Rich Renken 01/08/2021
"Today I found out I lost a good friend Wed. Doug Nofsinger. Had a heart attack way too young. I met Doug in the late '80s when he cold-called James Tyler Guitars. At the time Jim and I were working out of Jim's garage building Tylers. I still remember standing there on the phone and this kid tells me he is coming down from Washington to go to Musician's Institute. He says to me, I am a huge fan but I am nobody. If you could help me out I will play and tell everyone about your guitars. He did. He played with many killer musicians. He was a great guitar player.
Below is a photo (see video) that Simon Higgs posted of Doug from MI's 1990-1991 Catalog showing off the guitar we built for him. He was so stoked to show us that catalog back in the day because it was a random photo that got seen by many. So he was keeping his promise. The other 2 photos are from what we at Tyler call "The Green Book". It is what we wrote all the serial numbers of the first few thousand Tylers.
The green page before is my hand written note about some discount with Doug's name. Recently when I came back to work at Tyler I sent him that photo. He said he was a "natural relic of that notebook". We laughed. The other photo is his serial number, 142. That means it was one of the first 50 Tyler's built. He's had multiple others and still has the first. Notice it just says SL next to the serial number? We built him one like one of his favorite players, Steve Lukather.
I know we'll meet again one day but for now I weep. Love you, Doug."