Carlos Lopez came up through the Fender Custom Shop, from the assembly line to Master Builder, and built for Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Robbie Robertson and Ariel Posen while he was there. He left at the end of 2021 and started Castedosa the following year with his wife Stephanie. The name is the family: the first letters of Carlos, Stephanie, and their kids Dorian and Savannah.
The guitars are built in Southern California in small numbers. Carlos designed the pickups and then taught Stephanie to wind them, so every set in a Castedosa is wound in house.
Anyone who has handled a Lopez-built Custom Shop guitar will know the hand. The outlines are familiar until you look at what he did to them. The Marianna is his read on a T-style, the Conchers runs as a standard and a baritone, and the Maravilla, El Halcon and Abi each take the idea somewhere else.
Finishes come clean or aged. Sparkle over sunburst, shell pink, olive drab, candy apple red, and heavy-aged work that is worth seeing in person rather than in a photograph.
We keep a small number of Castedosa guitars in Ottawa, and what is on this page is what we have. We can also spec a build with Castedosa: colour, scale length, pickups, how far the aging goes. Anything that ships from here goes across Ian Vance's bench first.