I really like builders that make their own hardware or put effort into unique bits and pieces on their stuff. So many guys basically come up with a very basic, been done to death build process, route the wood and then just slap off the shelf components on it and then dress up the marketing with crystal lettuce, tone tapping, tone wood talk. Even stuff like custom pickguards and knobs make hand made guitars a million times cooler.
TK Smith really takes that to extremes, sandcasting his own tremolos, building his own pickups (which are complicated Dyna-sonic style ones), doing a lot of custom inlay and scroll saw work for fingerboards and pickguards, custom made guitar cases, wrapped up in constant Western Swing niche. Pretty much every thing but the pots, jack, wires, fret wire, and switch is scratch built.
They are really expensive, but the amount of work that goes into them is legit. A lot of Gibson Custom Shop guitars are in the same price range and are hastily built with 90% mass production work...where as some Smiths must take hundreds of hours to complete. The total time that went into building the tailpiece and bridge on that mando double neck is probably more than total time for Gibson Custom Shop to shit out a $9k Les Paul. He does every thing on really old machines too, which seems a bit gimmicky but worth mentioning.
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