Internationally Acclaimed Guitar Maker George Lowden Celebrates 50 Years Of Making Guitars At A Special Event To Celebrate Global Enterprise Week 2004
George Lowden is an internationally renowned acoustic guitar maker and he is celebrating his 50th year in business.
Last night (Tuesday 19th November) he held a ‘fireside chat’ with Emma Bohill, CEO of the Down Business Centre as part of their involvement in Global Enterprise Week 2004.
Opening the evening up at the packed St Patrick Centre auditorium, Emma introduced George Lowden saying that the Down Business Centre is the local enterprise agency for the area, and George Lowden was a past long-term tenant at the centre in Downpatrick.
Emma acknowledged George as a business visionary who has made acoustic guitars for many top artists such as Ed Sheeran, Paul Brady, and Eric Clapton to name a few.
As George chatted through his memories of how he got involved in Guitar making, he said: “I just wanted to make guitars. I had no aspirations. Back then I was 23 years old. My dad gave me great advice. He said ‘whatever you do, make them good’. And that’s what my main aim was.
“I was totally green. I had no idea how to make a guitar and I needed someone to show me how to do it. I remember contacting a guitar maker in the south of England and his wife directed me to a handbook which I still have to this day with my notes on it.
“I had virtually no woodworking skills back then. I asked my dad how you would carve a piece of wood to make a neck for the guitar. He suggested a spoke shave … I didn’t even know what that was back then.
“But somehow I got going and made guitars and took orders. I even made guitars for Fleetwood Mac eventually. I built my reputation improving all the time but I was putting a lot of money into the business development. It was costly.
“I received a grant and support from LEDU back in the 70s, and that was very useful. But I was learning the hard way. Eventually my business grew and it was what I call an ‘accidental’ experience.”
George talked about one of his early experiences about trying to promote his guitars when he called in to see Eric Clapton at his home unannounced on New Years Eve at his home in Surrey.
“I decided to call in and I had five guitars in the back of the car. Eventually I travelled through rural roads and found his house… and he actually answered the door himself! I was literally speechless. But he was great and arranged to test my guitars and give a critique at a later date which was brilliant.
“Eric bought a guitar from me and used it in the acoustic parts in his albums Pilgrim and Reptile. But I respected that he had had a long relationship with Martin Guitars which was fine.”
Emma posed an interesting technical question to George. She asked: “How has guitar making changed over the years?”
“Basically it has hardly changed,” said George. “We still make them in the same way that we did back in the old days.
“The absolute attention to detail makes all the difference. We do things that no other guitar makers would do. It adds to the cost, but we are in the business of making the best that we can. It’s all about quality.
“At the moment our hand-made guitars range from £4-25,000. The most expensive guitars I tend to work on myself. There is a lot of judgement involved and each piece of wood has to be evaluated.
“Our workers are all great craftsmen and love playing guitar. One of them said one day, in working here you have to get used to the ‘rigours of excellence’ from myself. I suppose I have set the bar high. But it has paid off.
“We do a range of ‘Ed Sheeran’ guitars for beginners now and they are priced much lower at anything from £500-900. I met Ed one day while over in Texas on business and explained to him that I wanted to make a range of quality affordable guitars.
“Ed was interested in partnering in the ‘Ed Sheeran’ range of guitars. He thought about it and two years later we were making guitars for beginners.
“Interestingly, the Lowden top guitars are all hand-made, but a small part of the Sheeran guitars are machined, given we are creating volume. And all parts are produced in Northern Ireland. Other manufacturers may even get parts of the guitar made in China.”
George explained his attention to his craft through his experience training in Japan. “This experience was invaluable for me. I learned how to focus on the product I was working on. Amazingly, the Japanese crafts people could made items in a quarter of the time that we do in this county.
“The Japanese woodcarvers had a fantastic array of tools I had never seen before and work methods. This was of huge benefit to me. And incredibly, the Japanese went home at the end of their working day and did not feel tired.
“The Japanese treated me like a king recognising I was very keen to learn.”
As the discussion wore on, Emma asked about sustainability in the business of making guitars and the problems of the supply of suitable woods.
“Quite a lot of wood we buy now from reclaimed and recycled sources. For example, we buy sinker redwood from America. The sinkers are logs that have sunk to the bottom of rivers where they were floated down stream to the saw mills, and after many years they are reclaimed from the bottom of the river by being lifted back up and processed.
“The sinkers have a special, unique sound quality. It is very resonant. But we also use other woods such as bog oak which may be 50,000 years old found in Ireland and England. Also, we use Californian, and Indian redwood. We get wood from all over the world.
“Brazilian redwood seems to be the best for the back and sides. And the fronts may be made often of African blackwood or cedar or spruce.
“Once I paid £8000 for wood for one guitar to make the back and sides. The order was for a shiekh in Kuwait.”
George discussed what options budding entrepreneurs have when trying to break the mould and move forward. “There are courses and apprenticeships etc, but I learned from many hard lessons. I had no formal training as such. That means I was free to be more creative in my business approach and how my product evolved.
“Certainly, looking forward to the days when my two sons take over the business, I would like them just to improve on what I have done. My other son is a Church of Ireland Minister… I think he has found his own direction in life.
“There are many special moments looking back. One was listening to Eric Clapton playing my guitar at the Grammy Awards on stage… not that was a special moment!”
George answered questions from an enthusiastic audience and the evening ended with three junior guitarists playing their Ed Sheeran guitars!
Music teacher Mona Owens had run a competition and the prize was an Ed Sheeran guitar. Some of the musically talented past music students judged the performances but they could not separate the top three pupils.
When George found out, he disappeared into a back room and conferred with Ed Sheeran on the phone in a back room.
Ed and George agreed to give each player a guitar and the young budding musicians then played out the evening with a couple of tunes to the enjoyment of the audience.
Check out: Lowden Guitars
