I am a novice luthier who started out by building a 000-18 from a Stewart MacDonald kit (the picture at the left). The guitar sounds great, but I learned my first lesson about grain filler with this guitar. The mahogany grain pores are filled with a white filler -- gives it that nice, aged look :-).
I moved onto building guitars from scratch. The first few were built without
the benefit of a side bending machine, but soon I built a side bending machine
and forms to greatly improve the guitars. I have been fortunate that the
guitars all sound pretty good; and each guitar's finish and setup seems to
get a little better than the previous one.
I have built each of the guitars you see on this site (except for the "Guitars
by Other Makers" which are guitars that I am willing to part with).
My guitars are a great value in solid wood guitars made using contemporary
acoustic guitar construction techniques.
They are styled after pre-war acoustics, but
use an adjustable truss rod and bolt-on necks. Manufactured guitars
that use these materials and constructions techniques will cost many
hundreds of dollars more than these prices.
In general, I am making much less than the minimum wage when I build
these guitars -- "get'em while they are still inexpensive!"
Browse and enjoy.
They are for sale at a cost that is not much above the cost of the materials.
There are a few guitars that are flawed in one way or
the other e.g., by poor finish, an imperfect neck set, etc. — see the
Seconds on the Guitars page.
It can be risky to buy a guitar over the Internet, especially if it costs
several thousands of dollars.
None of the guitars at this site cost nearly that much,
so there is not much risk in buying one of them — see my
return policy.
What is the downside? These guitars are built by a novice luthier, so they
lack the level of fit and finish of a $3,000 guitar made with NC machined
parts.
On the upside, they are built
from fine quality materials, using classic handmade construction techniques.
Sound is a subjective thing, but each of these guitars sounds pretty much
like it is supposed to sound — dreadnoughts have lots of bass,
small body guitars are responsive and sweet — they sound quite
good, and some of them sound great.