David Clerest Project

Clerest Guitars were designed and built by David Clerest.
In the early 1990s, he worked at Original Musical Instruments located in Huntington Beach California,
a small manufacturing company, that built DOBRO, resophonic Guitars.
He was responsible for the major expansion that took place when GIBSON Corporation took over the
small plant, and production was increased 500 % .

Finding no reward of his hard work, he began designing and building his own accoustic guitars.
These were inspired by Danny Ferrington's work. Dave's small shop in Fullerton California used to be
Loe Fender's old radio repair shop. this is where Clerest guitars were built in the second half of 1990s.

The first prototype proved to be excelent, so based on it's design several other guitars were made.
"The Warrior" is made of inexpensive materials, mahagony body (plywood),is 5 inches deep,
mahagony neck,and rosewood fret board. This was designed for the beach and the desert; Very
tough and yet comfortable to play.

The "Custom Performer", is the most beautiful,and most excellent sounding of all Clerest Guitars.
Made of solid Curly Mahagony back and sides, Solid grade A Spruce top, Mahagony neck, ebony
fret board and bridge(a picture of it will be available soon). This one also has flamed maple linings
and lots of ornaments made of mother of pearl. Definitely a collectors item.

The Frankenstein is unique in the way that it was a solid body guitar, it was made hollow by
routing out the body, and placing a thin venier for sound board. Hand carved bridge was placed
on the sound board. This guitar comes with two separate pickups and separate outputs. One
pizzo-electric element pick up was placed under the saddle of the accoustic bridge, with it's own
output plug. The humbucker pickup is hooked up to the volume and tone control with it's own
output jack. There were numerous other experimental instruments built in the 1990s.