Hello, I'm Nasri Daher, and guitars have been a part of my life for a very long time.
I fell in love with the guitar as a teenager. Lessons weren't something I could afford, so I taught myself with YouTube, a guitar, a couple ears and an unreasonable amount of free time. There were days I'd play from sunrise to sunset. Through my teenage years and into early adulthood, guitar became a huge part of who I was.
Then life changed.
I got married. We started a family. Four beautiful kids came along, businesses grew, priorities shifted — and somewhere in all of that, I put the guitar down.
For over a decade.
I never really decided to quit. It just happened.
Then, strangely enough, troubleshooting a tube amp I hand-wired brought me right back.
I started playing again. Then tinkering. Then modifying. Before long, that obsession I'd had as a teenager was right back where I'd left it.
But this time, I brought almost twenty years of other experience back with me.
OLD IDEAS. NEW POSSIBILITIES.
More than twenty years ago, one of my first guitars was a Squier that I wanted a wooden pickguard for. I went to the craft store, and cut one out myself. In 2011, I wrapped the pickguard on my G&L Asat in real tweed.
When I came back to guitars, those old ideas came with me.
My wife Natasha and I already run a custom graphics business together from our Calgary home, so one day I started wondering what would happen if I took the design and production capabilities we have now and applied them to guitars.
Could I recreate that old tweed guard — not just how it looked, but how it felt — without using fabric?
Turns out, I could.
And then came the obvious question:
What else can I do?
THAT QUESTION BECAME DAHERMADE.
Tactile surfaces. Dimensional artwork. Hidden fluorescence. Unusual finishes. Fabrics, patterns and textures transformed into guitar parts.
And we're just getting started.
DaherMade isn't really about making pickguards.
It's about taking a part of the guitar we've all seen a thousand times and asking:
WHY does it have to be so ordinary?
MAKE IT YOURS.
Guitars become personal. The modifications, scratches, strange choices and little details are what eventually make your guitar different from every other one that left the factory.
That's the part I love.
So send me the photograph. The piece of fabric. The artwork. The half-baked idea.
And especially send me the idea you're not sure is possible.
Those are my favourite.
— Nasri Daher
DaherMade · Calgary, Alberta