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Lowden Guitars
At the age of 10, Northern Irishman George Lowden made his first attempts at building his own guitars. George, who began building guitars in his father's workshop and was a big fan of Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton, quickly blossomed into a creative and professional guitar maker , whose guitars with their curvy body shapes are famous and renowned far beyond the borders of Northern Ireland unique sound became known. Some of Lowden Guitars' biggest fans include Alex Di Grassi and Ed Sheeran.
Would you like to learn more about the history of George and Lowden Guitars? In our series and product overview you will find everything you need to know about George and his guitars.
The most popular Lowden series
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All about Lowden Guitars
George's beginnings
In 1961, at the age of 10, George Lowden came into contact with guitar theme for the first time. Together with a friend, he made two instruments out of wood that his Vater used to build boats. These "guitars" had frets made of nails and strings made of fishing line, the body was square instead of conforming to the form of an ordinary guitar.
The theme of the guitar didn't let young George go and so at the age of 18 he started a new experiment, this time with an electric guitar that was more like the form of a typical electric guitar. George played the guitar himself at the time; his biggest role models were Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton.
Guitar building rethought
In 1974, without any support, George decided to make acoustic guitars professionally . He bought cheap wood, simple tools and a textbook on guitar building. During the first few years he taught himself how to build guitars and use the appropriate tools, and of course he had ups and downs along the way. He also learned more about bracing structures, body shapes and painting techniques. He was very inventive when building his instruments and tried out a wide variety of woods and processing techniques .
Over time he developed his own bracing structure and a special bridge design . He worked a lot on alternative woods, which he explains to you in the video. Here you will find out more about woods such as walnut, Honduras rosewood, African blackwood, Redwood and Brazilian rosewood, and why every guitar has its own, very personal voice.
George Lowden is making a name for himself
Over the course of the 1970s, George Lowden had developed a small and loyal fan base of dealers and the number of Lowden dealers grew steadily. Demand for George's guitars increased across Europe, with the most popular models including the O-25 and O-38 with cedar tops from the original series. The demand soon became too great for George alone, so he initially hired four new employees as apprentice guitar makers . In the mid-80s he rented a larger factory and hired more apprentices and guitar makers. Production became increasingly professional , in the first few years in the new factory in Bangor 500, later 600 guitars were produced and from the end of the 80s around 1000 instruments a year.
The fall and comeback of the acoustic guitar
The 1980s were not the easiest years for acoustic guitar building due to the increasing popularity of electronic music. The temporary decline of the acoustic guitar did not stop George Lowden either: demand fell and the prices of Lowden guitars at the time were only about half of today's average prices. In 1988, George decided to partially sell his company. A group of local investors took over the company and continued to operate it as “The Lowden Guitar Company”.
A year later, George moved to France with his family and became a self-employed guitar maker. From then on he concentrated on building classical and western guitars. However, he quickly returned home, where he worked in cooperation with the Lowden Guitar Company and developed new models for the company. The Lowden Guitar Company's license has now expired and George is once again producing instruments in his own name in his new factory in Downpatrick, which you can discover in the video.
The cornerstones of the Lowden sounds
design
Curved, soft body shapes in combination with carefully coordinated ceiling struts and new sound body profiles as well as the use of high-quality natural wood make up a large part of the Lowden sounds . Decorative elements with the unique hand-rubbed satin finish make the Lowden guitar what it is today and give it a highly recognizable look.
Crafts
Lowden's construction techniques include the use of hand tools to improve the quality of all joints and to enable Dolphin Profile intonation of the braces. These and many other design and engineering factors ensure that the sustain, volume and balancing of the guitar are not compromised. George has built a team of craftsmen who build Lowden guitars by hand using Japanese chisels, planes and knives.
Wood
The Lowden team searches all over the world for the best tonewoods. It is this combination of many details that determines how a guitar sounds, feels and plays. Today, George Lowden is busier than ever evaluating his guitars and continuing to improve intonation, feel and playability. Only people with a talent for concentration and an eye for detail work at Lowden Guitars.
In honor of the master
George and his numerous qualified employees at Lowden Guitars can now look back on over 45 years of experience and success in building and selling high-end western guitars. The successful company now offers many new models and has a large fan base , including among professional musicians. There are some signature models, such as Alex Di Grassi, and even the master George Lowden himself was given two signature guitars for his 70th birthday. Ed Sheeran is also a big fan of Lowden Guitars and owns several of the brand's guitars. Together with George Lowden, he created his own brand of guitars, which is in a cheaper price segment and also enables price-conscious guitarists to purchase real Lowden quality. So take a look at his Sheeran by Lowden Guitars.
Special editions with unusual cooperation partners
In addition to collaborations with well-known artists such as Alex Di Grassi and Pierre Bensusan, George Lowden and his crew also occasionally team up with more unusual collaboration partners. For example, this is how the Bushmills special models came about, which were created in cooperation with one of the oldest distilleries in the world. Since both Bushmills Irish Whiskey and Lowden Guitars come from Northern Ireland, this collaboration was a natural choice and we think the result is very successful, both visually and sonically.
Other special models include the Genesis model with serial number 20,000, the Shanghai model and the Expo guitar, which was displayed in the Great Britain pavilion at the Dubai Expo in 2020 and presented during Prince William's visit.
Lowden Guitars also introduces new winter special models every year at the NAMM Show.
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