Roger Giffin's career in guitars started during the 60's and 70's, when he played in various bands around the South of England. Frustrated at his inability to afford a good instrument he set about to make one himself, and embarked on a career as a luthier. His first workshop was located under a bridge by the river Thames in London. Giffins workshop soon became a meeting place for many well known British players looking for guitars, repairs and set-ups. In these early years he worked for Eric Clapton, Pete Townshend and John Entwhistle (The Who), Mark Knopfler (Dire Straits), Andy Summers (The Police) and David Gilmour (Pink Floyd) amongst others.

The Giffin Guitar workshop ran for about 7 years, for three of those years it had an attached music store.  By the late 1970s Giffin felt the need for a change, work on the design for the Steinberger M series led to a job offer from Gibson. In 1988 Giffin accepted the job, moving to California to front Gibson's West Coast custom shop in Los Angeles.  He ran the Gibson custom shop until 1993, together with Gene Baker (www.bakerguitars.com) until Gibson management moved the Gibson custom shop to Nashville. 

Giffin and Brett Allen, ran R&B Instrument Services (on Sunset Boulevavd.) for the next three years, also building Giffin guitars. In 1997 Giffin set up "Giffin Guitars U.S.A." in Los Angeles building small quantities of hand made guitars. He remained in Los Angeles up until June of 2004 building small quantities of hand made guitars from his home. In July 2004, Roger moved again, to Portland, Oregon.

Roger Giffin is a friend and mentor to "Make Your Own Guitar" author Melvyn Hiscock