He's an obsessive builder, nothing else matters to him, including what other people think.
Seriously, the best thing to do is talk to him. You'll know how passionate he is then. He's got a shiteeeload of quirks, and a certain 'you're into it or you aren't' view on his work, but he's obsessive about getting any guitar to a customer at his own level of perfection.
As a bonus, if you catch him on a good day Doug'll talk your ear off, for literally hours, about guitars.
Doug suffers with something that I suffer with too....
I dont always come across well in emails or IMs etc. but catch either of us on the phone or face to face and it's a different matter.
What will come across in a conversation then is how keen, passionate and obsessed we all are.
I also get a much better feel for what the customer/player is about from a proper conversation rather than an email
I have found that those enquiries that I only get by email often dont turn into projects (and some of that may be my fault)
But customers who have picked up the phone or dropped in to see me more often than not end up commissioning a guitar.
I have a mobile phone but I barely use it and I pretty much loathe text messaging as a form of communication.
However I am pretty much attatched to my landline half the day (thank god for cordless phones and headsets!)
You can exchange more ideas in 5 minutes of decent telephone time than you can in an hour of text messaging IMO
Also I bet Doug gets hundreds of emails from enthusiastic teenagers who have an interest in his stuff but dont have the money to have a guitar made along with emails from guys who are in a position to buy a guitar .
How do you tell who is who - it's really tough and you could spend your entire day corresponding with people who ultimately aren't going to buy, when you should be making guitars.
Also if you can only make 1-2 guitars a month that is only 12-24 per year and having a hundred enquiries a month is great in some ways but no use as you will be turning most people away.
