routed body and back | Hollowbody top view |
The small dimensions of the body require that we design custom f-holes. Many thanks to Pat O’Donnell of Resurrection Guitars for his help with the design and location of the f-holes. Pat made a template for us, so we can replicate the design for future customers that would like a Custom Rambler® RS-175 Hollowbody Travel Guitar.
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| RS-175 f-hole template | Pat routing the first f-hole | Flip over the template |
After all the routing is complete, we start the long process of sanding and sealing the body. Our inspiration for the design and finish of the Strobel Rambler® Hollowbody Travel Guitar was a 1956 Gibson ES-175. After many hours of sanding and several clear coats of nitrocellulose lacquer we are ready for the color coats. We used the “PRS” process to make apparent bindings for the edges of the top and bottom by painting a base coat of Vintage Amber on the whole body, then taped off the “bindings”. The next color coat was a light Tobacco Sunburst, followed by a darker Tobacco Sunburst.
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| Vintage Amber front view | Back after first color coats | Side view with “bindings” |
After taping, we spray on the vintage tobacco sunburst finish…
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| Taped and ready to paint | RS-175 Tobacco Sunburst | Side view – tape removed |
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| Finished RS-175 Travel Guitar | Les Paul side jack | Back of Rambler Hollowbody |
The RS-175 sounds excellent unplugged, rivaling the sonic output of much bigger electric hollowbodies like the Gibson ES-335 or a Thinline Tele. Weighing in at about 3 pounds, she has a warm “acoustic” tone plugged in with nice harmonics and “oomph” provided by the Schaller® Golden 50 Humbucker. MP3 audio files are available upon request. Please visit our Guitar Gallery to see more pics of the RS-175 Rambler® Custom Hollowbody Travel Guitar (courtesy of Speedring Studios).
As with all our Rambler® Travel Guitar models this is a full scale professional instrument with an easily detachable neck. The body and neck fit in your briefcase or computer bag providing you with a great sounding, great playing guitar that just happens to be easy for traveling.
It takes careful planning and workmanship to create a great sounding, great playing, high quality portable guitar. We are now pleased to offer the Custom Rambler® RS-175 Hollowbody Travel Guitar for sale. Please contact Russ at [email protected] to create the guitar of your dreams, designed just how you want it. Strobel Guitars works with you to optimize the wood selections, neck shaping and set up to match your style of playing. You pick the wood, the color, the neck shape, the inlay and choose any number of available options (piezo bridge, gold hardware, coil tap, etc.).