Nate Lee, Alan Munde & Elliott Rogers

Shown above are, Left to Right, Nate Lee, Alan Munde, Chuck Lee and Elliott Rogers. Chuck enjoyed spending time with 3/5ths of the Alan Munde Gazette when they stopped in for a shop visit.

Banjo Company Personnel

Our highly skilled and intelligent personnel are eagerly waiting to serve you.

Texas Highways Magazine Luthier Story

Hi, Stan A. Williams, Texas Highways Magazine photographer and musician here. I recently had the good fortune to both come up with the idea of a story about Texas stringed instrument makers and go photograph them at their craft.

I got to spend some productive time with Chuck and Tammy Lee and their friend Lee Thomas, of the Salt Rock Rounders, at Chuck’s shop in Ovilla.

I learned about clawhammer banjos, family togetherness and the values of such, Newfoundland dogs in the form of shop assistant, Charlie, and how it all comes together at a place called Chuck Lee Banjo Company.

You can see some of what we came up with at Texas Highways or pick up a copy of the January, 2009 issue of Texas Highways magazine at your local bookstore or newsstand. If you’re really bored and want to know more about me, look here and here.

Thanks, Chuck and Tammy, for your hospitality and the chance to meet Charlie before he entered the next leg of his journey over the rainbow bridge.

In the picture below Charlie was so sure he was to be included that he just centered up in front of Lee Thomas and sat down until the session was completed.

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Charlie the Newfy with sidekicks
Chuck Lee (R) and Lee Thomas (L).

Here's some personal details about Charlie.

Charlie's registered name was "Brenrich's Little Boy Blue", but his real friends called him Charlie.

His date of birth was June 22, 2002 and he crossed over the Rainbow Bridge on August 19, 2008. He no longer feels any pain and is able to rest while he waits for those that love him.

Charlie's father was "Josh", BIS, BISS CH. Darbydale's All Rise Pouch Cove, ROM. His mother was "Lauren", CH. Sunvalley's Brenrich McLaurin, DD, ROM.

For those that don't know: BIS - Best in Show, BISS - Best in Specialty Show, ROM - Register of Merit Newfoundland, DD - Draft Dog Title, CH - Champion.

Rolling Brass

Here Chuck is bending brass for a brass hoop to go under our Dobson style tone ring. The gadget he's using is called a Ring Roller. We do as many steps in-house that we can. The building process includes what seems like thousands of individual steps!

Chuck is pretty good at using his time--when he sets up for a task, he does several at once. This gives us a small element of factory- like efficiency even though each instrument is individually hand made.

You know it's a small family business when......

.....There are jigs for gluing dowel sticks in the shop bathroom
.....Children wander in and out of the shop on various missions
.....Family secrets and trade secrets are one and the same
.....When you need a model for a special inlay project, the kids come to mind first
.....When there's a Star Wars action figure behind a drill press
.....Toys are lined up on the work bench to be repaired for your kids and the kids next door
.....When the most creative planning work is done late at night in the bedroom




and when your EIGHT year old is put to work cleaning the hardware!

Peghed (tm) Tuners

We interrupt Chuck Lee on assembly day to ask him a few important questions.

Tammy: Chuck, tell me, what kind of tuners are you installing?

Chuck: Well, my dear, these are patented, 4:1 geared planetary Peghed tuners (pegheds.com)! Similar to the Knilling Perfection tuners used on violin family instruments.

Tammy: Oh! Are they difficult to install?

Chuck: No more difficult than others. As long as I don't get carried away with this reamer! I ream the hole to the proper size and thread the tuners in. They come in LH threads and RH threads.

Tammy: So, why do so many of our customers prefer Peghed tuners?

Chuck: Because they're easy to tune with and they have that old-timey violin peg appearance.

Tammy: So, if a customer wants Peghed tuners as opposed to Waverly planetary geared tuners, what should they ask for?

Chuck: They should buy or order a "Vintage" Chuck Lee banjo as they come with Peghed tuners .

Tammy: What if a customer wants Pegheds on a banjo which has another kind of tuners? What options do they have?

Chuck: They can contact Chuck Herin at Pegheds.com as he has tuners in several sizes. Peghed tuners can be used on guitars and other stringed instruments. He makes a cool 5th string tuner for banjos as well. Chuck Herin is the designer and patent holder on all the Peghed and Perfection tuners.

Tammy: This concludes this interview. Thanks Chuck! You look a little tired. Maybe you should take a day off :).

Chuck: I think I just used up my words for the day.

Chuck Lee Guitar Company. Who knows?

Chuck Lee guitars? Well, I hope so! I've been suggesting to Chuck that he should build some guitars for several years. And he has been pondering.

When a few weeks ago he started staying up most of the night studying guitars, and talking mysteriously of variations of "braces", "carbon graphite", and new and wondrous jigs, I knew it was getting closer. When he spent his 51st birthday, April 15th, fully immersed in the project, he was clearly "all over the top of it".

This picture shows two of the jigs he has labored over; they're for an OM sized guitar.

Would you believe he already has 6 or 8 people wanting one? Chuck says, "Let's see how the first one comes out". I believed in the banjos and I'm believing in the guitars as well.

Time to ship banjos

This image in the shop tells us it's time to ship banjos! Our banjos ship to any of 12 U.S. music dealers, or to a customer who has ordered a custom. We love to have visitors in our shop, but unless they arrive on a day like the one shown above, they may be disappointed to find very few banjos to hold and see. However, at any time, there are 50 or more banjos in progress to be seen.

Fiddle Set-up and Rim Guard

This is Chloe. Whatever Chuck is working on in the shop, she wants to be in the middle of it!