A TELE TRIBUTE WITH A TWIST

To build his hollowbody Tribute, Tim Bram turned to a vintage Fender from his youth. The result is a remarkably versatile jazz box.

- DAVE HUNTER

PAYING HOMAGE TO the world's first production solidbody guitar by creating a hollowbody jazz box might seem an outré move - but it's not the only surprise Tim Bram's Tribute Archtop is packing. Certainly, the notion to make a more playable, portable and versatile jazz guitar by adopting a thinline design might seem like nothing new. But then again, nearly everything else about the Tribute Archtop is done a little differently than we've seen before.

"My Tribute model was first made as an homage to a vintage Tele that I restored when I was just 19 years old," Bram tells Guitar Player. "That guitar had a great feel that I wanted to try and re-create in an archtop guitar. The goal with this model was to make an archtop that was smaller and easier to play than a traditional archtop, while still offering the familiar archtop voice. I also wanted to stay away from the traditional shape that is associated with archtop guitars."

Doing things differently would certainly behoove a luthier whose own career has followed an unusual path. Bram made his first guitar in 1976, at the age of 14, and followed it with several others through his high school and college years. During the latter, he took one of his instruments to an interview at a local cabinet shop, where the quality of its workmanship landed him the job. His professional focus shifted to furniture and cabinetry for many years, until he sought new challenges in 2013 and began building guitars again part-time, tasking himself with designing the archtop model that would become the Tribute. Following the demand for this guitar, in 2018 he left the cabinetry trade and took up guitar making full-time.