Our Story

Chris Davidson has played guitar since the age of 12, but glasswork gradually became his true creative outlet. In 2001, he began learning to blow glass at Jerome Baker Designs in Eugene, Oregon, a legendary name in American glass pipe-making. Working the night shift and learning the craft from the ground up, he built the technical foundation that would later shape Silica Sound.

After that, Chris spent the next phase of his career making glass pipes independently, using that work to fund his education in borosilicate glass and develop his skills. In the early 2000s, the glass pipe culture was still a niche world, and it became his entry point into serious glasswork.

In early 2003, Operation Pipe Dream and related federal enforcement actions disrupted much of the American pipe-making industry, forcing many glass artists to rethink what they could create and sell. For Chris, that disruption made it necessary to develop something in glass he could continue making a living with. At the same time, he had already been experimenting with guitar slide designs, frustrated by how few glass slides offered a truly good fit.

During that process, he discovered that adding colored glass and melting it in naturally formed a snug-fitting tapered interior while keeping the outside smooth and uniform. The added mass at the tapered end also gave the slide a tonal quality that helped set it apart. That breakthrough became the foundation of Silica Sound and the original tapered interior glass guitar slide.

The design also carried a natural connection to the glass pipe world Chris came from, which made the original Model 420 name feel fitting. From there, the line expanded.

When the first slides were placed at McKenzie River Music in Eugene, they sold out within days. That early response helped launch Silica Sound as it exists today.

Silica Sound remains a one-person operation, with Chris handling the glasswork, product development, branding, website design, and day-to-day operation himself.

Silica Sound is owned and operated by Chris Davidson in San Francisco, California.