Rick Toone, Luthier

gorgeous. functional. art.

I've been following Sacha Dunable from Dunable Guitars for a while and I've been really impressed with the kind of guitars he's been putting out recently.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bg4uUiJlbct/?hl=en&taken-by=duna...

It's a little strange for me to see this here, in that I live in a world of instrument makers and luthiers, being a folk musician in the UK, and therefore interesting luthiers are pretty much my normal exposure to instrument makers. I even go to what is technically a festival of luthiers in France, which is fun!

Instrument making is very interesting, in that automation and export of production to China isn't really hurting the artisan makers. Obviously no-one can hand-make a guitar in the west for £150 and turn a profit, but the fact those instruments exist allows more people to enter the market, and eventually some of them will yearn for something unique, tailored to them, and probably expensive :D

The guitar is easy to take up, and very affordable, which means there's so many musicians there to appeal to as a luthier. The instruments I play (diatonic accordion/melodeon and concertina) are unfortunately immensely expensive by comparison, but even still the market is very viable for small makers to get going and selling their own inventions. I recently bought one made by a guy I know who's here in Wales, which is very cool :)

Being able to build individual one-off instruments is something the big factories cannot do, and I know a lot of makers who are all doing decent business in that niche. They might never be rich, but the ones I know love what they do and take great satisfaction from it.

Jersey Girl Guitar: http://www.jerseygirlhg.com/

Genuine pieces of art

For something a little more off-beat, see Matthias Wandel's experiments with a "home made" ukelele: https://woodgears.ca/ukulele/