Atkin White Rice

On Christmas Eve I had a proximal fracture of my right humerus. This means the break was in the upper part of the humerus. It was just below the head of the humerus that fits into the shoulder socket. This was both frustrating and painful.

I broke it by slipping on some ice that was on the sidewalk just next door to our house. I had been out for about a 2 mile walk. It was a coldish day. The temperature was below freezing. However, the skies were clear. It hadn’t rained recently. As a result I wasn’t paying close enough attention to the sidewalk when I got back from my walk. There was a sprinkler system leak onto the sidewalk. It froze into a thin smooth ice surface. Then I went down like Charlie Brown trying to kick the football with Lucy as the holder.

Falls are the most common reason for a proximal fracture. Since its a large bone there is significant pain. I lay for a few seconds figuring out how to get myself back up since my right arm was useless at this point. I managed to get back up and got back home. My wife took me over to the hospital for an x-ray to confirm that it was broken. Thankfully, the bone wasn’t displaced so no surgery was needed.

However, these fractures take quite a long time to heal. I was in a sling for 4-5 weeks and then began physical therapy. Ultimately I actually had to use a bone stimulator (Exogen Ultrasound device) to encourage bone growth to get the break sealed up. This seemed to work fine and the last x-ray showed that the bone was healed. The bone healing is not the end of things though. It will take another few months to get the strength back in my upper arm and the level of flexibility that I had before the break.

One of the hardest parts of this whole process is that I was unable to play guitar. A couple weeks after the sling came off I could manage to play an electric because it had a thinner body and I could get my arm around it without significant pain. However, even with the electric, I could only play for 5 or 10 minutes at a time.

During all this downtime from guitar playing I was listening to a lot of new music and watching many guitar YouTube videos. It was on YouTube that I discovered Atkin Guitars. Atkin Guitars was founded in Canterbury, England, in 1995. They build a number of models that are homages to pre-war Gibson and Martin guitars. They also built a tribute guitar that was a copy of Tony Rice’s D-28 (serial # 58957).

The reason Atkin Guitars built a tribute for this particular guitar is because it is famous in the world of acoustic guitars. Here’s some of the details of its story.

The Tony Rice guitar was originally built in 1935. It has Brazilian rosewood back and sides and an Adirondack top. All of these guitars that are still around and in decent shape have an incredible sound and are worth quite a bit. In 1935 it would have sold for around $100. As far as I know between its build in 1935 and 1959 there’s no story of who owned the guitar and how badly it was treated.

We do know that the guitar had seen some rough times. In 1959 fifteen year old bluegrass guitarist Clarence White bought the guitar for $25. It was really beat up and awaiting repairs. Some previous owner had whittled the soundhole to widen it (there some accounts that say Clarence White whittled this but according to Fretboard Journal it was “some anonymous whittler”). The original fingerboard was gone. It had been replaced with an ebony board that being held on with tape! He bought it and brought it home to his father. White’s father - who was a very good guitar repair person - declared it a lost cause. But White was determined. He took the guitar to luthier Milt Owen. Owen said he could make it playable for another $25. He found an old Gretsch blank with 22 frets that became the fingerboard. The guitar had been brought back to life.

When Owen gave the guitar back to White he cautioned that he had set the guitar up with light gauge strings and that is what should be used on the guitar. He said putting heavy gauge strings on it would cause it to “belly up”. “Bellying” refers to bowing of the soundboard of an acoustic guitar. The constant tension applied by the strings causes the bridge to rotate forward towards the neck; resulting in the warping of the top (especially behind the bridge), a slight drop at the sound hole and a raised action.

White seemingly immediately ignored this advice. So after just a year of use the action was incredibly high and it was almost unplayable. It was at this point that 9 year old music prodigy Tony Rice ran into the guitar at a music show in southern California. White let Rice play the guitar for as long as he wanted that day and Rice was impressed with the sound. He said “The only thing I knew was that it looked like hell but it sounded like a million bucks to a 9-year-old kid!” At some time later, as the guitar had become even more unplayable, White leaned the guitar against a tree and shot it with his pellet gun.

Finally, in 1965, the guitar was sold (or given) to his friend Joe Miller in 1965. The story I heard is that he used the D-28 as collateral for a loan to a get a Telecaster. In any case, it’s new owner (Miller) left the guitar under his bed for 9 years.

In 1975 a grown Tony Rice was playing with the New South. He and fiddler Bobby Sloan chatted about Clarence White (who had passed away in 1973). Sloan brought up White’s D-28 and said he had sold it to Joe Miller. Rice decided he’d really like to own that guitar. He only had Joe Miller’s name, knew that he lived in Southern California and knew that his family had a chain of liquor stores. Using that info he tracked down the right Joe Miller. He told him he’d like to buy the D-28. Miller was aware of Tony Rice’s talents and agreed to sell the guitar. The guitar was appraised and sold to Rice for $550. The guitar was eventually put back in working shape by Richard Hoover (who would co-found Santa Cruz Guitars later).

While Tony Rice owned the guitar in 1993 he lived with his wife in Crystal River, Florida. A hurricane hit in the middle of the night and they were evacuated without a chance to grab anything (including the D-28). The home flooded. The guitar was under water for a couple hours before it was retrieved but it no longer sounded like it used to. Five years later a man named Harry Sparks slowly dried out the guitar. This caused a lot of the bracings to come loose. Eventually luthier and friend Snuffy Smith reglued all the bracings and got it back to its former glory.

This guitar became legendary. It was used on any number of famous recordings. The enlarged soundhole gave it a unique volume and projection. There is a Tony Rice album called “58957: The Bluegrass Guitar Collection” where the guitar is used on 21 different bluegrass songs. He was joined on that album by Doc Watson, Sam Bush, Norman Blake, and many other masterful musicians.

There are a number of guitar makers who have crafted replicas of Rice’s iconic guitar. Santa Cruz has a Tony Rice model. So does Bourgeois, Martin, Huss & Dalton, Collins and, the aforementioned, Atkin Guitars.

After watching lots of Atkin Guitar videos and hearing a number of artists playing various models I decided I’d try and trade my Lowden F-34 guitar and get the Atkin Tony Rice model. The Lowden was amazing but I really wanted the Atkin model.

Atkin Guitars decided to name their replica the “White Rice” model as an homage to both Clarence White and Tony Rice. They sell it with both a Madagascar rosewood back and sides and one with Indian rosewood. I found one at Music Emporium in Boston Massachusetts with the Madagascar rosewood, worked out a trade for my Lowden (and forked over some more $$$) and got the Atkin Guitar.

It’s only been recently that I’ve been able to play the new guitar for more than a couple minutes. It’s amazing and easily the best acoustic I own. I’d like to get another Atkin Guitars model at some point. Maybe their homage to the Gibson J-45.

The Atkin White Rice I purchased has:

• Madagascar Rosewood Back & Sides
• Torrefied Adirondack Spruce Top
• Ebony Bridge and Fingerboard
• Nickel Gotoh Tuners
• Scalloped Forward Shifted Bracing
• Aged Nitrocellulose Lacquer
• Nut Width is 1 11/16”
• Neck carve is Medium C
• Scale length 25 1/2”
• String spacing 2 3/16”

There are no inlays on the guitar. There were none on the original Tony Rice D-28.