4 Winds Lutherie is a one person shop dedicated to meticulously crafting a range of unique custom electric guitars with outstanding playability. My designs range from minimalist working class to artisan features seldom seen on large scale production models. At any given time there could be a one piece slab body bolt-on or a multi-piece contoured set neck with matched wood top, binding, and inlay on my bench. It’s this desire to build guitars across a loosely defined customizable spectrum that lead me to the Lutherie approach as opposed to a factory production model guitar brand direction. At the same time, I’m committed to building guitars which people can afford and not be afraid to play.

While this is a new (ad)venture for me, my vision has been refined through building and servicing thousands of instruments since 1997. My lutherie origin story begins with converting my 95 Strat to a hardtail with a Tele bridge pickup using borrowed tools. Meeting a friend who built an Alembic style guitar with help from a local luthier sent my interest to the next level. This lead me to Melvyn Hiscock’s electric guitar building book. What he called “mixing the styles” really resonated with me. I was equally inspired by offbeat mash-up guitars and artisan craftsmanship : The Hamer Duo-Tone Acoustic Electric Hybrid, the Gibson Blueshawk, and Reverend’s then new retro offsets, plus Tom Anderson, Terry McInturff, and Gerard Melancon. My first build attempt was an overly ambitious partscaster inspired by Seymour Duncan / Jeff Beck : a Swamp Ash Thinline Tele-Gib with 3 P-90’s including one modded with Alnico polepieces for a cleaner Jazzmaster sound, and the pre-Graphtech Mike Christian active piezo bridge pickup.

Having caught the bug as they say, I attended Roberto-Venn School of Luthiery in 1999. From there I went into full time production guitar building and repair for Exotic Woods/Musikraft making CNC OEM and retail necks and bodies, to Ken Smith hand carving and fretting bass necks, and Chuck Levin's repair shop doing retail and warranty acoustic and electric service. Eventually I wanted a challenge I couldn’t find in guitar building and moved into computer tech in the TV industry for quite a while. In all this time I built small numbers of guitars, necks, and bodies on and off, and bought and sold guitar woods and used parts as a side line in my home shop. You can get a glimpse of some of these creations in the Gallery which I’ll be expanding as I go.

As time went on I found myself with more guitar ideas than time to build them, so re-dedicating my life to it seemed like the obvious way to go. I’m excited to finally be able to bring those many ideas to life, and put high quality guitars in the hands of players to make music.