electric guitars

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Electric_guitar

Sand Guitars

Kirk Sand grew up in Springfield, Illinois. As a teen, Kirk played in garage bands and worked in Ralph Sordyl's House of Music and after graduating from High School in 1971 he left  for college in California where he studied guitar. Sand's first job after leaving Springfield was at the Fender Guitar factory in California in 1972. After Fender, he went to work at The Guitar Shop in Laguna Beach. He eventually bought the shop and has never moved away from Laguna Beach. His first high profile client was Jose Feliciano, but things really took off for Kirk when he met Chet Atkins in the late 1980s in Nashville and Chet played one of Kirk's guitars. Soon players like Jerry Reed, Earl Klugh and Steve Wariner (all Chet Atkins fans) were calling Kirk and he eventually sold around 300 of those guitars. Kirk's specialty is nylon stringed acoustics, but he also makes steel string acoustics and carved top electrics.

SAMICK

The Samick Musical Instrument company is an important guitar manufacturer, at the start of the 21st century. When large scale production of guitars became uneconomical in the USA and Europe, many western brands outsourced their manufacturing to highly automated and cost effective Korean manufacturers like Samick. The instruments are then distributed under a variety of brandnames (like Epiphone or Washburn for example).

The very first Samick guitars were made around 1965, by what was then the Samick Piano Company. Many of these instruments were made for other companies, and were branded as such. The Samick Piano Company became the Samick Musical Instrument Company in 1973. The name change reflected the diverse range of instruments made by Samick. Towards the end of the 1970s the international importance of Samick was reflected by their establishment of offices in the USA and Germany, and the opening of a large guitar manufacturing facility in Korea.

SADOWSKY

Roger Sadowsky founded the Sadowsky Guitars brand in 1979, following seven years of luthier training. At first Sadowsky worked alone but as demand for his instruments began to grow, so did his number of employees . In 2008 Sadowsky Guitars Ltd employed eight people making four and five string bass guitars and six string guitars.

Sadowsky started out by modifying vintage Fender basses to improve their sound by adding more noise reduction technology and replacing the passive electronics with an active preamp. Once the price of vintage bass guitars began to take off, Sadowsky started building bass guitars, and finally, requests for signature models.

S3 GUITARS

S3 Guitars was a custom guitar shop specializing in arch top and solid body guitars and basses. Steve Saperstein was the builder. Steve Saperstein began building guitars around 1990 as a hobby which then led to him operating a full-time workshop from his home in Palo Alto. His initial creations were classical guitars and ukuleles, but his passion for jazz led him to focus on arch top and solid body guitars.

RWK Guitars

RWK guitars are made by Bob Karger in Highalnd Park, Illinois. After repairing guitars for himself and friends, Bob Karger started hand-making guitars in 1991. He wanted to build something that was not only contemporary but would to stand the test of time, which is why the company slogan is "Classic Guitars Built Today." The initial design was named "SET" (an acronym for Solid Electric Through-neck). Features of Karger's guitars are highly contoured bodies, neck-through design and strings anchored to the back of the guitar.

Russell Guitars

James Russell began making guitars in 1979 at the age of 23 while living in Orange County, California. Some years later he was able to go full time as a guitar builder. He is now based in Redding, California where he makes acoustic, electric, classical and bass guitars in his one-man workshop. James also teaches guitar and perforrms solo guitar in the Redding and Mount Shasta area.

Source: Russell Guitars website (10 May 2020)

Rowan

Michael Rowan Custom Guitars, were made in Meadowgate Drive, Garland, Texas. Michael Rowan started doing repairs for friends and building guitars as a hobby back in 1996. He decided early on not to copy or use an existing design: he came up with his own shape and refined it over the years. He carried on making electric guitars and by 2012 had 8 standard models. He retired in 2013.

Source: Michael Rowan Custom Guitars website (archived 2012)

Ed Roman

Ed Roman started out making custom Harley Davidson Choppers and motorcycle accessories during the late 1960s: he used this money to enter the music business in 1975. In 1975 Ed made a loan to a local music dealer friend and received about 50 old Gibson & Fender guitars as collateral.  Ed held the guitars for almost 2 years, finally when the dealer could not pay back the money, Ed began selling off the guitars - this was his start as a guitar dealer. He went into mail order guitars but also had retail stores - opening the East Coast Music Mall in 1982 - a music superstore.

Roscoe

Keith Roscoe started a guitar repair and restoration shop in the early 1970s which had evolved into Roscoe Guitars by the early 1980s - and Roscoe bass manufacturing started around 1983. Since then the company has moved several times and now occupies a 16,000 square foot factory with Haas CNC and Plek machines.

Roland

Ikutaro Kakehashi founded Roland in Osaka in 1972. Roland's first product was the TR-77 drum machine. In 1973 they introduced a compact synth - the SH-1000. Guitar effects were added to the line-up in 1974 and in 1975 they began making amplifiers including the legendary Jazz Chorus model. In 1977 Roland introduced the GR-500 guitar synth (by 1980 they also had the 303 and 808 guitar synth models). Roland also owns the Boss brand name known for its effects pedals.

Robin

Robin Guitars was founded in the early 1980s, as Houston-based importer of high-quality Japanese solidbody electric guitars from Chushin, ESP, and Tokai. In 1983 they introduced their Ranger series of guitars with reverse headstocks and large precision style scratchplates. In the late 1980s Robin stopped importing guitars and began manufacturing the Robin instruments in Texas. In the mid 1990s Robin became Alamo Music Products, and established the Metropolitan and Alamo brandnames. Robin guitars ceased trading in 2010.

Source: vintageguitar.com Robin

RKS GUITARS

Industrial designer Ravi Sawhney established the RKS brand in 2000. His first project was to design an improved guitar stand, but was soon working on guitar designs. Their first prototype was based on a human skeletal form. The RKS designers refined it further using a popular singer/actress' body as inspiration. Ravi was introduced to English rock musician Dave Mason by Ravi's brother Ramesh, and a close friend of Dave's. Dave brought the professional-working-guitar-player's perspective, and involved in making the RKS guitar a true player's instrument.

RKS guitars were discontinued around 2008.

Source: RKS website (archived 2008)

Rickenbacker

Rickenbacker International Corp. has its origins in the Electro String Instrument Corporation, founded in 1931 in Los Angeles. Electro String was an instrument making company established by Adolph Rickenbacker and George D. Beauchamp and they branded their pioneering electric guitars Rickenbacker Electro Instruments. Beauchamp had previously developed a metal-bodied tri-cone resonator guitar design in the 1920s with the help of John and Rudy Dopyera. Their company National enlisted the engineering skills of Adolph Rickenbacker to help manufacture the metal bodies. Around 1928 John and Rudy Dopyera left National company and founded Dobro while selling their National stocks to their brother Louis.

Ribbecke

Tom RIbbecke has been building and repairing guitars and basses in the San Francisco bay area since 1974. Ribbecke moved from New York to San Francisco in the early 1970s and opened his first lutherie shop in the Mission district. After ten years, and thousands of repairs and custom builds for clients, he closed the shop in order to fcous on Commission building. Ribbecke was President of the board of directors of the Association of Stringed Instrument Artisans (ASIA) and his instruments have been featured in the Scott Chinery Blue Guitar Collection for the Smithsonian and in the Boston Museum.

Source: Ribbecke website (14 November 2017)

REVEREND

Reverend is the brainchild of Joe Naylor. Joe studied at the Roberto-Venn School of Luthiery. After graduating in 1987 he designed and built custom guitars before establishing the Reverend brand in 1997. Initially Reverend offered American-made, vintage-style guitars, that weren't knock offs of the classic Gibson/Fender designs. If anything their body shapes looked a little like the budget mail order models of the sixties (Airline, Harmony, Sears etc.) or Italian and German made models of the same era. Joe was also cofounder of J.F. Naylor Engineering (Naylor Amps). Currently based in Toledo, Ohio, Reverend is run by Ken and Penny Haas. who bought the company in 2009, and has a wider range of guitar models. All of the guitars are designed by Joe Naylor, manufactured in South Korea by boutique guitar manufacturer Mirr Music with final set up by the Reverend technical team.

Source: Reverend website (6 March 2021)

Renaissance (Rick Turner)

Renaissance is a brand name of Rick Turner, a well known luthier, electronics designer and innovator. In 1997 Rick moved his instrument-making facility from the outskirts of LA to Santa Cruz, California, where he and his team began to build Renaissance instruments, Turner guitars, and custom projects. The Renaissance range are thinline semi-hollow bodied guitars and basses desgined for performance and recording - a great range of acoustic and electric tones without feed-back issues.

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