Alister Atkin started as a professional guitar maker in 1995, having trained at the London School of Furniture. He moved into Canterbury workshop of archtop maker Andy Crockett and began building a range of acoustic guitars. Inspired by the high build quality of Collings acoustics, he launched a range of six models in the late 1990s. The brand continued to grow, with positive reviews from the British music press and  player endorsements. Now for the first time ever Atkin Guitars are available in the shops. Arange of eight guitars is available in Standard and Deluxe versions.

Highland Guitar Company is a brand used for a range of Far-Eastern manufactured acoustic, electro-acoustic and electric semi-acoustic guitars. Prices range from mid $200’s for an entry level acoustic to the mid $800’s for a top of the line archtop. They use exotic hardwoods, Grover tuning gears and Fishman pre-amps. All the guitars are strung with Elixir® strings.

Highland Guitar Company guitars are distributed in North America by Power Group Ltd.

DOT ON SHAFT GUITARS is the brainchild of Mike and Natalie Carparelli, and is based in Ontario, Canada. The Carparellis studied samples from 20 different manufacturers 5 different countries, before settling on a Korean manufacturer. They produce some interesting designs, including at least six double neck models.

The Luna brand name is a Dean Guitars (Armadillo Enterprises) derivative fronted by Yvonne de Villiers a stained glass artist. De Villiers designed some inlay patterns for Dean and and they were spun into a product line of guitars.

de Villiers claims that Luna's specially designed neck profile is comfortable to play and some of Luna's electric models have been made using lightweight construction. This suggests Luna brand is pitched at women, and the Luna endorsee list is predominantly female.

This brand has some interesting graphics, but some of the Luna publicity materal pushes the boundaries of credibility, like " Luna has employed the use of symbols and images that, beyond the decorative element, have layers of meaning for players".

The guitars themselves are built in the Far East, probably using the same factories as Dean.

Jazzarette is the brain child of Belgian guitarist, composer, artist and luthier Zbiggy Smith. At the moment the main Jazzarette model is a unique archtop jazz guitar, in small scale production at the moment but Zbiggy is looking for a manufacturing deal.