LABOR OF LOVE
By Field Manley Intern

It took Hal McClain, along with friend Bryan Slowinski, nine months to build Hope.

It's not a Fender Stratocaster or a Les Paul Custom - it's an original Hal McClain.

In a modest shop off 11th Street, McClain has built something worthy of rock star status, and her name is Hope.

From the ash wood base right down to the paua abalone inlay, this guitar has it all.

McClain built the guitar for one of his good friends, Bryan Slowinski. "Bryan helped me wire up my house and wouldn't let me pay him so I asked him to help me design this guitar," McClain said. "He didn't know I was going to give it to him until it was complete."

McClain has been strumming guitars since an early age and made a living in the music business for 18 years. "I started playing when I was nine years old," McClain said. "Both of my grandfathers played the guitar so I was always around music."

Until 1992 he worked in an eightman show band playing all over the country, once with Garth Brooks.

McClain started his craft by building furniture and eventually built his first guitar in 1996.

While three months is all it usually takes for McClain to build a guitar, Hope took considerably longer. The intricate details and eight-hour

wiring job stretched his project

out to nine months.

"The guitar was built to have an

acoustic sound along with electric," McClain said, admiring the guitar lying in its case. "I had never tried anything like this before."

After building five guitars, he feels like he has gotten the hang of it. "When I got finished, it was perfect, no glitches," McClain said. "It is the only one I've ever built that was perfect."

While McClain's guitars could sell for thousands, he's not in it for the money. He either keeps them or gives them away. "I don't try to make money off the guitars," he said. "I've found that if you try to make money doing what you love, you lose your love for it."