You’ve gone through quite the career change. Tell us about what inspired you to start making guitars?
I worked for McDonald’s for 27 years starting from ‘crew’, working part-time, and ultimately left the business as Director of Menu having worked in the UK, France and Germany working on local, European and Global projects. McDonald’s developed my business ‘brain’ and I passed my MBA whilst working for the business. The Ray Kroc story and how he built McDonald’s was always an inspiration to eventually start my own business (watch the film ‘The Founder’ and you get a sense of why) but I never expected it to be in the music industry. I always thought that one day I would run my own burger restaurant or food truck. However, picking up the guitar in 2014, aged 45, changed all that. I was a late starter when it came to playing guitar. However, once I started playing I got interested, especially with electric guitars, in how they work, what impacts tone, what tone woods are used, what impact different electric set ups have and ultimately how are they built.
Tell us about your training experience?
My initial training was with Guitar Tech Courses in the UK, where I learnt guitar set ups and built my first kit guitars. James at GTC had attended The Galloup School of Guitar Building and Repair in Michigan, US and so I attended my first training course there in 2017 completing their ‘Journeyman Program’ building an electric and an acoustic guitar (I was fortunate to have a sabbatical from McDonald’s). I continued building kit guitars developing my finishing, electric installation and set up skills.
It wasn’t until 2019 that the opportunity to become a full time business due to redundancy from McDonald’s. I built 2 guitars with James Collins Guitars before returning to the Galloup School of Guitar Building and Repair in January 2020.
What was it like facing the challenge of the pandemic in the early days of Duncan Cruttenden Guitars?
The pandemic had a major impact on me throughout 2020 and 2021.
Firstly, the UK and US went into lockdown at the same time which resulted in Galloup closing it’s doors and I had to head home.
The next 2 years proved challenging as I couldn’t find workshop space locally and all exhibitions were cancelled. Although lockdown was essentially a positive for online sales for a lot of retailers, for a new guitar builder it was a challenging time as you really need customers to be able to feel and play the instruments.
Given these challenges I decided to enhance my training by attending The Totnes School of Guitar Making. Totnes is very different to Galloup in that it uses hand tools only as well as the more traditional Luthiery methods associated with classical guitar building. Galloup uses more industrial scale equipment (alongside traditional methods) to prepare its students for work at one of the big US guitar manufacturers.
The 2 schools in combination have given me a great mix of skills that can be used together to enhance my build process.
2022 has now at least seen exhibitions return (I have now done 4 and have 4 more booked in for this year) but challenges still remain on workshop space and availability. I eventually built a woodworking, finishing and set up workshop in my garden but ideally still need that bigger space where I can meet customers and potentially display and sell some stock instruments. At present I do build to order only.
If there was one thing you’d like to tell the wider music industry about being a luthier, what would it be?
A piece of general advice I would give is if you are passionate about something and want to go for it – do it! If it’s Luthiery then even better.
Starting your business months before a pandemic is not ideal but it wouldn’t change my decision, to be honest – it’s just made it more challenging (and hopefully more satisfying when I do get out of the other side).
Don’t underestimate the challenges that you will face. Coming from a huge corporate business, I was responsible for one small part of the business (alongside many other Directors all doing their small bits) but as a sole trader be prepared to wear a lot of hats!
Chief Executive Office
Chief Operations Officer
Head of Finance
Head of Marketing and Communications
Head of Supply Chain
Head of Quality Assurance
Finally, from a pure Luthiery perspective be prepared and accept that you will make mistakes. You may work on something for many many hours and it ends up as scrap / repurposed because the router took a chunk of wood out of a body or a chisel just dug in too deep on a neck. It is all part of the learning experience.
If you could own only one guitar, what would it be?
As you can see from my arm I am a huge Beatles / John Lennon fan. I do own a couple of guitars made famous by Lennon but I would have to say owning anything that he actually played would be an honour.
Obviously for that to happen I will need to sell a lot more guitars so I better get back to the workshop!
