Bio
My name is Scott Miller but you can call me Stonewall. Saying that guitars are my passion is an understatement… I have dedicated my life to guitars. I think we all know someone who wants to rescue all the stray animals in the neighborhood… that is me but with guitars. Along with making pickups, I also build and repair guitars.
The short life story… I grew up in Los Angeles and Cape Cod. I built my first guitar in Mr. Hoyt’s (Karl Hoyt Basses) guitar building class in high school. Still thinking I was going to be a rock star, I attended Berklee College of Music on a scholarship but dropped out after two semesters. I changed gears and graduated from Roberto-Venn School of Luthiery. After graduation, I moved back to Los Angeles and was fortunate to apprentice under Michael Spalt (Spalt Instruments) which really opened my mind. I ended up in New Hampshire by chance and it was the best move for my career.
When I’m not in the shop, I’m still a perfectionist (that can’t be turned off) and enjoying things that require an attention to detail. I love to cook, specifically burgers, tacos, and gourmet sandwiches. Maybe someday I’ll add a recipe section on the website. Most recently, I bought a sewing machine and I’m teaching myself how to tailor my own clothes. I like to use a lot of analogies: cooking is a lot like making pickups, you can simply follow the recipe (like copying a PAF) or you can make your own if you really understand your ingredients and cooking methods; sewing and tailoring clothes is a lot like repairing and modifying guitars.
Why “Stonewall”?? When I established Naked Guitar Repair and started checking out the local music scene in New Hampshire, I had trimmed my beard back to a big mustache and sideburns. A few of the local musicians started calling me Stonewall Pornstar (Stonewall for short). The name stuck and it’s far more memorable than Scott Miller Guitars or Scott Miller Pickups.
Alternate Dimension
My Alternate Dimension line of pickups comes from a different version of earth where tone is the primary focus in pickup construction, instead of aesthetics or making something different just to be different. The concept, in its most basic form, is to get the most amount of tone out of the pickup routs in our guitars. Most of these pickups don’t use traditional pickup covers: the bobbins are made the same size as traditional covers which allows me to wind an extra 1/8” into the coils. Wider coils means wider aperture (length of vibrating string sensed by the coil) which means bigger tone. In lieu of traditional pickup covers, I’m making tops out of pickguard material for custom aesthetics. The coils are also wrapped in string for protection (like a Tele bridge pickup). Some Alternate Dimension pickups have multiple magnets or polepiece screws per string. This helps to open up the core of the coil to widen the aperture but also makes the pickup more responsive. All of these pickups sound better than the traditional construction versions we’ve been using since the 1950s. If you had the option to make your instrument more responsive and sound fuller, with better clarity, string-to-string definition, and dynamics, wouldn’t you want that?? Welcome to the Alternate Dimension.
This Stonewall Pickups logo was designed by my friend, Nick Filth (musician, artist, tattoo artist, photographer). Her name is Ginger and even though Nick designed her five years before the Alternate Dimension line of pickups, she is clearly the ambassador from the Alternate Dimension with less gravity.
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