Every guitar built at Cindy Guitars is handcrafted from salvaged New York City wood, transforming historic beams into instruments full of soul and sound. In this episode, Cindy Hulej walks us through her process, from wood selection and pickup design to inlay art and tone customization.
Guest: Cindy Hulej, Luthier/Artist | Website: https://www.cindyguitars.com/
Host: Sean Martin, Co-Founder at ITSPmagazine and Host of Redefining CyberSecurity Podcast & Music Evolves Podcast | Website: https://www.seanmartin.com/
What happens when the story of a city becomes part of the music we make? In this episode of Music Evolves, host Sean Martin sits down with luthier and artist Cindy Hulej of Cindy Guitars to explore how reclaimed wood from historic New York buildings is transformed into custom electric guitars—each one uniquely shaped by memory, material, and imagination.
Craft as Innovation
Cindy’s process at Carmine Street Guitars isn’t just about building instruments—it’s about listening to what the material has to say. The beams salvaged from landmarks like the Chelsea Hotel and John Lennon’s former home aren’t just structural—they carry decades of vibration, weather, and presence. That physical history directly shapes how these guitars sound, feel, and resonate—offering a kind of analog innovation rooted in human touch and intention.
Cindy describes how she and her husband Johnny repurpose old beams, often salvaged from 1800s-era buildings, and transform them into guitars that are not only playable but deeply resonant—physically and emotionally. The aged wood, shaped by centuries of seasonal change, yields a tone that’s warm and chimey, with a resonance modern lumber can’t match. “You’re working with material that’s already lived a hundred lives,” she explains. “You just have to unlock the next one.”
Creativity Beyond Convention
Each guitar is made by hand, down to the smallest detail. From collaborating with boutique pickup winders to mixing finishes from shellac flakes, Cindy builds instruments that are both sonic and visual statements. No two are alike—because the creative process isn’t about repeating perfection, it’s about shaping something personal and alive. Whether players come with a precise vision or just a feeling, Cindy helps translate that into tone and form.
Reimagining the Past to Shape the Future
This isn’t just about guitars. It’s about the convergence of history, artistry, community, and sound. This episode challenges the idea that innovation must come from new tech or flashy trends. Sometimes, the most meaningful advances come from rethinking old materials and techniques.
Cindy’s guitars are a form of living history—reminding us that sound isn’t just produced, it’s inherited, interpreted, and carried forward. And, Cindy’s path from bartending to building some of the most soulful instruments in New York is a reminder that craft isn’t just skill—it’s commitment to meaning.
About Rick Kelly and Carmine Street Guitars
Carmine Street Guitars, located in New York City’s Greenwich Village, is a hand-built electric guitar workshop led by legendary luthier Rick Kelly. Known for using reclaimed old-growth wood from historic buildings across the city, Rick has built instruments for renowned musicians such as Lou Reed, Patti Smith, Bob Dylan, and many others. His approach blends time-honored techniques with a reverence for the city’s past, crafting guitars that are as storied as the musicians who play them. At the heart of the shop’s ethos is a commitment to individuality, craftsmanship, and sonic integrity—values continued today through Cindy Guitars and the growing creative community within the space.
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[00:00:00] Cindy Hulej: Hi, my name's Cindy Hulej. We're here at Carmine Street Guitars. My brand is Cindy Guitars and, um, we handcraft guitars out of like old New York City building wood from the 18 hundreds, and a lot of other old growth stuff as well. But we get a lot of the New York City stuff from places like the Chelsea Hotel, Remley, mc, Soley, John's Pizza, Jim Ish's, loft, all kinds of stuff.
Um, let's see, where, where do
[00:00:32] Sean Martin: I, how, how, um, go from there. How did you get started making guitars?
[00:00:38] Cindy Hulej: Um,
[00:00:38] Sean Martin: do you play?
[00:00:40] Cindy Hulej: I do play. I am a bit more of a wood chuck now, but Johnny, my husband Johnny, and I have started a. A project, a duo thing now called the Suspect Chart. So I'm starting to play again, but I did grow up with it with playing guitar.
My father was a player for about 40 years [00:01:00] and um, that's kind of how I really got into it. But then during high school I was following what Rick was doing on the gear page, Marshall Forums and all that stuff. And I loved what he was doing and. You know, I've, I kind of came to the city with no money outta high school and saved up.
I worked really hard sort of bartending, suit and tie Italian restaurant kind of thing, making some money for a few years. Got my own apartment, got laid off from there, got good unemployment for a year, and I just said. I don't wanna work in art galleries on the side anymore. 'cause I was always on the taking care of the artist part of it, the book part of it, which I wanted to be on the other side of it, you know, I didn't wanna work a guitar center or anything.
I wanted to do something with guitar. So I thought about it and I said, I wanna work with Rick Kelly. So I walked in here one day and kind of told him my story. Yeah. [00:02:00] And he said, I can't pay you. And I said, it's okay. I got unemployment for a year that I'll, at least at that point would cover my rent. So I did have some side jobs and stuff for some years before I got really steady with this.
But um, yeah, I've been here ever since. He said, kind of, you know, sit at the computer, I'll show you around in the back. Answer the phones, and I've been here almost 13 years now.
[00:02:28] Sean Martin: That's incredible.
[00:02:29] Cindy Hulej: Yeah.
[00:02:30] Sean Martin: Can you describe for folks who appreciate music, appreciate guitar, primarily electric guitars. They're solid.
Solid guitars, right? Mm-hmm. I don't know if you do any hollow or semi hollow. We do
[00:02:43] Cindy Hulej: like chambered stuff and things like that, and actually Johnny's working on one for himself right now. For our project that I was talking about, which is behind here, this is gonna be an inspiration. OI can hear you looking inspirational.
Ode to [00:03:00] Dungeons and Dragons. This thing for this woman in Canada. So this is gonna be a one off kind of all carved, inspired by crazy build that I'm gonna be doing. But yeah, this one, so this is just gonna be the top and this is gonna be all hollowed out and stuff. It's in the rough. Beginning stages. So we do stuff like that.
Um, well we haven't done that before with the, with the Old Pine. So normally we don't make sort of all hollow guitars. But, uh, we'll be doing that kind of thing for the first time with this one. And we're very excited. This one's kind of like a mix match sort of hybrid between a, uh, like a Jag and a, a Gretch white Falcon.
'cause Johnny's a big white Falcon fan. Um, but yeah, otherwise it's all solid body electrics and bases, some chambered if you need it.
[00:03:54] Sean Martin: And talk to me a little bit about the electronics, the different types of pickups, [00:04:00] and obviously electronics are inside. How do you, how do you Uh, well,
[00:04:04] Cindy Hulej: we do everything pretty much custom in here, so I, we don't make the pickups here.
But we work with guys that just make pickups forever. So one of the main guys that I work with, his name is Smitty, and he is with MJS pickups up in Toronto. And uh, he's been winding for over like 30 years now, and it's him and his wife set up on their property with like their whole business. So they're really cool, old school family, super, super intelligent and really knowledgeable about what he does.
Um. Also like Lindy Fralin, we work with Don Mayer forever and his pickups are just going for crazy amounts of money now. So we haven't been using him lately, but we have a bunch of stuff with Don Mays in it. Lindy Fralin. Rick still uses Seymours and DeMars a lot, you know, but yeah. And Gemini here in New York.
This guy Rob Banta, he's been doing it [00:05:00] for like a decade now. We work with him a lot, you know, especially for the people that want like all New York builds, right? Yeah. So, yeah. So how, but yeah, everything's custom though. I get everything custom wine for the custom build. So I usually put people directly in touch with the pickup maker and they go back and forth and say, okay, define the right, this is what I like, this is what I want.
Or can you do this? So Smitty does all kinds of crazy stuff. He'll make what are, what
[00:05:29] Sean Martin: are those decisions driven by certain sounds or. All
[00:05:33] Cindy Hulej: kinds of stuff. Yeah, I mean, what's that conversation? So they tell people if they don't know what they're kind of going for to, 'cause some people know exactly what they want and then other people are like, I have no idea.
I just love your work, or whatever it is. So yeah, if they don't really know, I usually tell them to talk to whatever the pickup guy is, tell them, you know, the kind of music or favorite guitarist or what kind of sounds they're going for, and. You know, they'll usually come up with a visual [00:06:00] and that's about it.
Usually they have pretty good suggestions for people and I've, I've always had great luck with everybody I've worked with. They, they always sound great, so, yeah, it's cool.
[00:06:11] Sean Martin: Do you do, uh, obviously six stringing, do you do bass as well? Mm-hmm.
[00:06:14] Cindy Hulej: Okay. Yeah, we do bases, uh, yeah, I got a couple orders for five strings I think right now coming up, but yeah, we do four and five strings.
I've done a couple,
[00:06:27] Sean Martin: so I'm super interested in the process. I don't, do you wanna start with, because you mentioned the wood, that's, I think it was one of the draws for me here is kind of the history of, of where the wood comes from, but, so these are old beams and
[00:06:41] Cindy Hulej: Yeah.
[00:06:42] Sean Martin: Parts of buildings, uh, start there. So,
[00:06:44] Cindy Hulej: I mean, this, this building for example, where you're standing right now, if you look up at the skylights and all this, this is actually the backyard here.
So this building is 1827. And what happens is a lot of these from back then, [00:07:00] um, when they get older, just the ends of the beams will rot. And in these old buildings, it's every 16 inches. There's another. You know, roof r or floor joists running across and it's just the very ends, they'll take them out. Um, but you know, this wood for most of New York City, Brooklyn, um, the old buildings that are built outta this stuff, there are trees that grew for 500, 800, maybe even a thousand years.
And then we're cut down, brought down the Hudson and the log runs built all of New York City. And, you know, with, with. The wood being that old and then being indoors another a hundred or 200 years throughout the seasonal changes here through summers and winters expanding and contracting. That's what really makes a difference, you know?
Um, and the sound and, and especially with how these trees grow. Pine trees, conifers, they don't have to reach through the [00:08:00] canopy to get to the sun. They grow very straight and grain. So that's another reason why this stuff is great for instrument making. If you wanna work with all the nails and knots and dumpster diving or whatever you gotta do to get it,
[00:08:14] Sean Martin: how does it, how does the wood change the sound?
[00:08:16] Cindy Hulej: Um, well if you were to look at this stuff, what I'm saying is like with, with it growing so straight on like a microscopic level, the grain structure is so straight, it would, it opens up over time. It crystallizes all the molecules and they open up like bundle of straws. So it works really well with having the all pine bigger necks that were known with no trust rod.
With the pine on Pine it just. Fully just kind of opens for the vibrations and resonance. This stuff is a little warmer in tone, you know, compared to maybe Maple Maple's. Very bright. The the pine overall, if you get one of these, they're very warm, but they're super chimey. They just ring out. They're really resonant.
It's great stuff. [00:09:00] It's different stuff to work with, but, and then we have a lot of other old growths that we do work with, so a lot of people kind of wonder like. You don't put any res rods in anything? No, no, no. It's just the one inch, like classical thickness, banerjee, 45 fifties telly style, full inch thick neck, nores rod, but corson.
And you gotta know how to work with, you know, the wood. That is a different story. You know, everything else that we work with here, skinnier necks, other woods, we always put restaurants in them. It's just a different story with this stuff. So. Um, but yeah, we, yeah, we have 150 year old hard rock maple. We got gauna and a Brazilian rosewood.
It's all new old stocks, the well old stock stuff that Rick got, you know, back in the seventies at farm auctions and things like that. So pad, zebra, wood, oak, cedar. We got all kinds of stuff here. But it's nice that we get to work with all the really good old wood. 'cause a lot of the stuff they're using now is really green and rubbery, [00:10:00] even for the necks.
Yeah,
[00:10:03] Sean Martin: I see the, I was looking over here the, a lot of the old beams from I see Chelsea Hotel and
[00:10:09] Cindy Hulej: Yeah. C it's a lot of the places. Yeah. We gotta update that wall too. We recently got, um, some beams outta John Lennon's first house on 1 0 5 Bank Street. We got John's pizza. We got some wood right here on the corner.
They were renovating right on a. Bedford over here in Carmine. So me and Johnny went over there, took a couple beams out of the dumpster, but yeah, we, yeah, we got them from all over the city and yeah. One of the cedar pieces that we got, uh, is one of the guys that owned where the new Google building is over here.
Mm-hmm. And he actually brought some beams in of the water tower wood. It's one of the gray sort of drop horns that Rick made out there. You can see it out there. It's, you'll know
[00:10:57] Sean Martin: I'll grab a shot of
[00:10:58] Cindy Hulej: it. Totally different patina [00:11:00] it just like this stuff is just like all, it's all green, white, it's a different type of, you know, 'cause it's cedar, but this is mostly like yellow white pine Douglas f sometimes if we're, if we get some of the neck wood in once in a while.
Um, but yeah, it was the stinkiest stuff to cut into and it was just like weird. But yeah. But yeah, it was water tower wood. I thought that was a really interesting trade. That
[00:11:25] Sean Martin: is cool.
[00:11:26] Cindy Hulej: Yeah.
[00:11:27] Sean Martin: So it starts off two, two beams. Is it, and you join them or,
[00:11:30] Cindy Hulej: well, some of them are wide enough for one piece bodies actually.
Like if you look at those piece, those really tall ones, the three of 'em there.
[00:11:39] Sean Martin: Oh, right. Yeah.
[00:11:40] Cindy Hulej: Those are, uh, wide enough for one piece bodies, I think. But, but a lot of 'em, you know, the. The actual two by fours that they used to have and everything, they're, they're, you usually get like, um, a piece off the same board or, um, if it's thick enough this [00:12:00] way, we'll do like a book match where we open up, kind of like that piece.
So, although that's not the Old Pine, that's a different piece of some kind of black lace wood that I got for Rick a while ago. But yeah. Um, so yeah, most of them are just center seemed. Some of them are one piece and some of them are book matched, so that's really, we do some other ones. You know, if it's rarer wood, like McSorley's or something where we'll sandwich a few pieces.
So it's all different parts of this stuff, but from different places or different parts from the same building that, yeah.
[00:12:37] Sean Martin: So you have. Do you use templates? Obviously, I'm assuming this is not a template. This one here, is that, that is a template for
[00:12:44] Cindy Hulej: the out outline. Yeah. I mean, I'm actually doing this whole thing carved by hand no matter, but I wanted to lay everything out and have a proper template of what I did so that I can trace all this on there when I get going for routing and carving on this whole thing.
So, but yeah, [00:13:00] normally, you know, like these are some of mine, but Rick's got like hundreds of them down here that he's made throughout the years. Oops. Oh, oh,
[00:13:09] Sean Martin: sorry.
[00:13:10] Cindy Hulej: Yeah, I think I came unplugged.
[00:13:12] Sean Martin: I stepped on it. There. There we go.
[00:13:15] Cindy Hulej: Are we good? Yeah. Um, but yeah, they're all handmade. So for, you know, like one, um, one build you might need anywhere from.
I mean, maybe even just one, one or two templates up to maybe seven or eight, depending on if you have things layered and routed different and stuff. Um, so we hand make all these out of tempered Masonite, like Leo Fender did back in the fifties. Um, um, yeah, and then everything is kind of from there, pretty rough.
We gotta pull all the nails. Like if you look at that nail box over there by the leather. Station like these are some of the nails that we've pulled out of the boards back in the 18 [00:14:00] hundreds. They would, you know, uh, make these solid iron square cut nails. And so what we do now is you'll see some of them out there, you gotta ask Rick about it.
Uh, we actually send these to Smitty up in Toronto, and he makes us custom pickups now
[00:14:20] Sean Martin: out of the nails.
[00:14:21] Cindy Hulej: We call them nail head pickups 'cause they can work as the pole pieces 'cause they're solid iron. Um, yeah, we call them, we call them nail head pickups. And the actual face of the pickup is the Chelsea Hotel Wood and sometimes Trinity Church.
So we're doing that for our custom stuff now too, which is nice. Um, and then, yeah, for finishing and stuff like we hand mix the shellac. So we use Denatured alcohol and Shellac flakes. For people who don't know. What she'll lack is it's more of a natural finishing closer to like a violin finish than something like a Nitro or those really shiny, [00:15:00] thick plasticy crappy finishes, crappy.
I mean, they're cool for certain things. I like 'em, but not for this stuff. I think that, you know, we like to use the natural finishes here because it kind of lets the wood breathe a little bit more. You know, shellac is made from the LAC bug, so it kind of. It works with the old characteristics and the old wood a little bit better, in our opinion, than covering it all in a thick plastic coating.
Yeah, these are some of the, yeah, so some of the scraps, we've been kind of just hand making little things out of stuff. So we've been doing like John Pizza, John's pizza scraps from like, you know, the necks or bodies that we cut out that are left over, or this is Chelsea Hotel Wood that come, came out of there.
So we've been hand wood brewing stuff. Yeah, so basically like the wood starts out like this, right? Okay. So you wanna do half a telly body out of this. Um, you pull the nails and then you'll take the template and [00:16:00] lay it out rough, right? So then you'll trace around this, flip it other side on the other piece.
And then you'll rough cut it like, I did this piece, these two pieces. Right, right. And then we'll thickness this because this is too thick for what we want. Especially if this, this cap's gonna go on this, so this is actually gonna be like a skim top back. And then this'll be the front tell, which I didn't draw that shape on there yet.
Right. So, we'll, we'll actually. Cut a couple pieces. One piece off of here and one piece off of the other side. Glue this up and then glue these up on top of the front of it. Get the body done. Then you rough cut it, which will bring you here basically, or here,
[00:16:52] Sean Martin: right?
[00:16:53] Cindy Hulej: And then when you go to route, you'll attach your outline template, routing template, whatever you are on the back.[00:17:00]
Of the piece, and then you come over here, bring this with us. Okay?
And with this, on the bottom of that wood, this bit will come down an eighth of an inch every step. You turn this with the pedal. The bid will come down an eighth of an inch and cut all around. So you have the piece of wood here, it's bigger. Right,
[00:17:27] Sean Martin: right.
[00:17:28] Cindy Hulej: You just follow that around and this'll cut the outline.
That's how we do, you know, a lot of the pickup routing and all that, but it's all, yeah, it's all kind of done by hand. And then with the use of these old kind of cool machines, and then for this machine over here, this one's really cool too. Come over that way back where we were maybe. Okay. This is called the D Carver, and this thing was originally for gun stocks and [00:18:00] decoys.
So if you look here and down there, there's those points down there. There's three of 'em on each side, right? And this wheel is actually a wheel that you can spin. So originally before Rick added this table back in the seventies, eighties. You'd put your master template of whatever gun you were shaping here, all finished and carved, and then you could take this, this isn't moving right now, but you could take this and the rough cuts here would have two cutters and you could all, you could flip 'em all at the same time as kind of like, you know, A CNC in a way.
But it's like the old school. So they used to do like ducks and, and, um, and Gunstock. Gunstock, yeah. Yeah. Stuff on here. The decoys and everything and yeah, so we do, we use this for the contours, so on offsets and, and you know, s Strat style S models. Uh, we'll follow [00:19:00] the contours on there. If somebody wants a really traditional sort of thing, a lot of the time I'll just hand carve 'em by eye myself too.
It's almost faster in my opinion, but
mm-hmm. What do you think, Cal? Alright. You don't wanna keep it? No. I am excited. This is gonna be beautiful. This is gonna be a really cool build because this is the one that's got the skim. This is gonna be the back skim top, just taken down. And then we're gonna route this just a little bit around it in like my number 100 build so that it's all natural and then the face is all dark.
This is gonna be cool beauty. It's not even gorgeous sanded either. It's gonna be really something else. It's called Black Lace something. I don't remember. I tried to find it. Even my [00:20:00] order. I can't find any of these. I, I bought this for Rick as a present like eight years ago.
[00:20:06] Sean Martin: And then last question, I'll let you get back to work the, the next headstock.
[00:20:12] Cindy Hulej: I don't do illegal headstocks. So we, I mean we are, it depends on the build. Um. But yeah, we, yeah, everything's, everything's kind of designed by me, or it's one of the ones that Rick already knows is approved. That's legal. Um, but yeah. What, what question that to me.
[00:20:33] Sean Martin: Well, I'm just, the idea there's something legal and interesting
[00:20:37] Cindy Hulej: for, so for bigger companies like you, like.
I mean, even saying like telecast or if you're making something, you're not allowed to use that word, right? That's why you hear like model T or S model or whatever it is, right? But the shapes for the bodies fender don't have patented. That's why you see those a lot. Okay. So those don't have to be changed for those two.
But [00:21:00] Gibson's a different story. I don't know if the double cut is like. Uh, good or not? There's, I don't know. It's been back and forth, I think. But yeah, for the headstocks though, offender headstocks are patented, so if you make those, it's not gonna be good. Probably if they go after you. Right. So, so yeah. I always tell people that, you know, I do my own headstock shapes and nobody's ever had an issue with it, you know, if they don't like one that I have available already.
I'll work on designing something that, you know, they like. I've, I've been building almost 13 years now here, um, under Cindy Guitars, and I've never made one the same. Even the artwork, I don't duplicate stuff exactly on anything. I've, somebody sees something that I built or made that they like, I say, okay, I can do your own version.
Right. Let's talk. So that's kind of a nice thing to one of the kinds
[00:21:56] Sean Martin: Yeah. Yeah. You do inlays. On them as well. We do
[00:21:59] Cindy Hulej: all kinds of, yeah, [00:22:00] we do. In Lia. Yeah. The one out there in the front cabinet you should get a shot of because it's, it's an S model, but the guy, it's his second Cindy and he wanted the shop on the front.
All Woodburn with me, Rick Johnny, and our Cat Dahlia in the doorway because we're like the Carmine Street guitars band. He was kind of referencing like the Ramones against the brick. Album covers. So he wanted us on this one for the face and then the Brooklyn Bridge and like brass inlay on the neck. So that was a lot of, a lot of work trying to figure that out.
And yeah, Johnny hand cut the stanchions for it. And then I inlaid all like that, all the ropes. I got this like jeweler's wire that looked like roped inlay all brass and then engraved it and everything for the detailing. So that one's out there. Um, I'll
[00:22:53] Sean Martin: grab a shot of that.
[00:22:53] Cindy Hulej: Yeah. A bunch of stuff out there.
Yeah.
[00:22:58] Sean Martin: Well, it's incredible. I, [00:23:00] uh, I appreciate the journey in here. Oh, yeah. It's a pleasure to have you. Yeah, I love, love seeing all this stuff and the story is great and your story is great, so
[00:23:08] Cindy Hulej: thank you so much.
[00:23:09] Sean Martin: Thank you, Cindy, and, uh, appreciate it.
[00:23:11] Cindy Hulej: I'll grab some come by anytime, some
[00:23:13] Sean Martin: shops, and from all the, all the gear out front as well.
[00:23:15] Cindy Hulej: [00:24:00] Awesome.