- Now up next, we're going to take a look
inside one of my personal favorite places in Colorado.
It's called Blindworm Guitars,
and it's an imaginative, custom instrument shop
owned by two very cool people.
- Kelly and Andrew Scott use their storefront
to showcase a magical array of instruments,
and other creations.
Their most recent invention is the Mindbender.
I've heard of this thing.
It's a musical instrument that virtually anyone can play.
Check it out.
(guitar quietly playing)
- [Kate] There are no rules when it comes
to playing the Mindbender.
It requires no formal music training.
- [Andrew] Just kinda listen to what you're doing,
and you can pick out melodies and songs.
- A sound as unique as this one
has to come from a pretty creative space.
Welcome to Blindworm Guitars where shop owners
Kelly and Andrew Scott let their imaginations lead the way.
It all started decades ago when Andrew
was growing up in Oklahoma,
dreaming of an artistic vocation.
- [Andrew] I was just always creating stuff out of,
you know, everything.
- [Kate] Moving to Colorado in 2002
turned out to be the perfect decision,
leaving his old life behind, Andrew built a new world
in Colorado Springs, starting with an entertainment center.
- It was huge, and it looked kind of like an Asian temple.
As I building it, I remember at one point,
I ran and jumped up into the big TV cavity of it
and I thought, maybe I could do this for a living.
At some point, my sister had asked me
to make her a lamp out of some broken instruments
or something, and so I started hunting
all of these broken instruments
from you know, thrift stores and things.
And every time I would get them,
I would say, well I can just waste this.
And I'd fix 'em, and I'd make 'em work,
and then I just ended up having all these instruments,
and no lamp. (laughing)
- [Kate] Then he met Kelly.
- [Kelly] I really like whimsy, draw upon my experiences
growing up, use a lot of that for my sculptures,
and that type of art.
So this one was my Valentine for Andy this year.
She booty shakes.
- Is this anyone in particular?
- It's kind of like me but.
(laughing)
- [Andrew] One of the great things about this space
that Kelly and I have put together,
is that we've created just a great lab, if you will,
to invent and work with new thing.
It's just great to have another creative person
to bounce ideas off and to be inspired.
- [Kate] The rest is history.
Together, Andrew and Kelly are the reason Blindworm Guitars
is the creative imagination center in town.
- [Andrew] I realized that, well I had this great shop
with all these tools, and all this knowledge.
And I had already done a lot of carving
and precision woodworking, and inlay work.
And kind of all the elements to building instruments.
So I started making some for myself for fun.
And right away, I started getting custom orders
from friends and people around town.
And within probably a year from that,
I had decided okay, I'm moving into this music business
side of it, it just always felt right.
(metal music)
- This is the Manticore Seven, that,
God it's at least a couple years now
since I walked outta here with this one.
(rapidly playing guitar)
And so this, to me, is the quintessential
heavy metal guitar, seven strings,
red, horns, looks like it might steal your soul.
And that's what I wanted.
- [Kate] The Scotts source their building materials
as locally as possible, some even have family roots.
- The bird's eye maple came from a table
my great grandfather built over 100 years ago.
And it got damaged, and I saved all the wood.
This one here is a custom piece I made
for a good friend of mine, that it's a full acoustic guitar
but it's also, it has magnetic, piezo, and midi components
so you can hook it up to a computer processor
and make it sound like a trumpet,
or anything you want, really.
We select wood here in town,
and then we glue up sort of these blocks of,
chunks of wood that are then kind of roughed out
on a bandsaw, and then we attach
a pattern, and then run 'em through a big router,
and then some other smaller routers,
until we end up with something a lot more refined.
We rout out cavities, and drill the holes
for all the equipment, then we put in the inlay,
which we're currently cutting all that
with the laser cutter.
And then they go through a process of clear coating.
(plastic crinkling)
Then we go to the assembly process.
Our pick guards and all that stuff,
we make with patterns we cut out on our laser cutter.
Of course, you have the relief in the neck
which allows you to get that full amount of tension
that you're bending the strings in.
That's really crucial to the design of this.
Also, the shape of it has to do
with how it sits on your knee,
how it hang son a strap, or how it can sit on your leg
this way too, everybody does something different.
(playing the Mindbender)
- [Kate] Back to that sound,
generated through this Eastern-inspired stringed instrument
and created right here in Colorado Springs.
Through 15 years of invention,
and the patenting process, the Mindbender is staged
to be Blindworm's most popular order.
- A lot of it had to do with wanting to create things
and sounds and ways to play that weren't out there.
(woman playing koto)
Japan has the koto, China has the guzheng.
Vietnam had the dan tranh, and they all rely on
having a string anywhere from one to 20 of them or so,
and using slight amounts of bending
to create different sounds out of it,
and change the pitch a little bit.
Of course, you can do all kinds
of weird sound effecty type stuff.
(makes warbling noise)
There's just endless number of things you can do with it.
Gives us a huge future of, who knows what we're gonna do.
- Well, there's no wrong way to play the Mindbender.
- No, that's right, it's pretty much the Reese's
of the music world.
Blindworm Guitars also showcases work
from over a dozen other local instrument makers.
It is truly worth a special trip,
especially if you are an instrument nerd.
- Like Kate is, and we all know it.
- Hey! (laughs) - And if you can't
make it in person, you can still see their creations
at blindwormguitars.com.