I have devoted myself to music and wood craft for as long as I can remember. Guitar was an obvious choice. I turned to fingerstyle and acoustic blues in my young teens. My craft springs from the traditional Swedish slojd, where the properties of the wood form the basis of what will be the final product. Through this experience I have found my way to read what kind of sounds the wood will produce.
All the senses are in the process. The vision is obvious, but just as much hearing, touch, smell and even to some extent taste. All this combines with what I know about guitar making, as I learned from others and from my own mistakes.
Once I decided to build my first guitar, I contacted instrument maker Andras Novak. I hung around in his workshop one day a month and learned a lot about the various parts of the construction, not least what tools were missing from my own workshop, so that I could equip one to build my own guitars. I got that for myself very quickly and after a while I realized that this particular craft was what I had been looking for all my life. Some people close to me would say that I became obsessed. They are probably right. I searched for everything that I could find about guitar construction.
After my time with Novak I took myself to Lewes in England. There was Richard Osborne who taught guitar building courses. His sense of detail gave me a deep understanding that all parts of an instrument must work together for it to be really good. Most people can learn to build a simple guitar, but not a really good one.
After my time in Lewes I have built a number of guitars and developed the four models that are now in the “family”.
I now build only a few guitars each year, which means I can give each instrument the time and accuracy it needs to become really good. An instrument that makes you as a guitarist want to play more and more. As Ian Carr said: it makes you wanna play!