TIers do amazing things every day at work and when they are out of the office. In our ongoing series, ‘Out of Office,’ we showcase the unique and fascinating hobbies, talents and interests of TIers all over the world.
It all started six years ago with an old guitar that needed a little bit of work. TIer Alex Urban was playing his guitar when he noticed the instrument needed a new finish.
“I went to some online forums where I learned about applying finishes to guitars and saw these guys posting pictures and explaining how to build guitars. I thought I could do it too,” said Alex, a photolithography and implant module unit manager in our Freising Fabrication plant (FFAB).
Alex created other carpentry projects in the past, but nothing quite like a guitar. He spent 120 hours woodworking, installing proper electronics and applying metal work and a multi-layered oil finish to his first, custom-built guitar. Every aspect of the new, simple, but stunning bass guitar was handmade. Alex was hooked.
“If you start building one, you are going to get addicted and build several more. Now it is the endless pursuit of perfection, even if perfection is not attainable,” Alex said.
Alex built 15 more guitars after his first, each more elaborate and closer to perfection than the last. His wife Yvonne is also involved in the hobby, and is the perfect complement in the workshop.
“Alex is the one who hurries, and I am the one who likes to think things through first. But it takes both of us. If he wasn’t around, nothing would get done. If I wasn’t there, the work would be a lot shoddier,” Yvonne said with a smile.
Alex even involved his colleagues. A couple of years ago, a group of TIers were returning to Europe from the United States on a business trip. Alex made a strange request – bring back three pieces of wood. Michael Hummel, head of European operations, said no one in the group realized that Alex had taken up the hobby of building custom, high-end guitars.
“Nobody understood why we should bring back wood from the United States. The wood didn’t look that great. It was untreated and unfinished. We even had a lengthy discussion about getting it through customs,” Michael said.
The wood cleared customs, and the untreated, unfinished lumber became an ocean blue guitar with gentle waves of wood on the front and natural wood coloring on the back.
“It is one of the best guitars I’ve ever made and won an award,” Alex said. “It was a very rare piece of maple with natural deformation that looked absolutely, stunningly beautiful when it became a guitar.”
Being an engineer, Alex decided to build a machine to help him with much of the wood and metal work, cutting his production time by a third. It’s the same kind of efficiency he works on every day at FFAB.
“Alex is one of the most innovative guys here,” Michael said. “We have an optical inspection tool Alex invented that could go to market for $1 million. It cost us $10,000 to make, and it was replicated across fabrication plants all over the world. It helped us produce semiconductor wafers with greater efficiency.”
For Alex, he sees parallels between his work and his hobby– not in the tools he’s created to build the guitars – in the guitars themselves.
“This is what we do here at the FFAB. We strive to make many parts with the same quality. That is at the heart of what we do here and in the heart of every engineer,” Alex said. “I’m trying to do the same with my guitars.”
Alex plans to continue building guitars with his wife in his spare time. What started as a project in one room of their house expanded into three rooms.
“Sometimes I think building guitars is an excuse for Alex to buy new equipment and collect machines,” Yvonne said.
But it’s all worth it when a recipient of one of Alex’s finished products picks up their guitar, plugs it into an amp and strikes the first chord.
“I only play 5 percent of my time and build 95 percent of my time. I am a lousy to mediocre guitar player,” Alex said. “So when someone plays with my guitar and gets something out of it that I cannot, it is a really nice feeling.”
Scroll through some of Alex’s other work below:
