You'd think that the up-to-the-minute news, thorough Guitars section categorized by Brand, and listings of Artists and Songs with ability to find on ITunes and Amazon, would have been the thing that caught my attention about the active guitar community website Fretbase. 

But it was the About Us page where a completely genuine Brian Stolte confessed he cut his hair into a mullet after becoming obsessed with Led Zeppelin that really did me in.  In the next minute, co-founder David Mandlebrot told his readers he had only picked up the guitar in his 30s and made us all realize that it's still ok to start something new in our later years.

I may not have interviewed Dave Mandelbrot and Brian Stolte for the Guitar Hero series, but I think you can call them heroes in their own right. It is the complete and utterly open honesty, dedication, and hard work of these two Fretbase founders that really make this site worth visiting.

How did your guitar infatuation start? Did you play when you were young? See a performer that got you excited about it?

Dave:  I didn’t play when I was young.  I was a young kid in the 70’s and really enjoyed the music of a lot of the 70’s guitarists like Jim Croce and Neil Diamond. In college I was a big Bruce Springsteen fan and especially liked his Nebraska album.  It really struck me how powerful one person with one guitar could be.  As an adult, I gravitated towards the music of Texas singer-songwriters.  I was and am a very big fan of Lyle Lovett.  When I’d see him in concert, all I wanted was to be able to play “If I Had a Boat” on guitar.

Brian: I started playing when I was about 14 years old - my parents bought me a cheap used Hondo and 10 watt practice amp.  Around the same time I had just started getting into music, mostly by "borrowing" my older brother's cassette tapes.  He pretty much introduced me to Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Clapton, AC/DC - all of the great heavy guitar classic rock from the '70s.  This was all during the late 80's, so we had plenty of hair band rock lying around too.  I'd have to say listening to Jimmy Page was definitely a big driver in my guitar playing early on.  

How did you two meet?

Brian: I'll let Dave answer this.

Dave:  We met when we both worked at Yahoo.  I worked on media and entertainment stuff like Music, Movies and News and Brian worked on Yahoo Shopping.  I had heard when I was at Yahoo that Brian was a really good guitar player but I didn’t see him play then.  In our office, we play every day so now I have seen him play quite a bit and he is darn good.

Which guitars are your favorite? Do you have a guitar you adore? Is there a dream guitar you may not have yet? And your thoughts on Ibanez and JEM…

Dave:  I recently bought a used Martin OM-28V and right now that one is my favorite.  I’m especially interested in acoustic guitars and like some of the all-time greats – like the Gibson J-45 and Martin D-28.  The guitars that I dream about but don’t have yet are Collings dreadnoughts and Santa Cruz OM guitars.  Hopefully one day…

Brian: My favorite guitars almost change on a daily basis.  One of the absolute best parts of working on Fretbase is getting to see and hear about of these new guitars coming out from all the different manufacturers.  Currently I'm really into Reverend Guitars.  I would love to get a vintage Kay Thin Twin.  As far as dream guitars go I was lucky enough to be able to get mine - a Gibson Les Paul Standard - about 6 years ago.  It's an absolute joy to play. 

I really liked the new Ibanez Fireman - even though it's way out of my price range and probably too limited a run.  I do like Ibanez JEM guitars but I haven't had the much experience playing them.   

Dave, you came to the guitar late? Do you have any words of wisdom for someone older looking to pick it up now?

Dave:  You are right.  I didn’t start playing until I was in my late 30’s.  I have a cousin who is a music teacher and he told me that he always tells his older students that even if they start now, in ten years they’ll be really good guitar players and still hopefully have a lot of years to enjoy it.  I think that is solid advice.  If somebody wants to pick it up now my advice would be to learn some basic chords and then start focus on a song that uses those chords.  Playing songs you know can be really inspirational.  I knew it was going to stick with me the first time I played “Dust in the Wind.”  Of course, practice a lot and enjoy the practicing.  In fact, I wouldn’t even look at it as practicing.  Look at it as playing.  That’s what you’re doing.

Brian, tell us about your Led Zeppelin infatuation and that whole mullet growing thing. :-)

Brian: My Led Zeppelin infatuation has become a kind of inside joke among my friends.  I was probably way too into Led Zeppelin as a kid.  I wore out many of my Led Zeppelin cassette tapes rewinding and playing along and pretty much drove my Mom nuts with watching The Song Remains The Same over and over again.  How could you not be infatuated with a guy that wears sorcerer pants 

As far as the mullet goes, when I was in high school I wanted to grow my hair out but my parents would only allow me to grow it so far before sending me off the barber... so we comprised with "business in the front" and a "party in the back" haircut.  Thankfully this was before digital photography.  

Tell us about Fretbase. Is it just a hobby? And why step aside from the whole hi-tech thing (both of you work or worked for big name companies and still decided to create the site?)

Dave:  It has always been our intention to grow Fretbase into a real business – and that continues to be our goal.  In a way, Fretbase was built to be an alternative to the way we built websites at Yahoo.  We had 12,000 people working with us on websites at Yahoo.  We built Fretbase with just the two of us working on it full-time and minimal resources – that’s what happens when you use your own money!  We were able to use a lot of inexpensive and off-the-shelf solutions like WordPress and Google Analytics.  We did a lot of the heavy lifting ourselves to save money.  But we have been amazed by how far we have been able to get.  We now have direct relationships with most of the major guitar manufacturers and even had one come to our office to demo some new guitars recently.  We are on pace to have about 30,000 visitors to our website this month and the site also generates some income for us through advertising and gear sales.   

Who are your musical influences?

Dave:  I really go for the acoustic singer-songwriters.  In addition to Lyle Lovett, I also really like Guy Clark, Ray LaMontagne, Patty Griffin and John Prine.  I recently stumbled upon an independent artist named Joe Purdy who I like quite a bit.  I have also been playing more fingerstyle lately and really like the sound of Mississippi John Hurt.

Brian: Besides the aforementioned  Jimmy Page and other titans of '60s and '70s classic rock, I'm really into blues.  Lately I've been listening to the new Dan Auerbach - I think he's got one of the greatest tones out there right now.  Wilco, My Morning Jacket and Radiohead get a lot play on the iPod.  Bonamassa and Sonny Landreth are great players.  I love the classic blues too - Sleepy John Estes, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Sonny Boy Williamson.  I think Jerry Garcia is a great guitar player - I was introduced to a lot of country and bluegrass listening to Jerry.  

Tell us something unusual about yourself or your guitar playing skills that we’d be surprised to know about you.

Brian: I studied Jazz and Classic guitar my first year in college.  I thought I wanted to be a music teacher but I ended up getting a degree in elementary education and taught one year of school before switching to the tech industry.  

Dave:  My guitar teacher was in a very successful band from the 70’s and I’m really jealous.  I just don’t want to say which one out of fear he’ll drop me.

Where are you looking to go with the site?

Dave:  We want Fretbase to be the ultimate resource for guitar players and a really active community of guitarists.  We want people to think of Fretbase for guitar information the same way they think of IMDB for movie information or Google for web searching.

Brian: Our goal with the site was to create the ultimate guitar database for guitar players.  Ideally the site would contain every guitar ever made with photos, videos, reviews and information about that guitar.  We also like to connect the artists, both big and small, with their instruments and gear they use.  One commonality among guitar players is a love of gear. Being able to explore what other people are using and doing with their gear could help you to generate new ideas about your playing or introduce to you new gear that help you in your pursuit of tone happiness. Fretbase aims to help you in your research and hopefully help to connect you to the right gear.  

Give me details about the site—what it offers, what you can use it for, etc.

Dave:  We built Fretbase to be a robust resource for guitarists looking for information guitars, guitarists and songs with guitar.  Fretbase devotes a specific page to each guitar, artist and song.  Guitar pages include summary information about the guitar, specs, videos with the guitar, images of the guitar and a list of famous players of that guitar.  Likewise, artist pages include a list of songs by that artist and guitars played by that artist.  Song pages include links to tablature, videos of guitarists playing the song and links to song downloads.  We will be expanding the functionality of the site next month with new features including user-reviews of guitars and pages devoted to the gear that guitar players use including amps and other accessories (like pedals).  If a guitarist has a question about it, we’ll either have the answer or send the guitarist where they should go for it.

We’re always open to suggestions on how we can make Fretbase more useful.  We’re happy to have readers contact us with suggestions at contact@fretbase.com.  Thanks again for talking to us.  It has been fun.

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