Tag: Hawksbill Turtle

From Antique Tortoiseshell to Italian Celluloid, to Epoxy Resin

Originally Posted to Quora

My favorite part of a guitar isn’t the beautiful woodgrain, ornate wood figuring, the shape and size of the instrument, or the nice appointments like a maple binding, or the style and colors of the back seam, it’s the pickguard the builder chose to use to augment the overall beauty and particular look of the guitar. Vintage style nickel “Waverly-style tuning machines are something else that immediately catches my eye.

Some years ago, when there was a shift toward more pickgaurd styles and a much broader range of designs and colors, I began to be curiously fascinated by them, particularly tortoiseshell guards. I spent some time researching the history and materials used over the last century.

The first tortoiseshell pickguards didn’t come from a tortoise, at all, but from the now endangered hawksbill sea turtle. What a beautiful animal. The practice of using this obviously gorgeous creature to make all manner of ornate things such as ladies hair combs, belt buckles, mirrors and hairbrushes, was first used over a hundred years ago. Pickguards from this era are so rare that I couldn’t find one online. These pickgaurds would be still attached but in very poor condition on guitars more than a hundred years old, and not many guitars from that period have survived. Other extremely old pickguards would have become detached from their guitars and would have been unceremoniously thrown away. I did load one photo of a modern pickguard for you to compare along with examples from my guitar collection.

Hunted for centuries, a CITES moratorium was placed in the early 1970’s on hunting, sale, or trade of this creature and it’s beautiful shell. Suddenly, the use of “tortoiseshell” became illegal, but I recollect seeing guitars from the late 70’s still adorned with turtle shell pickguards. I suppose, in practice. it took a few years for the moratorium to settle in on remaining stocks. The Hawksbill turtle has recovered but populations are still far from what they once were.

Since then, several materials have been or are still in used today, such as various forms of plastic including nylon and PVC. It wasn’t until the advent of “genuine Italian celluloid” after WWII that a material as beautiful as tortoiseshell began to make inroads and, within a decade, became the preferred pickguard material for the entire industry. Suddenly, all sorts of color combinations became available and every major guitar brand used nothing but high-quality celluloid acetate. You can see some of those different options in the photo showing celluloid sheets, from which pickguards are manufactured or made one at a time, by hand. Today, the number of boutique pickquard makers is growing and for prices ranging from $35 to over $100, a fair amount of money can be spent on buying a custom, handmade pickguard. These custom made pickguards can be absolutely beautiful and when the right one is chosen for a given guitar, it can give that guitar an entirely new look. The process for removing an old pickguard and installing a new one is not difficult but does require some focus and attention so as to not cause damage to the guitar’s finish. As always, you can reduce any angst you might have by taking the job to a qualified luthier.

As they say, “all good things come to an end” and, today, there’s a shortage of high-quality celluloid stock. For a brief period thirty-plus years ago, celluloid acetate was being made in the US, but environmental regulations made it impossible to compete with Chinese manufactured celluloid, which is where the bulk of the world’s supply comes from today.

With this shortage, inventors have been hard at it making hybrid celluloid -epoxy resin pickgaurds. All- resin pickguards are also being made.This may be the way the industry is headed, but to my knowledge no single manufacturing company is making them on a production scale. These pickgards can be beautiful to look at but have a rubbery, flexible feel and are about twice as thick as celluloid sheets. Some people love them and some haven’t gotten used to the idea. Prices range from $35 to around $70. Some of these makers have more experience working with this resin based material, so it may be worth spending a little more on a more established maker. Personally, I prefer celluloid but I do not know if the current shortage is long or short-term.

Here are some celluloid pickgard examples from my own guitars:

Examples of Various Celluloid Acetate Pickguards

I have switched-out the stock pickguards with some custom made pickguards on several of these guitars. I was completely happy with the stock pickaurds on others.

A Couple of Examples of Resin Pickguards, Resin and Genuine Turtle Shell Picks

As you can see, we’ve come a long way from using the extravagant shell of the Hawksbill turtle. It wasn’t just Americans that hunted the hawksbill, but indigenous people had coveted its shell for centuries. Among the most obvious uses for its shell was in making beautiful, ornate bowls. At that time, it must have seemed like the hawksbill’s numbers were limited. The real pressure on its existence was around the period of the civil war, on into the early twentieth century when their numbers declined enough to become noticeable. Tortoiseshell was also used in making guitar picks one at a time. I can’t say that I’ve followed the most recent trend in making “boutique” picks, but with celluloid getting more and more difficult to source, there are a number of changes in guitar pick materials some of which are very expensive (between $15 and $65) per pick. You can still buy a bag of your favorite picks for under $10, so this is going to be an interesting new subject, one that I will write about after I’ve learned a bit more.

Thanks for reading “my walk down pickguard lane”.