And he wasn't that way just with his well-known clients like Watson and Kaufman, Hazel says.  "He met a lot of interesting people - that focus on individual people was his from the start.  There's no telling how many meals I've cooked for people who were down at the shop visiting around dinnertime.  Back in the '60s, we had a lot of hitchhikers come through, and he'd just bring 'em down to the house."

Doing business with J.W. Gallagher & Son hasn't changed since he bought his first Gallagher, Kaufman says.

"The personality of a company is important to me.  If I had to call from Seattle, Don would be right there with me.  Eastern Airlines broke my first G-72, and he slapped a new neck on fast so I could get back playing.

"All the comments I make about Gallagher guitars, I do because I want to.  I don't endorse them; I stand behind them."

"Don has that kind of reputation all across the industry," says Bob Redford, the organizer of the Walnut Valley Festival.

A Gallagher G-72 Special has been one of the prizes at Winfield since 1978.  Kaufman has picked up two of them.

"It took us a few years to get on Don's list," Redford says.  "He has been superb to deal with and he's been very creative in suiting the customers."

One of the customers who knows about the Gallagher waiting list is Doyle Petty, a parlor picker from Nashville.  Doyle got the last Gallagher of 1994, a Doc Watson model.

"I order it in March and got it in December.  The wait was worth it, though.  Absolutely.  Any guitar that sounds like mine does new, I can't imagine what it'll be like when it gets some age on it."

Petty is on the waiting list again this year, this time for an A-70 he's giving to his wife for her birthday.

"The waiting list is about six months right now, which is optimal," Don says.  "It lets us feel comfortable.  We've been as far behind as a year, but that's too long."

Another Gallagher customer is Glen Buckner, a Jackson, Georgia, restauranteur.

"I haven't got but about a dozen, right now.  I had a few more but I've given some away."

That Buckner has a dozen Gallaghers is all the more remarkable since fewer than 2,300 have been produced since 1965.  A review of ads for vintage guitars in a recent trade publication came up with hundreds of Martins and Gibsons, and two Gallaghers.

Among the guitars in Buckner's collection are a G-45 and a G-50 - both made in 1968 - a new Ragtime Special, and a G-72 Special he bought from a Winfield winner.  Buckner also owns a G-71.

"That G-71 is special.  Don made it out of his last piece of Brazilian rosewood.  He showed it to me while he was making it, and I said, 'Can't you sell it to me?'  He changed the subject - he'll deny this, but it's the truth.  But, finally, he said he'd be glad to, just don't push him because he was by himself.  I kept true to my word and didn't call him but three or four times a month until it was ready."

Don was by himself because of a crisis which nearly put him out of business in 1987 and 1988.

"When EPA mandated changes in the way lacquers could be made, our supplier changed the formulation.  In so doing, the elasticity characteristics changed.  We weren't the only ones affected.  Martin had the same problem because we were using the same stuff."

The problem surfaced when a customer called and told Don the finish on his new guitar was beginning to crack. Gallagher checked the instruments in his finishing room and found similar problems. He called a halt to production while he searched for an answer.

"We were down for well over a month while the company analysed the formula. The vinyl sealer was misformulated, they said, but I had three months of guitars with bad finishes and nothing to finish them with."

In January 1988, Gallagher laid off his staff.

"I couldn't keep playing games. It was costing too much and destroying the reputation of the guitar. We were down until March, talking with the supplier, trying other things.

"I spent all of 1988 working by myself, stripping down guitars and refinishing them. There were over 40 in the finishing room when we discovered the problem."

The rumor started that Gallagher was out of business.

"I had orders to fill but i refused to take new orders until I took care of my obligation to the people we'd already shipped guitars to."

The supplier's local representative finally suggested an alternative which worked. The new formula not only works, Gallagher says it's better.

"It seems to have enough hardness that it doesn't mar easily," he said.

Each Gallagher gets nine coats of lacquer over a three-day period and is sanded between each coat.

"The final finish is very thin, but all the pits in the wood are filled, which is what you're wanting. The standard lacquer finish is a necessary evil to protect the wood and to serve as a moisture barrier. The thinner we can get it and still do that, the better."

The sound of the Gallagher has changed over the years because of input from the people who play them. So has the Gallagher line, Don says.

"Our first guitar was the G-50, which is a dreadnought. I guess the first big name we built a guitar for was Peter Yarrow. He wanted a 12-fret neck with rosewood and the big body but designed for silk and steel strings. We built the first G-70M for him."

The Gallaghers built their first grand concert-size instrument in 1968.

"Ramona Jones wanted to give one to Grandpa for Christmas. We designed it, built it, and finished it on Christmas Eve. Dad called Ramona, and she said she had a pot of soup on and to come on up and have dinner with them."

The Ragtime special was designed for a Knoxville customer who wanted to play jazz.

"We've been doing more lately in fingerstyle guitars with smaller bodies. Sometimes I'll have an idea and I'll sell it to someone and incorporate it into our designs."

Don and Kaufman are working together on one of those ideas, a modification to 'Hazel.'

"We're going to set the neck angle more like an archtop. I'm looking forward to hearing what happens. Since it was built in 1978, we have a good baseline for judging the sound.

"This year, I'd like to do a couple of classicals. An archtop may be something in the future. I've had more and more people asking about them."

Don's mother says J.W. would be proud of the work his younger son is doing. (The other Gallagher son, Bill, is a chemical engineer in Fort Worth. He does play a Gallagher guitar.)

"J.W. was a craftsmen," Hazel says, "I don't think anybody has ever enjoyed anything any more than he enjoyed making guitars. I think he would tell you these are good as any guitar we've ever made."

"When we started, we approached it from a woodworking standpoint," Don says. "We had no more idea about Martin or Gibson than anything. We stopped making the D-17 because we became aware of the Martin D-18.

"Dad would recognize the shop - that hasn't changed much since we started - but I'd have to explain a lot. There's 'The Guitar,' then there are the nuances, and that's what has changed."

What hasn't changed at all in 30 years is a commitment to craftsmanship and tone.