December News 2019

It’ll be a shortened news this month as we’ll be taking a couple of weeks off for our winter break. To start – we had Andy from Plymouth picking up his new Lamorna,

It had a Sitka spruce top and this stunning English walnut for the back and sides.

Second along this month we have this twelve fret Torridge for Sarah from Somerset. Sarah wanted her Brook to have an aged look so we shaded the top, stained the nut and saddle and gave the guitar a satin finish,

The inlay around the twelfth fret is based on her tattoo.

The Brook logo is maple in a rosewood head veneer with an inlaid pearl star to match a similar sticker Sarah’s daughter applied on her previous guitar!

Mark really liked my Lamorna when he came down from Surrey to place an order so we built a similar one but with a slightly wider nut width and fingerboard splay to his specifications. He couldn’t make it down to pick the guitar up so we sent it up to him. He wrote ” It’s a beautiful guitar! Your collective workmanship is superb and the set up is fantastic”.

Julie has several Brooks and came down from Stroud to buy this figured redwood topped pre-owned Torridge.

This spectacular top, back and sides set has just arrived by post – we bought it to make an all koa Lyn for Coda Music in Stevenage.

Adam came down from Scotland to order his second Brook with the Tavy we made for him nearly fifteen years ago. Adam did the inlay for that one himself, here it is –

Two of the repairs this month include a neck reset on this vintage Martin and repairing a split back on this David Oddy guitar.

Now, in the true spirit of an over commercialised Christmas, we send you our best wishes

And hope to see you again in the New Year. New Year, new guitars!

November News 2019

First off this month – these two, an Okement and a Teign went up to Coda Music.

The Teign has the stunning figured mahogany top back and sides, while the Okement has a Sitka top and maple back and sides.

We don’t often get asked for the Okement so here’s the opportunity for a couple more photos,

It’s the largest of our range, similar in size to a J200 with a 650 mm scale. It’s a big powerful guitar!

Sebastian came to pick up this Lamorna,

He’d picked out the flamed English walnut and Sitka some months ago.

The guitar was a present and he asked for this inlay on the twelfth fret to mark the occasion of his 18th bithday.

Now – what are the chances of this? The same day as Sebastian (above) came to pick up his guitar we had a visit from another Sebastian, same age, both came with their fathers, both had a Lamorna! Seb here had bought his from Project and it was love at first sight! He came for a look around the workshop and to have a strap button fitted.

It’s not often we get a chance to make any guitars for stock as we’re so busy with orders but we thought we’d better make up a Taw out of one of the last sets of the spectacular figured mahogany before it was all snapped up.

Here’s the back. If anyone would like to try it come and see us at the workshop.

We sent the Abbey featured last month over to Italy, Fulvio sent us this photo of himself with the guitar overlooking his beautiful home city of Sanremo. He wrote to us ” When I hold the Abbey in my hands, I get excited like a child with his first toy. Pleasant to the touch, to the ear and to the view; it attracts me like a magnet”. Thanks Fulvio!

These two Taws are about to go to Project Music. The walnut one has our standard bridge and the rosewood one has a traditional belly bridge, we give our customers the choice but we’d be interested in anyone’s opinion if they have a preference.

Jez has our old friend Chris Ayliffe’s Lyn. Jez came down to visit Chris’ wife Jan and pop into the workshop so we could show his neighbour Mark, a violin maker, around.

Aaron’s Tavy had now re-joined his collection back in Australia after a spell abroad and Aaron’s really pleased with the new custom neck.

Now – some customers want low, low frets while others like the jazz playing owner of this Epiphone Emperor want them as high as possible, here we re-fretted the guitar with substantially large hardwearing Evo Gold fretwire.

We’ll give you the final news update of the year in about three weeks.

October News 2019

Dave here has had lots of guitars from us over the last twenty years and for a while and was distributing them in the Dorset area with our mutual pal Freddie under the company name Shady Grove.

This time Dave went for a reclaimed mahogany Lyn

With an Adirondack top, rosewood fingerboard, bridge and head veneer, and a slightly narrower body.

George picked up his left handed Taw

With a cedar top, abalone purfling and rosette,

Local English cherry that we sourced from a farm in North Devon, a sound-port,

These delicate fingerboard inlays

And a wolf inlay on the headstock.

This Abbey is about to go out to Fulvio in Italy,

Like the original we made for Ian Anderson it has his trademark pearl rosette

And is going out in a custom flight case.

Here’s a slightly unusual instrument for us, it’s a nylon strung Weaver we’ve just completed for Paul from London.

The Weaver is a small parlour size guitar with a full 630 mm scale length that fits into a three quarter sized hard case. We fitted a passive Fishman under-saddle pickup,

Here’s the flamed maple back. Paul will be coming down to pick it up next week.

The Indian rosewood Torridge here had just gone off to Project Music in Exeter.

A friend passed on half a dozen guitar books to us the other day. Browsing through them we noticed that, unknown to us, we were featured in several of them. Amongst them this little parlour we made for Tom Cutler was included in ‘1001 Guitars To Dream Of Playing Before You Die’!

Rather a lot of repairs and set-ups this month:

First of all we were asked to make up a wider and deeper neck for this Tavy we made for Aaron in Australia four years ago. He loved the guitar but neck was too skinny for him so he sent it back and we’ve made a replacement with this alternative headstock design he’d asked for.

The customer who ordered the Lyn here earlier in the year had the opposite problem and asked us to narrow the neck, fingerboard and nut width by 1.5 mm. A substantially easier job!

Jesse Molins brought in his nice Aria jazz guitar for a re-fret with tall Evo Gold fretwire. As well as performing with his own trio Jesse has toured and recorded with Mike Westbrook and other prestigious musicians – and played at Ronnie Scott’s!

The bandaged arm here belongs to Marcus who had an unfortunate incident involving a ladder – get well soon and we hope you’ll be up and strumming those Indian influenced compositions on your Taw again before too long!

We set up this fifteen year old 680 mm scale Tamar baritone for standard tuning with a new nut, saddle and a set of Elixir 11s to bring it to the normal string tension.

This cello turned up a little worse for wear, we glued it back together and repaired the finish and it’s now as good as new.

This nylon strung vintage instrument is a bit of a mystery to us and the owner, we had the glue the bridge back on and get it back together. It has an interesting clock key neck adjustment. Any information about it from our readers would be appreciated.

Finally – thanks to Frances for this little Brook mosaic

It’s now taken its place amongst our increasingly large display of unusual instruments!

September News 2019

This beautiful Lyn is soon to be shipped out to Wolfgang in Germany,

The koa is the finest we’ve seen for a while,

The soundboard, back and sides are a matching set.

It’s an 015 trim with bound fingerboard and headstock, abalone purfling, diamond and dot fingerboard inlays, Wolfgang preferred the chrome tuners to the regular gold ones we’d normally use on the higher spec model.

Brian Higbee, a local artist, collected his new mahogany Taw,

Brian chose this Escher inspired image for the headstock,

He asked us to sign the guitar so we made up a similar themed label for the purpose!

Here are the latest three for Coda Music, clockwise from the front: a rosewood Taw, Lamorna and Teign.

Rob’s the proud owner of this thirteen year old Taw, it’s Rio and Sitka and has a dolphin inlaid on the headstock. He picked it up a couple of years ago from Ivor Mairants. Rob’s delighted  with it and at last got the chance to bring the guitar down and have a look around the workshop earlier this month.

Allan appreciates the quality of his Torridge, in part because he works to the highest standards himself, Allan makes the superb quality leather cases you see in the photo on the right.

Pete MacGregor picked up this walnut Lamorna from Project Music and put it straight to work the following day accompanying Rosie Upton at the Village Pump, Trowbridge. Thanks to Dave Pegg for the photo.

Finally – a sad farewell to our friend, blues legend, Julian Piper who died a fortnight ago. Julian was a great player, promoter, interviewer, reviewer, enthusiast – and genuine good fellow, we’ll miss him.

Our sympathies go out to Cathy, Lucy and Sam.

August News 2019

We’ll start with a couple of guitars we previewed for you last month: Suhail is a filmmaker from North London, he ordered this fretless Taw with the Anjan fingerboard, he’s planning on using it for the soundtrack of the film he’s currently working on!

Tony picked up his ziricote Tamar and is already considering a second Brook.

This month we seem to have mainly been working on mahogany topped guitars:

These two for Coda, a Lyn and a Clyst,

Pretty stunning figured wood, pyramid bridges on these two 12 fretters.

John Middleton brought in his 2016 reclaimed mahogany topped Tamar for us to fit a pickup.

And this lovely vintage Martin came in for a neck reset, new bridge and repair work to the bridge plate and bracing,

It’s  an 00-17 from 1935 and sounds great now with an easy action.

Amongst the other repairs we had this Maton in with some severe damage to the back, Andy did another great job getting it back together, the customer was delighted and couldn’t even see the repair!

Andy relacquered the fingerboards on two of these custom shop Strats and sorted out a few dents and dings.

I went up to Kevin Aram’s workshop in North Devon with Martin who edits our Babbling Brook magazine, Martin was picking ‘Ritzy’ his new classical, I had the pleasure of trying it out up there!

It’s back and sides are from the same batch of yew as Martin’s Okement.

It’s festival time again, Dave Treloar always has a pop up shop with his vintage instruments at the Sidmouth Folk Festival, he brought in these nine instruments from his van for a quick set-up before he set up shop.

I went down to the Cornwall Folk Festival to see Wizz Jones, Pete Berryman and Boo Hewerdine, then on to the Hellys Guitar Festival to see Pete again along with Chris Woods, Bob Devereux and innovative luthier Kif Woods. Here’s Pete playing the Tamar we made for him about twenty years ago.

Nice to see this pretty little German blonde guitar-shaped mandolin on the bench again for a re-string.

And thanks to Pat in Las Vegas for the photo. Pat’s still planning on eventually crossing the pond to see us – The Devon cream tea will be waiting for you and April!

I’ve collected so many guitars over the years and occasionally not been particularly selective, I know that this may not go down too well with some enthusiasts but, rather than giving unplayable instruments away to budding guitarists, it’s sometimes kinder to dispose of them gracefully,

The guitars not the budding guitarists of course, let’s make that clear!

July News 2019

First off the post this fine July morning and certainly a first for us is this fretless Taw, it’s tuned in fifths from a low F to a high E.

It’s a cedar topped 12 fretter with an Anjan fingerboard, bridge and head veneer. Anjan’s one of the densest Indian hardwoods so we thought it would be eminently suitable to cope with fingerboard wear.

Rosewood back and sides with a satin finish.

The Lyn here will be going up to Manchester this week. Adirondack top,

Snakewood binding, soundport,

Highly figured bubinga back and sides

With a laminated mahogany neck with a rosewood splice, topped off with bronze Waverleys with snakewood buttons.

Possibly not coincidentally – this cutaway Tamar is for Tony who has a place down by the Tamar estuary.

Nice ziricote back on this one!

Andy took this English cherry Tavy and English walnut Torridge up to Project Music in Exeter a couple of weeks ago.

Phil Taylor took a trip down here for an adjustment to his Lamorna neck.

This early ’90s Gibson ES 175 has rather unpleasant cold checking on the headstock and other areas – an all too common problem on these. The frets ended up working their way through the binding as the fret-board shrunk, everything points towards humidity problems in the factory during the build. Unbelievably there are still Gibson fans out there who consider this a charming feature!

A considerably better finished Gibson Midtown Custom came in, we made up a replacement pick-guard.

Here’s a cute small bodied arch-top Framus – it came in for a neck re-set and went out playing beautifully!

TV’s Taw with the removable neck came in for a check over,

And – yes, that’s buckle rash!

It was somewhat of a disappointment to see this printed tortoiseshell pattern on an anniversary edition Martin. Ladies and gentlemen I can assure you at Brook Guitars we only use the very best quality fake tortoiseshell for our pick-guards!

Enjoy your summer.

June News 2019

First up – We resisted for many years but our thanks go out to Robbie and Martin for their hard work and prodding us into setting up the Brook Guitars Facebook page. For anyone who might be interested in following us we promise not to bombard you with incessant inane drivel and photos of our food!

Back to the real stuff: Arjan and his wife Monique came across from the Netherlands to pick up his new Tamar,

It has a European spruce top, red gum back, a torch inlay on the headstock and hexagonal abalone block inlays for position markers.

Arjan was so pleased with his new Brook he called in to Project Music on the way home and purchased a Lamorna to keep it company!

Our buddy Tony has added a custom Calder to his impressively large collection of Brooks,

This one has  English walnut back and sides with a tinted Swiss spruce top

And Jack’s kingfisher inlay on the headstock.

A couple of weeks ago I went to see the excellent Steve Tilston and Jez Lowe playing a gig in Kingskerswell, Steve was happy to sign the label and test drive the guitar – Tony was delighted!

While we’re on the subject of the Calder, here’s Steve’s mate Keith Warmington performing at The Eldon House, Bristol.

Phil came down from Oldham to pick up his new Lamorna,

Adirondack top on this one along with English walnut back and sides.

When Phil got back he took this photo of the Lamorna, already feeling at home, between his Torridge and Lyn.

Another Lamorna – very popular this month, this time with a sitka top with a pick-guard, and rosewood back and sides,

Also very popular with our customers currently is the new decking area. Here’s Mike with his new guitar!

Will Riding’s playing his Torridge on his latest EP ‘Venus In Mohair’, it’s officially released on 1st of July and available on Bandcamp here.
Tom Robinson wrote “The unpretentious charm of Will Riding’s performance…completely disarmed me”! Check it out.

Lars Mullins came down to interview us for Britain’s Rare Guitars

It’s for a short feature for their program on Sky, you can check photos from the shoot on their Facebook page here.

See you next month!

May News 2019

Keith Warmington picked up his new Calder. Keith’s a good pal of Steve Tilston and ordered a similar guitar but with a few changes:

Keith went for a natural finish for the fine Swiss spruce top,

he asked for a Cornish chough inlay on the headstock.

Apart from that it had the same features as Steve’s – the 12/14 fret body join

And the sound-port.

Here’s the full-length shot

And here’s Keith on the decking outside the workshop for the obligatory photo!

This Lyn‘s just gone up to Steve in Hertfordshire,

A solid headstock rather than typical slotted one – it does make string changing a lot easier!

He asked for a nice aged tint for the top, simple wood rosette, purfling and binding along with a pyramid bridge and diamond and dot position markers.

Jon had this walnut Torridge shipped across the US from Shoreline in Colorado to North Carolina, he said ” WOW.  I’ve probably owned over 200 guitars in my lifetime (I used to buy and sell), but this is by far the best guitar I’ve ever owned.  Incredible workmanship, and the tone is…I don’t know, it gets inside me.  Just WOW.  Not ever selling THIS one!” Thanks for the kind words Jon!

This Lyn and a Tamar went up to Intersound last week,

The Lyn (above) is Bubinga and sitka and the Tamar (below) is ovangkol and cedar.

Marcus and Nitin are part-way through their latest tour, they dropped in to see us again and we were really pleased to have another impromptu performance.

There’s still an opportunity to catch them at the following venues:

Here’s a picture of Mack with his owner’s new Torridge, we featured Rob and Mack in the February news last year. Recently Rob decided to trade in his Clyst for a bubinga Torridge he’d seen in Coda. He loves the new guitar, he had some regrets about letting the Clyst go and checked Coda after a few days about maybe buying it back but it had already found a new home. It’s a slippery slope Rob – one Brook‘s  never enough!

As usual we’ve had more than our fair share of repairs and set-ups this month – one of our customers brought in these four and I worked my way through them one busy afternoon.

We replaced a worn bridge-plate on this 1970’s Gibson MK53.

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Andy worked wonders with this Martin which had a major split along the ribs.

He’s part way through some interesting repairs, we’ll show you the results next month!

April News 2019

We’re pleased to announce the sixth issue of Babbling Brook is now available, you can download it here, you’ll also be able to download it along with previous issues on our homepage.

We have an in-depth interview with Steve Tilston, our collectors feature and a look at Celtic Chords in Stonehaven, an article on some of the more unusual guitars we’ve made outside our standard range, a brief explanation of how the new CITES legislation affects guitarists, along with tab for ‘A Place For Solitude’ by Phil Taylor. As usual many thanks to Martin Bell for all his hard work, hope you enjoy it, any feedback will be most welcome!

Adrian came down from Berkshire to buy the walnut and cedar Tamar we had in stock, it was a toss up between this one and a walnut Lamorna in Project Music  – the Tamar won out this time!

Chris also had a similar dilemma: he’d come down to look around the workshop and try some guitars before Christmas. He recently went into Intersound and was torn between a Taw and a Lamorna, eventually the latter got his seal of approval! He sent us a message “I’m constantly astounded by the quality and consistency of your guitars. They are the bench mark that I judge others against. I’ve yet to play anything that enjoy as much as these”. Thanks to Sam, aged 6, for the photo!

You may remember this spalted sycamore Taw we recently sent out to New Zealand, Matt got in touch to say “It’s arrived, and is even more beautiful than I had hoped”.

Coincidentally – we’ve just been sent this photo of Alex playing his Bovey by Lake Taupo in New Zealand. Thanks to his daughter Kora for the photo.

Closer to home, Len picked up his rosewood and Sitka spruce Taw and looks delighted with his new Brook!

Mark brought his 000 shaped Newlyn over for a set of strings, we’ve only made a couple of these….so far.

Here’s Matthew in Stourbridge with his cat Charlie, along with a ten year old Clyst he’s just acquired, he’ll be coming down our way in August so he’s going to call in to the workshop then.

Several years ago we made a striking black Tamar for New Zealand born, London based singer/songwriter Louise Loft (that’s the third N.Z. connection this month!) Louise decided it was time for another Brook.

A few years ago we had a vintage 1950s Gibson 185 through the workshop and took a drawing from it. Louise liked the look of it and we’d been waiting for the opportunity to add this shape to our range so we made up a mould in preparation for the, as yet, un-named new model!

As I’ve got my new Lamorna John here asked if my old Taw was for sale, I reluctantly agreed – it’s the seventeenth Brook in his collection, which now includes several which were my personal guitars!

This Bovey came in for repair, damaged while builders were working on the owner’s house, Andy managed to glue the top back and replace the broken binding.

I’ve just re-fretted this Ovation and it reminds me of why they’re not amongst my favourite instruments: you can’t hold them down on the bench to work on them, you can’t release the strings to work on the saddle and bridge, the saddle is integral with the pickup so changing the action is a nuisance, they slip off your lap when you sit and play, I could go on…..and on……

but I’d rather not end this month’s news on that sort of note!

March News 2019

Andy made the trip down from Hertfordshire to collect his highly customised Tavy, dedicated to his late father with his initials on the 12th fret.

It has a stunning variegated cedar top, figured English walnut back and sides, sound-port, along with abalone Celtic knot inlays, rosette and trim. Andy’s really pleased with the result and already contemplating his next Brook!

Barry came down from Oxford to pick up his tasteful cutaway Lamorna –

With dark rosewood binding and purfling, custom bridge with stained black saddle and nut

And this rather nice set of heavily flamed Australian blackwood for the back and sides.

We made this Tamar for our shop, the majority of woods are  non-tropical, the only concessions are the ethically sourced Crelicam ebony we use on all our guitars and reclaimed mahogany for the laminated neck and back struts. The top’s cedar, the back and sides are figured English walnut and the binding and heel-cap are lacewood – London plane, cut on the quarter.

The latest four guitars for Project Music are nearly ready now: a bubinga Taw, a walnut Lamorna, a rosewood Taw and a walnut Torridge.

I thought it was about time for a change so I’m moving on my old Taw and have gone  for a Lamorna this time!

Very plain with simple appointments, an Adirondack top and Indian rosewood back and sides.

I’ll be spending most of April playing my new Lamorna in but hopefully also get enough work done to put together something for next months news!

February News 2019

First off the post this month is this Taw, heading off to New Zealand shortly.

The spalted sycamore came down in a paddock just round the corner from Andy’s home in the village of Sandford!

Here’s a close up of the back, plenty of variegation as well as flame!

Mike, from the New Forest, picked up the cherry Tavy 12 string we featured last month.

Another guitar we featured last month was the Macassar ebony Lamorna, collected a couple of weeks ago by Gary who came down from Dorset.

Rose brought down her custom Lyn for a tweak of the truss-rod. It’s not often you get more than a wry grin out of us two old buggers but we all cracked a smile over Andy’s quip along the lines of ‘a rose between two thorns’…… though slightly more offensive about us both – and slightly more amusing!

Rose has been setting up gigs again recently and will be playing with Ian Holleran at the Plough Arts Centre in Torrington on April 12th.

Keith’s up in Cumbria, he bought his Torridge from Project Music in Exeter, he wrote – ‘I want to thank you for making such a lovely guitar. I’m a little different, being a one- armed/handed guitarist after a serious motorbike accident fourteen years ago. I’ve persevered and managed to develop a style of playing that works to a level, with both electric and acoustic guitar. Once again thank you for making such a lovely instrument.’

Here are more photos of Chris with his Tavy and Teign performing around his home town of Tavistock. Photos courtesy of Jac Flash Photography.

Jan popped down from North Devon with a fine hurdy gurdy and lute handmade by a relative of hers, we did a little research, ordered a set of lute strings and put on a couple of temporary ones until the new set turn up.

We took delivery of a massive board of old stock Brazilian mahogany which we’ve been cutting up for necks, back and sides.

We also ordered up this superb top, back and sides set of koa for Wolfgang in Zetel, Germany who’s asked us to make a Lyn for him. The koa was sourced and supplied by Joshua Rose, a native of Hawaii who’s relocated his fine woodworking business to Devon!

We should be able to show you the completed guitar towards the end of the year!

January News 2019

Mike’s planning on coming across from the New Forest to pick up his new Tavy 12 string in a couple of weeks,

Here are close ups of the cherry back and sitka top, the binding is rosewood with a yew rosette and also yew purfling.

Mike asked Jack to inlay this sparrow hawk on the headstock using local woods.

We’ve just strung up this Lamorna for Gary in Dorset

Based on the O.M. shape this one has a stunning Macassar ebony back and sides and finest grade Swiss spruce soundboard.

We inlaid this abalone torch design in the headstock.

Three new guitars for Intersound: (front to back) a Creedy, Lamorna and a Taw.

The woods (front to back again) cherry, rosewood and red gum.

Mauro, in Foggia, sent us this photo of himself with his new Torridge

Along with some pictures of the stunning area of Southern Italy where he lives.

Andy’s been spraying the latest batch of Brooks

He’s also spraying a sunburst on this fine yew Strat made by James Millman.

We’ve just repaired the bridge and splits ribs on this lovely 1925 koa Martin.

Richard sent us this photo of his music room to remind us about the Bovey we built for him back in 2002 and the Taw a couple of years later, he’s promised to pop in and see us again this year….

Jake has just finished his course in music engineering and production, he’s joined our small team to see how he gets on with guitar making!

We’ve just re-fretted this Fylde and still got a couple of Strat refrets to fit in before the end of the month!

More next month!

December News 2016

OK – Final monthly update of 2016!
Jon came down from York to pick up his new Torridge, it’s Jon’s second Brook, we’d built an 015 Creedy for him back in 2004.

This time he went for a Torridge with a Venetian cutaway,

With bubinga back and sides

Bubinga head veneer with the old logo to match his Creedy, Waverly tuners

And a sound-port

Yes – the obligatory photo of the interior through the sound-port!

James Bartholomew came to pick up his fan-fretted Tamar,

He went for a 630/650 mm scale

With a tight grained German spruce top and rosewood back and sides.

He asked Jack to inlay this dragonfly around the 12th fret,

here’s the headstock with Gotoh 510s with ebony buttons, the fan frets aren’t very obvious from the angle of this photo!

George came down from Milton Keynes for his new Brook uke,

A cedar top on this one

With figured mahogany back and sides. George is a fine player and we enjoyed listening to the new uke in action.

Another small bodied instrument here, the first Bovey for a while, this one with a tobacco sunburst top,

We built it for Chris who’s a long-time supporter of Brook and has had many instruments from us over the years.

This beautiful Venetian cutaway Torridge with an Engelmann top has just gone up to Bristol,

The customer asked for this sea trout inlay on the headstock.

Jim’s over in Australia right now but his parents collected his new cherry and sitka OM so it’ll be waiting for him on his return, hopefully we’ll get a photo in the New Year.

And another OM here, this time a bubinga one for Forsyths in Manchester,

We gave the purfling a red theme as you can see here alongside the sitka top.

Tinker came over from Norway to drop off his Weaver, he asked if we could narrow the neck a little for him, we did the initial work while he waited which may have been a bit of a shock!

Here’s the re-finished neck ready to return to Tinker.

Jed and Maggie work in music therapy in care homes in their area, they also raise funds for Dementia UK, a very worthwhile charity I’m familiar with after losing my father to the disease earlier in the year. Anyone wishing to can donate here: https://www.dementiauk.org/donate/

Repair section:
I don’t want you to think we’ve got a thing about Martins, we’ve had some very good ones through the workshop over the years but really – we’ve had a lot with finish problems and where the binding has sprung off, this one the fingerboard binding had fallen off completely and the binding on the waist had come away on all sides.

Now we did have a new one in last year where they’d forgotten to put in the neck bolt completely, whereas on this other new one they’d just omitted to add the odd washers on the tuners – slightly less important!

Amongst the other set-ups this month this Gibson 160E came in for a fret dress and set-up after the customer had previously paid for an unsatisfactory job on the same instrument by a local ‘reputable’ guitar shop.

This 1950s Gibson came in for a neck re-set and to change it to a lefthander, it’s a good example of a previous appalling attempt at a vintage re-finish, not much we can do to save this one but it sounds pretty decent and the owner’s not too worried about the look of it.

This Manson Cittern was sent down for a refinish and to re-fix the tip of the headstock after it had taken a knock.

Season’s Greetings to all

We’ll be starting next year in a slightly different format with larger photos in our monthly news updates so we hope to see you in the New Year.

November News 2016

TV picked up his new Taw,

We made this thin-line model with a detachable neck so Tim can take it apart and fly with it as hand luggage rather than risk it in the hold

As you can see…

The Shock of the New: TV’s twenty year old Taw and the new one!

We made this Taw for Amy Newton, a fine singer/songwriter from North Devon, she chose some local cherry and walnut for the back and sides

And we inlaid the logo from her studio on the 12th fret.

Here’s Amy debuting the new guitar at a gig in North Devon, she took her Martin along as well but the Taw sounded so good she didn’t bother to use the Martin!

Ged came down from Salisbury for his new Florentine cutaway OM,

He chose this bubinga

And we went for a red theme again but this time with cherry binding.

Here’s the full length shot.

I went up to the Intersound Guitar Show last week and delivered their latest Brook – this little rosewood Weaver.

On our YouTube channel now – check out the John Forrester trio with Linze Maesterosa & Jenny Carr performing ‘Butterfly Catcher’ at The Harrison in London. The song’s from the forthcoming album……

This mahogany Torridge went off to Gerry in Washington, D.C.

Pete Berryman came over for a refret on his fifteen year old custom Tamar.

Andy ended up wiring up another of our friend Stan’s guitars he makes to auction off for a children’s charity. They’re loosely based on Brian May’s guitar, unbelievably there are about fifty solder connections to make on the one guitar, hope this one makes as much as the last!

Chris bought his Torridge from Ivor Mairants in London and came down by train for his free set up, we picked him up from the local station, took him back to the workshop, set up the guitar, and spent a couple of hours there before taking him back for his return journey.

David, in the States, sent us this photo of Wayne Henderson playing his Taw, master guitar-maker and player Wayne was giving a charity concert for a small group in the mountains of Virginia on Sunday 30th October!

This very nice Sobell came in for a set-up

And this gorgeous little 1955 Martin tenor for some T.L.C.

I guess the repair side of the business is all grist to the mill but we sometimes despair when we see the work of other repairers.
A couple of examples : These replacement tuners weren’t even screwed home leaving a large gap between the plate and the headstock – naming no names but this was by someone in the business who should know better.

This Martin came in with replacement tuners delightfully held in position with gloops of araldite.

And how about this for a repair to a Martin soundboard – the customer decided the best approach after seeing this disaster was for us to re-top it! Well enough of that.

Finally – Tim debuting the new Taw in Penzance.

Thanks to Pete Knight for the photo.

October News 2016

When I got to the workshop the other morning the mist was just starting to clear, here’s a photo with Nymph Woods in the background – and before you ask – no we haven’t seen any!

Richard from Bristol popped down for his beautiful new Taw

With an Engelmann top,

It’s a little deeper than normal with a figured mahogany back and sides.

Here’s the back and front of the headstock.

John’s an old friend of ours, he picked up his third Brook a few weeks ago, he’d always fancied an all mahogany guitar,

We made his new Tamar out of this lovely dark reclaimed mahogany.

Here’s the close up

We’re working on the new issue of Babbling Brook – Martin took a trip to London to interview founding member of Genesis and solo artist Ant Phillips who has three of our guitars!

Stephen, blending in well with the lime tree in the orchard, came down from Kent for a set up on his Torridge and his Bown. He also has a Lyn but found this second-hand mahogany Torridge in Project Music in Exeter, we’re not quite sure of how it got there as we’d made it for a shop in the States!

Here are a couple of shots of the cutaway thinline Taw with a removeable neck we’re making for T.V.

Just a few finishing touches before we hand it over!

Steve Lane sent us a photo of himself with his maple Tavy at Acklam Park Open Mic. Steve told us “folks said the guitar sounded wonderful” – and the songs of course!

This red gum Torridge went up to Intersound.

Now our regular repair feature:

Andy and I have had quite a few guitars on our benches this month, amongst them this Manson Magpie we made about twenty years ago,

And this Bluebird that Andy Manson made a few years ago.

Nice to see this Creedy again when it came in for some T.L.C.

We made it about fifteen years ago with an all-over black lacquer and dark pearl purfling

Along with a dark pearl vine inlay, we haven’t had to inlay a vine for many years!

A rather nice old Levin, it’s always a pleasure to see these.

This guitar came in for a set-up, it brought back a few memories – my first hand-made instrument was a similar model to this made for me in the early seventies by Norman Wood in Sennen, down near Land’s End in Cornwall.

Visiting Norman’s workshop all that time ago was the initial reason I decided I wanted to make guitars!

And here we are forty or so years on……..

September News 2016

We seem to have had a lot of interest in our guitars this month and all but one of our stock Brooks have gone to new homes, we only have the rosewood OM left. Simon from Halifax liked the Tamar we sent up to him so much he came back a couple of weeks later and ordered a bubinga Taw! Phil from Dorset came down to pick up the figured mahogany 000.

John from South Devon collected his five string baritone uke.

There’s a fourth course octave pair so you can get the best of both worlds – the high and low D!

Here’s the ever popular figured bubinga on the back and sides.

Two sets of shop orders this month, the first went to Forsyths in Manchester,

From front to back: a cherry Torridge, a rosewood cutaway Tamar, a figured mahogany Taw and a rosewood Teign. We heard that two of these were sold shortly after they arrived!

These two, a cherry Tavy and a rosewood Taw are just about to go off to Project Music in Exeter.

Dev, who we’ve featured on our YouTube channel, came over from India to visit. He bought his Torridge from Ivor Mairants in London some years ago, so far Dev is holding the record for distance travelled to get his free first set-up!

Dev stayed with me for a couple of days and wanted to visit Poldark country so I took him down to St. Ives….

…..To visit the residents

Which reminds me – I was amused by this sign on a lamp-post at the Wadebridge Folk Festival.

Will Riding bought Fliss’ Torridge and sent this photo of its first outing at the Chester Live Music Festival.

Lastly a couple of the latest photos of TV’s Taw with the removable neck, here I’m giving it a final sand before it goes to the spray-shop

And here Andy’s giving it its first coats of lacquer, we might well get this one together for next month’s news.

Finally –

I was looking out some bits and pieces for a Brook display at a local craft fair and came across these two photos of me and Andy from the early days in the mid 90s,

These the first batch of Mansons before we started concentrating on our own range – a little piece of obscure history!

More current Brook news next month.

August News 2016

Back in March Norman came down and selected his favourite set of spalted figured sycamore for his Torridge, here he is collecting the finished guitar.

The sycamore came down in a storm a couple of years ago, we picked it up from a paddock just a hundred yards from where Andy lives in Sandford!

Here’s the completed guitar.

Norman came down when there were a fine display of snowdrops in the orchard here at Easterbrook so he didn’t have to look far for inspiration for his inlay – again expertly executed by Jack.

Here’s the alternative pearl fingerboard inlay that we’ve previously used.

We made this Weaver for our shop

And this Tamar, the two recently have been smapped up by customers in Birmingham and Halifax respectively.

Here are the talented Wheeldon family – Claire, Holly, Jamie and Summer playing some fine bluegrass for us! Claire came down with her cedar Teign for a set-up and some TLC.

A customer came down from Windsor to pick up his cutaway Taw, the top’s a fine set of Sitka,

The back – rosewood with koa binding and a satin finish on the neck.

A couple of weeks ago Tony McManus visited Celtic Chords in Stonehaven and seemed to enjoy playing the batch of Brooks Pete had in stock!

Marcus Corbett popped in with his Taw to say hi and dropped in his latest CD, we’ll talk more about that when it’s released in October.

I went to see the excellent Urban Voodoo Machine the other week when they played a rare West-Country gig, they invited TV Smith on for the encore, you can check out the video on our YouTube channel.

Talking of the man – here’s the latest photo of his new thinline Taw – made to be taken apart, hopefully making the flights abroad a little less stressful!

Here are Ayse and Sinan

Sinan Tuvan got in touch a couple of weeks ago asking if he might come down for a few hours to take some photos of the workshop, here’s a preview of some of the photos you can see on his site at sinantuvan.com along with a video. We’ll be adding it shortly to our YouTube channel, apologies in advance for my rather vague mumblings on the soundtrack and some rather dodgy playing on my tatty old Harmony! Lovely photos, thanks Sinan!

Now the inevitable repair section: Two headstock breaks for the price of one here, the most common break – a Gibson and far less common – a PRS.

We had this lovely 1965 Fender Jaguar in for some work on the frets, a saddle problem and a set-up.

This nicely battered ’57 Martin came in for a new bridge.

And a slightly less desirable Martin, along with a Yamaha.

Last but not least – Roger, Exmouth’s Town Crier, bought his fan fretted Sanden down for us to lower the action. He’s obviously pleased with the result!

We’ve just come back from a long bank holiday weekend to lots of enquiries about custom builds and even more repairs so – more next month…..

July News 2016

Introducing our latest addition to the range – another small parlour, this one with a 595 mm scale, we’ve called it the Abbey:

Here’s the body close up,

This one’s for Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull so it has his trademark pearl rosette and he supplied a Fishman Rare Earth pickup for the sound-hole.

These Golden Age tuners seemed the most suitable option for the diminutive solid headstock.

To give you a true idea of the size here it is in the playing position. The guitar plays beautifully, Ian’s hoping to debut it on stage later this year.

Nice to see a couple of our older guitars revisiting the workshop this month for a quick look over – a seven year old Tamar and a seventeen year old Torridge!

Ornithology Corner: We don’t often see Jays, apart from in flight, around here, here’s one in the orchard though along with a grey wagtail, if we’re not mistaken.

We also had a batch of elderly Bantams that Andy led out here the other weekend

Robin Dransfield is highly respected nowadays for his work on violins and cellos after his heyday in the ’70s with brother Barry in The Dransfields. He brings his guitars to us for renovation! We re-set the neck on his vintage Martin a couple of years ago, we’ve just re-set the neck and made up a wider fingerboard and bridge for his Levin and set up his old Harmony Sovereign.

We’re pleased to see Robin’s out gigging again with a couple of prestigious spots at the Sidmouth Folk Festival this year.

It’s been another month when we’ve been trying to clear some of the many repairs that arrive on our doorstep: Amongst the other renovations were this Stella 12 string which had a broken truss rod, needed a neck re-set, a new bridge and gluing back the various braces that had come adrift.

A neck re-set on this Keech as well. There are plenty of Keech banjo ukes out there, the odd standard uke and tenor guitar but we can’t find out anything about this seemingly unique Keech guitar. We welcome any information we can pass on to the owner!

Three more guitars in for work – this old Japanese Antoria J200, an old Fylde and Kevin Aram’s Silvertone for a body respray it its original colour.

Kev also brought over this Precision bass body, he’d commissioned a local artist to paint it, we just gave it a couple of coats of lacquer to protect the artwork.

This Kalamazoo was a tricky repair, it came in pretty much unplayable with a bent neck and the intonation way out, yet another re-set on this, as well as sorting out various other issues – a lot of work but it’ll leave here a really comfortable, useable instrument.

We were joined by Harris who helped with some very useful but dusty preparation work during his week here on work experience.

Martin, who edits ‘Babbling Brook’ sent us these two photos from a studio where he’s recording with a friend of his, the consensus was that his Okement sounds wonderful!

June News 2016

We have several fine guitars to show you this month: First of all a cutaway OM for Tony who’s now into double figures with his collection of Brooks!

This time he chose this stunning curly redwood for the top,

Bubinga for the back and sides.

Jack designed and inlaid this kingfisher on the headstock

And we designed this coded 12th fret inlay for Tony, if you can work out the significance send your answers on a postcard and we’ll publish the winners cards in next month’s news!

Next along for his new Taw was Clive from Chesterfield,

Here’s the full length shot of the guitar,

With a bearclaw European spruce top,

Cherry and walnut back,

MW insignia on the 12th,

And our alternative shape for the slotted headstock.

Next out this month was this Bovey for Laurent in France,

When he received it he got in touch straight away – “it’s just “Wow” and amazing, so impressed by the sounds and voice delivered by this small beauty, thank you so much!”

A Taw, Tamar and Clyst for Ivor Mairants,

Two in walnut and a figured mahogany Taw.

A walnut and European spruce Torridge for Project

And here they all are packed up and ready to deliver.

Jack’s working on a new Taw for TV, this time we’re going to have a removable neck to give him the option of breaking it down for travelling,

Double cross bracing for more stability for the constant gigging. TV’s been putting the photos of the build on his Facebook page and getting plenty of positive comments!

Pete Walton got in touch with us recently:

“I’ve had a Torridge for nearly ten years now and love playing the guitar, my favourite acoustic for fingerstyle playing. For the last four and a half years it’s been with me in Matilda The Musical in London’s West End, so at a rough estimate that’s over 2 million people who’ve heard the instrument! It’s such a lovely instrument to play, I always look forward to the parts in the show where you can hear the guitar solo and appreciate it’s beautiful sound in isolation.”
Checkout Pete’s website along with his Acoustic Earth project on our links page.

Anne came along for a first set-up on her cherry Taw, she plays regularly in West Cornwall.

Finally – it was great to see our old friend and mentor Andy Manson who was over from Portugal for a holiday!

May News 2016

First strung up in May was our new 000 style Aune model we made to go in the shop. We came across this fabulous figured mahogany and used it for the top,

Back and sides,

As well as constructing the neck from it!

I’m afraid we had a couple of requests for us to be included in the customer’s photos this month, if you’re easily offended – look away now! Siegbert came over from Germany to collect his new Tamar.

Here’s the full length shot

It’s worth zooming in a little to see the figured, curly Douglas fir top and the English walnut back,

Zooming closer in on the top!

Tony bought his lacewood Torridge from Ivor Mairants about ten years ago, he took us up on our offer of a free first set-up last week.

Oh dear – us again – Pat, from Las Vegas, asked that we send a photo of the crew who made his new cutaway rosewood Tamar before we sent it off, he’s promised his own photo in time for the next update.

Mike’s a local player and runs an open mic in Calstock, he came up to the workshop recently and bought the local cherry Taw we had in stock.

Early in the month Paul picked up the Epiphone that Andy had converted from right-handed to left. We were all really pleased with the result –

Andy disguised all the old holes and refinished the top.

A customer bought in this vintage Stella 12 string that arrived from the US unplayable and with a broken truss rod, we’re resetting the neck and putting in a new rod, hopefully a shot of it complete before too long.

Three interesting instruments in for fretting or refretting work recently: this double cutaway Fossey banjo/guitar, an Orpheum plectrum guitar and a very ornate Vega plectrum banjo.

We’ve mentioned the new parlour we’ve been making, here it is before I carved the neck and prepared it for the spray room,

And here’s the latest update – masked up and awaiting its first coats of lacquer.

Another preview here: the customer is coming down to pick up this lovely cherry and walnut, fruit and nut Taw in June, more pics then!

Here’s Nigel’s maple Taw that was separated from its neck by over enthusiastic baggage handlers on its way out to New Zealand recently, back together and ready to brave the airways again.

You may remember we’ve undertaken several repairs on Phil Bird’s yew Tamar, firstly a speaker fell off a shelf through one of the ribs, then a few months ago in Cyprus the guitar was sat on after an enthusiastic Greek dancing session! This time it’s Phil in the wars, after rupturing a disc and being laid up with heavy duty painkillers for a month he found the only guitar he could comfortably play was his little walnut Bovey.

We wish him a speedy recovery!

April News 2016

Robbie came down to pick up his new Okement bass, here he is in my kitchen giving it its first work-out!

This is the second instrument we’ve completed using the new J200 style shape.

Here’s a close-up of the bearclaw Engelmann top, we used a red theme for the purfling and rosette

To complement this stunning figured bubinga back and sides.

Robbie chose these distinctive Da Vinci Schaller tuners and we inlaid a small Celtic knot on the headstock.

We finished this walnut Lyn and red gum Tamar for Intersound and Steve and Denver came down to pick them up.

Andy delivered this rosewood Taw and a bubinga Taw to Project Music in Exeter.

We made this English cherry Taw for stock, you’ll see it on our ‘Shop’ page along with other guitars available directly from us.

René came across from Holland to pick up this cherry Torridge he’d taken a fancy to from the shop.

Jake popped in with his trio of fan fretted Brooks for a quick tweak (the guitars not Jake!)

Now for our regular repair section:
Firstly Phil’s Tamar, we mentioned last month that it had been sat on and the neck had been unceremoniously detatched along with parts of the top, it’s back together again now, none too worse for the experience!

Paul brought this Epiphone in for a major overhaul, we’re swapping it over to a left-hander, it’s surprising how much work is involved, you’ll see the results next month.

Here are a brace of Guilds, the one on the front was in for a set-up and fret dress, the one behind for a neck re-set.

We had to repair a few cracks and re-glue the bridge on this pretty little Victorian parlour guitar.

Which reminds me – Tom, in the U.S., sent us this photo of his Ian Anderson guitar in its beautiful new custom made case,

And speaking of which – here’s a preview of a new model we’re making for Ian.

Lastly a photo of Tony Hazzard with his Brooks in concert at the Convent in Gloucestershire, this must be one of the UK’s most beautiful venues.

March News 2016

First off the mark this busy March we’d like to apologise to the very talented Ellie Goulding for appropriating this photo from her Facebook page, she was in No.Tom Guitars on Denmark Street buying a Taw.

We made this custom Taw for Giles Andreae, children’s author and creator of Purple Ronnie,

Giles couldn’t get down to pick up the guitar so we shipped it up to him, he sent us down these photos of himself with the guitar enjoying a pleasant Spring day together by the Thames!

You might have noticed that Giles decided against the pick-guard, here’s a close up of the position markers we came up with to make the design just a little different.

Chris was down from Croydon to pick up his beautiful ‘fruit and nut’ Lyn.

The back features the last of the walnut from Kew Gardens with a centre stripe of local cherry, the neck woods repeat the theme,

Chris came up with this design for the fingerboard inlays which we cut from phosphor bronze and Andy turned the two different sizes of matching position markers out of the same material.

Chris also chose this dark Sitka top.

This cutaway O.M. was another fine guitar we completed this month,

It goes without saying it was custom made for a keen fisherman!

The back is some of our heavily figured bubinga, quite a popular choice recently –

Bubinga again for the head veneer with the stylish gold Gotoh 510s.

Another cutaway here, this time a Florentine style on a walnut and German Spruce Tamar for Celtic Chords in Stonehaven.

Another new model on the go – this time an even smaller short scale parlour.

We built this much travelled, jazz influenced Taw nearly twenty years ago, it came back for a neck reset and we returned it to the customer playing like a dream.

Unfortunately, in this case, it was followed by a nightmare! – on the way out to New Zealand it suffered a broken neck in the hands of a rather too casual baggage handler – looks like we’ll be seeing it again when it returns to the U.K.

Mr Bird’s guitar has been in the wars again, Phil and Anna were in Cyprus playing a concert and sometime later SOMEONE sat on the guitar.

For the perpetrator’s future reference this illustration might be of use, to the left is a guitar, to the right is a chair.

Norman visited the workshop and picked out the woods for a Torridge,

He’s had first pick of this stunning spalted sycamore we found a year back and is now ready to use.

I went along to the annual RMMGA meeting in a wonderful old mansion in Gloucestershire, alongside a display of Brooks there were also fine guitars on show by Adrian Lucas, Tony Thompson and Alan Marshall, guests included Amrit Sond and Clive Carroll but the highlight was probably watching Dave Wood and Louise Loft working up an obscure Sandy Denny song together!

Stephen Kenyon called in and we fitted a Fishman Rare Earth Blend system in his Tamar.

Marc came up from Plymouth for us to fit a couple of pickups on his two guitars, Many years ago we made a Tamar for his older brother, since then Marc’s become a fine blues guitarist in his own right, hopefully he’ll be a future Brook owner himself!

We had a couple of nice messages from the U.S. this month: First of all Tulley, who we made the recent left handed classical guitar for, sent us this photo taken at Peak Recording in Bozeman, Montana. He added “Thank you, again for such a beautiful and inspiring work of art”.

We had the pleasure of making two guitars for Woody Mann about twenty years ago, we’ve met up with Woody a few times since and we still hear from him, earlier this month he got in touch to say:

Hi Simon and Andy,
Long time… Hope you both are well. Just wanted to let you know I’ve been playing the guitar you made and it is sounding and feeling great. Time has opened the guitar up and it has found its voice – a beautifully even and rich tone from the highs to the lows. It’s just fun to play …. Just wanted to let you know. Great work.
All the best from New York. Woody

February News 2016

We’re featured in the March issue of Guitarist with a double workshop spread, thanks again to David and Joby for that!

We’d like to announce another new model, this time the OOO size Aune, here’s a full length shot of it,

Mark commissioned it and here he is picking it up.

It’ll be our biggest body 12 fretter, with a 650 mm scale length,

Here’s the rosewood back

With the attractive pomelle binding.

And here’s Mike picking up his Torridge,

He chose Jack’s eagle inlay for the headstock.

Nick here recently bought this Lyn. He said “over the last 45 years I’ve played all the very best makes of guitar, and have to say this Brook Lyn is one of the very best, if not the best”. Nick’s impressed enough with his purchase that he’s already contemplating his next Brook!

Tony Hazzard has a new album out – The Hallicombe Sessions, we thoroughly recommend it, it’s recorded, mainly live, by Tony at home, accompanied by Utah musician Matt Harding, check out ‘Loving On The Run’ from it on the Brook YouTube channel.

The video was shot at the album launch at the Green Note Cafe in London.

John Forrester recently bought his Tavy from Project Music in Exeter, he’s a musician friend of Robb Johnson and Tracey Curtis, both also Brook owners!

His last album was released in 2014 so we’re looking forward to hearing the Tavy on the next album, check out John’s first video with it, shot at Venford Reservoir, on our YouTube channel.

Here’s a shot of Jack with Andy’s new fixture in position, the rather complex piece of engineering ensures we cut a precise binding rebate.

Here are a couple of photos of Pat Nestor’s cutaway Tamar before the guitar is packed up and sent off to Pat in Las Vegas,

It’s our more ornate 015 model with pau purfling and an Adirondack top.

Alan, from St Ives brought his Taw from us sixteen years ago, back at the time Alan wanted a matt finish, he decided recently that he would like the full gloss treatment so we were happy to oblige!

Plenty of set-ups and repairs this month again, amongst them some fingerboard work and fretting on this Phil Davidson mandola for Phil Bird.

Here’s Rob from Model Folk along with Kate, also playing a Phil Davidson mandolin, and Robbie. We fitted a Headway pickup to Rob’s McIlroy tenor while Robbie looked over his, soon to be completed, acoustic bass.

Second in the series of photos to show why makers like ourselves sometimes are unable to put as much time to playing our guitars as we do making them!

Hopefully everything will heal up and we’ll be playing together again next month!

January News 2016

We start the year with John picking up his Kew walnut Torridge, just one more set of this coming along on a guitar next month.

Dave Rich is a local musician who runs open mic sessions most days of the week around Devon and Cornwall as well as gigging in his own right, he came over to collect his new Taw,

He provided the Rare Earth single coil, one of the most reliable pickups around,

Here’s the walnut back.

Bernard came down from London for his Clyst,

Normally this would be a 12 fret model but we re-designed the strutting and sound-hole position to make it our first 14 fret Clyst,

Here’s the bubinga back with contrasting maple binding, along with a maple neck

And gold Waverly machine heads.

Another Carey classical guitar here – this one, a left-hander, for Tulley in Montana.

This is Tulley’s second Brook, the guitar is winging its way over to him as I’m writing this so hopefully we’ll get a photo for next month’s news!

Talking of classical guitars – here’s Bob with the very first classical we made twenty years ago, Bob came over with that common problem – the lid fell on the guitar and dinked the top when he was getting it out of the case, luckily this time it didn’t do much damage and we were able to do a quick spot repair.

Leading on to repairs – as you can see they’ve started building up again:

Some of our Brook owners may have been slightly less conscientious about guitar safety over the winter break (pun intended) whether alcohol had been consumed or not we don’t know. Names have been withheld to protect the guilty parties! This Tavy slipped over on a wooden floor.

Above we have the before shot and below its back together again.

Here are stages of a Bovey headstock repair – this involved gluing the break and re-spraying the neck. In the lower photo you can see part of a fine hand-made case the customer had made for the instrument.

This Torridge suffered its injuries when the hanger came off the wall and shattered the tail block and ribs,

Here it is back together again.

Andy did quite a bit of work on this lovely old Keech Banjo-uke, now it’s been set-up properly it’s become a really playable instrument.

Amongst the other repairs and set-ups this month we had a re-fret of this Martin D41, complicating matters we found the celluloid binding had shrunk and was falling off so we had to deal with that before getting to the re-fret.

Anyway – here it is back in all its glory.

That’s it for this month, we also sent a few guitars up to Intersound in Dursley, unfortunately we forgot to photograph them!

News 2015

News Archive 2015

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December News 2015

Another year coming to a close, keep an eye out for a feature on our workshop in the winter issue of Guitarist’s Acoustic quarterly.

Jake here picked up his latest fan fretted guitar – this time our new Okement shape based on the J200.

This time we went for a 650/680mm scale length, a reasonably wide fingerboard and a general black and white theme with the guitar made of maple and ebony,

The guitar has a Florentine cutaway, the rosette is a patchwork of pieces of variegated ebony. Jake was really pleased with the way it turned out, very different from his other two, with the big body size it has a really powerful bass with singing top end.

Another new model – The Culm, we can make this as a standard flat top or as the small resonator we have here:

It’s David’s second Brook, Bryony’s taken a particular shine to it so it looks like she’s going to be playing it at much as he is!

Here’s a close up of the rosewood top, we’ve used a Beard spun cone with a biscuit bridge which allowed us to keep the body size down. The pickup is an excellent Bare Knuckle ‘Stormy Monday’.

And now a third new model – it’s the redesigned Little Silver, we adapted it slightly to fit a Gator hard case for the Baby Taylor.

Just to give an idea of the size, here it is with the fan fretted Okement partially in view above it.

This one went up to Richard in Nottingham, Richard chose a bog oak, back and sides, fingerboard, bridge and head veneer

And a fingerboard inlay of his own design – similar to the one we inlaid on the guitar we made for him last year.

Martin, who puts ‘Babbling Brook‘ together for us came down with his Okement to play a fine set at the acoustic club at the Okement Centre in Okehampton,

He also picked up his new guitar – the nylon strung Cary we featured in the September news, he’s been too busy to get down until now but Martin’s assured us it was well worth the wait!

Peter first came across our guitars at Robbie and Dave Smith’s CD launch in Bradford on Avon,

He came down to try some guitars and put in a custom order for this Taw with a deeper body.

Here’s Tony Hazzard again, this time performing in Bilbao with his Brooks!

There’s a new Torridge for sale we’ve just added to the Shop,

Andy has just made up a new mechanism to help with the binding process, it temporarily mounted to the drill press while Jack tries it out!

November News 2015

Anne runs the Acoustic Folk & Blues Night at the Blues Cafe in Teignmouth on the last Friday of every month.

She ordered this left handed Torridge with bubinga back and sides and a European spruce top.

These three went up to Ivor Mairants in London –

A walnut Tamar and Clyst, along with a rosewood Torridge.

This Ian Anderson model, our first with a cutaway, is on its way to Tom in Colorado,

Jack inlaid the fingerboard with an iris design based on one of Tom’s mother’s watercolours.

We managed to find some local walnut on a farm in mid-Devon, here are Jack and Kev selecting and cutting it into sets,

And here are the results ready to store and dry thoroughly.

Joby and David from ‘Guitarist’ came to take some photos and interview us for the magazine.

Tony Hazzard came over to have a Fishman Infinity fitted to his Martin, the same pickup as we put on his Taw,

Tim Broadbent down on the Côtes du Rhône just bought this rosewood Lyn and kindly sent us these photos.

Phil Taylor sent us this one of his Torridge in the room in Fowey where he wrote his latest composition ‘From Covington Wood’. Check out both our and their own YouTube channels for Phil and Tim’s latest videos.

Amongst the other work this month we repaired and re-fretted this vintage Antoria and made up a new bridge for it.

We’ll leave you with three photos of our collection of various stringed instruments we’ve built up over the years!

We’ve some interesting new guitars to show you next month for the final Brook News of 2015!

October News 2015

The weather’s getting a bit chillier now and when I arrived at the workshop the other morning and looked across the orchard and thought the spider silk between the trees was worth a photo!

Mike, from Gloucester, has expensive tastes, this is his fourth high end 015 Brook – this time an OM.

Adirondack spruce and rosewood on this beauty with pau shell Celtic knot position markers to match the purfling

And Jack designed this inlay for the headstock.

We sent these two Brooks up to Forsyth’s earlier in the month –

A Lyn in figured mahogany with a bear-claw Engelmann top and rosewood and European spruce Tamar.

Here’s the first Cherry we’ve made for a while, this one’s for a customer up near Aberdeen, it’s a short scale travel guitar, there’s a Torridge behind to give you a size comparison.

This one has a cedar top and very old and dark mahogany sides we’ve had tucked away for many years!

It seems apt that we can show you Jack’s latest inlay of an octopus in the month of October,

Gavin commissioned Jack to decorate the headstock of his banjo with the octopus triggered by his interest in the stories of H.P.Lovecraft!

As for the repairs this month:
This little nylon strung Bovey had come a cropper somewhere along the line, we made it for a customer back in 2001.

We soon put it back together and it was shortly reunited with its owner.

We completed the work on this nice old 1953 Gibson LG1. Quite a lot involved here with a neck re-set, new bridge along with bracing and splits to repair.

Julian from Delta 88 came to us to have a new bridge fitted on his old Boosey and Hawkes double bass.

Andy weaved some magic on blues queen Josie Lloyd’s two Nationals.

We asked Kevin Aram over to look over the latest classical guitar we built and he bought over three of his latest range of instruments – beautifully made cigar box guitars, a little more expensive that the run of the mill ones but c’mon – this bloke’s made guitars for Julian Bream!

Oh – apologies for this – that reminded me of this old Cluff cartoon from Private Eye I’ve had above my workbench for years……

September News 2015

First of all we’d like to let you know that the latest issue of Babbling Brook is now available to read or download from our homepage. This issue includes in-depth articles on TV Smith, Tony Hazzard, Andy Lale, information on home recording, more Brook collectors and a tab of one of Robbie’s compositions. As usual many thanks to Martin and Robbie for all their hard work.

You can get it here

The following three new guitars are waiting to wing their way to their owners:
The first classical of the year –

This time we used a Torres design with a few modern features, a nice bubinga rosette and bridge decoration

To match the back and sides of the Cary.

We used these fine Irving Sloane classical tuners with black barrels on headstock.

Next up we have Simon from Lancaster’s new OM, a nice European spruce top with red gum purfling

To match the red gum back, Simon asked for Venetian cutaway with a return, rather than our standard drop cutaway – more access to the dusty end!

John will be coming down from Pembrokeshire in the next couple of weeks to collect his new Torridge,

Adirondack spruce for the top.

John sourced this old growth Rio for the back and sides himself.

Andy delivered these three guitars, two Taws and a Torridge, to Project Music a couple of weeks ago,

From top to bottom – English Walnut, Indian Rosewood and Bubinga.

Richard has amused us with some of our favourite customer photos over the years, he sent this delightful ‘thank you’ for the latest work on his Gibson and Gretsch.

Andy did a fine job completely rewiring Richard’s Gibson with new hardware along with a couple of superb Bare Knuckle pickups.

I slimmed down and reshaped Richard’s Gretsch resonator neck

Then we gave it a sunburst and re-lacquered it.

Talking of resos – here’s a sneak preview of a new biscuit bridge addition to our range, this one is going to be named after the river Culm.

We were very pleased when Forsyths in Manchester featured the Torridge we recently sent up to them in their latest half page ad in Acoustic magazine.

Johnny Butten, banjo player extraordinaire from Hayseed Dixie, was keen to show us his initial reaction to EasyJet trashing his much loved instrument of choice!

We glued the headstock back on and refinished the neck – go to Johnny’s site for some expert tuition videos and info about him.

Dave from Cumbria sent his Tamar down for repair, it’d been knocked off a stand and split the neck, here’s Dave with the newly repaired guitar – a decent set-up and it’s playing like new again!

Looks like things come in twos – this little Bovey lost its neck in an accident as well.

Tommy sent another photo of his new Taw, this time taken from his balcony on the Swedish island!

We’ve just done a neck re-set on this nice old vintage Gibson, still got loose struts to repair as well as some major splits and make up a more sympathetic bridge to replace someone’s previous attempt.

Well here’s an interesting repair – we had this Martin in with the neck parting from the body, when we prised the cover off the heel block inside we could see the bolt insert in the heel but no bolt! Someone asleep on the factory line gentleman?

Don’t forget to download the latest Babbling Brook for additional information about our hand-crafted guitars!

August News 2015

Carol and Simon called in after their holiday in Cornwall to pick up Carol’s new tenor uke, here they are with Andy and myself.

Here’s a close up of the highly figured mahogany top

And a full length photo.

We made this Tavy for Simon last year,

We were amused when we saw the cake that Carol made for his 50th birthday!

Derek collected his new Lyn 015,

There were some interesting features in this custom guitar: the curly Douglas Fir top,

An interesting profile on the slotted headstock as an alternative to our standard shape

And this red gum back.

This cutaway Torridge went off to Forsythes in Manchester

And these two, a Lyn and a Torridge went to Intersound in Dursley.

Bryan in Arizona sent us this photo of his new Ian Anderson model with a very suitable local backdrop!

Tommy’s backdrop, taken on an island off the Swedish west coast, is a little less inspiring, however – the guitar is! He says ” My Taw is so alluring that I have to lock the case in order to get to the office. Amazingly easy to play – and a beauty”

Thanks Tommy!

Phil Taylor went down to Robbie’s to record some tracks for a CD,

They gathered up a fine bevy of Brooks between them, we’ll look forward to hearing the results.

Well we got TV’s guitar back together after the EasyJet disaster, all in time for his appearance at the Rebellion festival, here’s the first appearance with the newly repaired Taw (including guest uke player for one number!)

Another outing that weekend, albeit with necessarily limited audience numbers, was the gig on this lovely Blackpool tram!

Another EasyJet casualty here – be warned musicians – this is Johnny Butten from Hayseed Dixie’s banjo, the budget airline managed to break the neck of his expensive signature model instrument in two places, you should see the results next month….

Other repairs completed were: This Guild neck re-set

And the 1920’s Oscar Schmidt tenor guitar neck re-set. This little beauty required a new fingerboard and bridge as well as dealing with other splits and cracks.

We’ll finish off the August News with this black & white shot of my workbench.

Enjoy your summer holidays, see you next month!

July News 2015

These three beauties: a Taw, a Torridge and a Weaver, were collected by Steve from Intersound. We’ll be going up to their anniversary show in November.

Amongst the three there was this rather nice four piece back yew Torridge

And this Taw with an unusual curly Douglas Fir top.

Jack’s inlay work was chosen for the first issue of Devon Artisan, the magazine included a two page article on him and his work.

Toby acquired his ovangkol Taw from us four years ago, he bought it in this month for its first set up. Phoebe and Imogen couldn’t resist picking up a couple of our ukes and joining Toby for the photo!

Martin, who puts together our Babbling Brook magazine was seen out at his local club playing his Tamar for a change instead of his beloved Okement!

We thought we’d take this opportunity to give you a preview of Martin’s latest Carey nylon strung guitar getting its first coats of lacquer.

We’ve been drawing up a couple of new plans for additions to our range,

Each new design requires a new mould so I’ve been making up two – one for a small wooden resonator with a biscuit bridge and also a redesign of the Little Silver to go in an SKB hard case designed originally for the Baby Taylor.

We had a visit from New Zealand guitar maker Ray Mercer, many years ago Ray moved over to the UK, he took part in a guitar-making workshop with Kevin Aram and worked for a while with Roger Bucknell at Fylde’s and also at Andy’s in Denmark Street before moving back home. Ray came over to visit some of his old mates and Kev brought him over to the workshop for a visit.

This beautifully decorated little parlour guitar was found in an attic in North Devon and was brought in for appraisal.

Graham, one of our customers, found these old mahogany snooker table legs about to be skipped and thought it’d be a waste of good timber so bought them down for us to use. In some ways it seems a pity to re-saw them, legs or necks – we’ll see……

Breaking News!! TV’s old familiar Taw is in again for repair, this time easyJet insisted it went in the hold and managed to break it despite it being in the Hiscox case.

It’s going to have to be a quick repair – he’s playing at the Rebellion Festival next week.

June News 2015

Well June’s come round again, the old computer ground to a halt so with the new one up and running at last and a new photo editing program to contend with we’ll start this month’s news:

We completed several overseas orders, let’s start off with this one going to David in North Carolina,

He came over last year and chose an Adirondack top for his Taw along with this set of English walnut,

David sent Jack a design to use as inspiration for this eagle inlay in walnut, ebony, maple and yew.

This cutaway Tavy has just been sent out to Aaron in Australia,

It has a wide yew rosette, yew purfling

And this four-piece yew back.

Here’s a close-up of a pretty little Weaver in European spruce and rosewood, this went out last week to Tinker in Norway,

A couple of days ago Tinker sent us this photo of himself with his new guitar taken at midnight on midsummer’s eve. The tradition is, in Southern Norway, to go out in their boats, burn huge bonfires and have a drink or three – a very fine tradition too, if I might say so!

This Taw is about to be boxed up and go off to Tommy in Sweden,

Another yew four-piece back

And a cat inlay in pearl on the twelfth fret.

Another Ian Anderson model completed this month, this one’s going off to Brian in Arizona.

Now – customer time:
Mike bought the beautiful sunburst Torridge we had in the shop and ordered another Torridge in the last of the Kew walnut.

Hilary, from Cornwall, picked up this second-hand 12 fret Torridge locally and came up to have a look around the workshop and show us her new acquisition.

Andrew brought over his Clyst for a set-up.

John Middleton, from Somerset, picked up this second-hand O.M. as he felt his Taw needed a companion!

Liam bought this new walnut Tamar from Celtic Chords in Stonehaven.

Colin was happy with the repairs to his Lowden and Hermanos guitars, both had suffered fairly major damage and required several struts to be re-glued amongst other problems.

These two Kalamazoos needed major restoration as well, we recently completed the work and sent them back to our old mate Roger in South Wales who was very pleased with the results!

More international orders next month – and more yew….

May News 2015

We’d like to thank Julian Piper and his daughter Lucy for their work on the article about us in the latest ‘Acoustic’!

Jamie came down from Wiltshire for the cutaway Tavy we featured in the previous month’s news

And Darren came down from Nottingham for his Weaver,

Here’s a close up showing the tortoiseshell style purfling and the pyramid bridge.

Eric didn’t have as far to travel, he only lives a couple of miles up the road and came over to collect his Teign.

He ordered this sunburst, 12 fret slope shouldered model,

Andy got to grips with a complex pickup system combining a L.R. Baggs Lyric and a K&K Pure Mini.

You may remember last September we put up a photo of Peter with some walnut he’d just acquired from Letheringsett churchyard.

Here’s that same walnut on the O.M. model we made for him,

He came down from Norwich to pick up his new instrument and was delighted with the result!

You may also remember this badly damaged Taw, we re-topped it and Phill’s obviously very happy to see his favourite guitar back in one piece!

This Ian Anderson model went off to Wolfgang in Germany, the first of a batch of international orders – more of that next month….

On to the repairs:
Three Lowdens in for various things from a rebuild to a set-up.

This old Framus bass for renovation, also a fine old Yamaha.

This Jerry Bix Tele was brought in, the customer wanted us to make up a pick guard to imitate George Harrison’s famous Tele.

Talking of pick guards – we were resetting a neck on a 1930’s Kalamazoo and we removed this, supposedly, original one – it turned out to be fashioned out of a piece of 1960’s vinyl!

Lastly – Jack and I sent some work over to the Shady Grove Gallery for an exhibition in Ringwood,

Here are some photos of the gallery with Robbie playing centre stage.

See you next month.

April News 2015

This Taw is for Dave from Shady Grove,

How about this stunning figured redwood top!

Anne came up from Cornwall for her Taw,

Another ‘fruit & nut’ with cherry and walnut back

With a European spruce top.

Here’s the heelcap, with her initials inlaid in the corners

And Jack inlaid a Celtic Knot in the headstock.

Another three piece back this month in cherry and walnut for Jamie in Wiltshire –

And the Tavy full frontal. Hope to get a photo of Jamie picking it up next month.

Vince picked up his little mahogany Clyst.

We’ve managed to find some more of the beautifully figured mahogany which we cut into sets a couple of weeks ago!

We’ve got this Lowden in to repair – it’s taken quite a battering.

Amongst many other repairs we worked on this unusual hand-built guitar.

We say a sad farewell to John Renbourn who passed away a few weeks ago, I was lucky enough to see John play with Wizz Jones at Wadebridge last year and Topsham last month. Our friends Dave Wood and Michael Dunnigan also enjoyed their company and got to play with them at the last RMMGA meeting the weekend before he died.

8 August 1944 – 26 March 2015

March News 2015

We all took turns watching the eclipse through Andy’s welding mask the other
morning in the orchard! the photo doesn’t capture the full effect unfortunately but
gives you an idea of the atmosphere as the moon passed in front of the sun.

Back to guitars: This walnut Taw went off to Project Music in Exeter

And these three, two Taws and a Tamar were picked up by Denver for Intersound.

A while back we came across some interesting spalted sycamore from a local farm,
we recently cut it up and are in the process of converting
some really interesting sets for future use.

To give you an idea what it is likely to look like here’s a set in our Tavy mould.

We’re pleased to announce the arrival of a new model in the Brook stable,
it’s J200 size, we’re not sure yet if it will join the Okement
or replace it in our super jumbo range.

We completed that David Oddy tenor guitar conversion, here’s the new neck going on

And here’s the finished guitar.

Along with other repairs and refinishes this month we had a couple
of necks with the headstocks broken off, firstly this Duesenberg,

Then this lefty Les Paul, here’s a montage showing some of the stages including someone’s previous rather inelegant attempt to repair it with a couple of nuts and bolts!

Note to Roy – now we’ve done all that work on it put some decent tuners on it!

February News 2015

Richard, from South Devon, picked up his new cutaway Lyn,

So we’ll proceed with some shots of that. Firstly the full length portrait,

One of the yew back

And one of the yew head veneer provided by Richard’s father.

Richard also asked Jack to inlay a small harp on the 12th fret,
Jack cut this by hand from a single piece of pearl!

Andrew and Gracie are holding the two guitars we made for them
a couple of years ago, Andrew’s father David, a fine player,
was impressed with the quality and coordinated a family visit
with coming down and ordering a Brook for himself!

Here are the covers of Robbie and Dave Smith’s fine new albums

Along with the reverse sides. More information on http://chalkhillsmusic.co.uk/

Julie came down from Gloucestershire with two of her trio of Brooks for set-ups

And Steve and Denver from Intersound picked up their latest two guitars

A rosewood Taw and a red gum Tamar, then promptly ordered some more!

Stephen picked up the Lyn he’d ordered
and brought along his Taw for us to check over.

Alpine spruce top with a pyramid bridge,

One of the last sets of Kew walnut

And the increasingly popular slotted headstock with a rounded top and Waverly tuners.

Phil Jones popped down from Porthcawl to have a pickup fitted in the
bubinga Torridge he bought from Oasis in Ringwood last year.

Oh dear –
The more repairs we complete, the more come in it seems
– as you can see by the ever-increasing pile of cases!

Amongst them this nice old Guild for a neck re-set
and replacement for the broken truss-rod,

This PRS we’ve just put back together with a neck break – both ends of the neck!

It was good to see this lovely lacewood, narrow bodied Tavy of Lucy’s again.

Now – just to let you see how we suffer for our art,
I recently took a photo of my picking hand – not a pretty sight,
it’s a bit ironic that working on these guitars
make it rather painful experience playing the finished product!

Hopefully things will heal up by next month.

January News 2015

A quick mention of Robbie J’s CD launch –
If anyone would like to attend the event come along to
Wiltshire Music Centre in Bradford on Avon, Wednesday 28th January,
you can expect an evening of fine guitar playing by Robbie and Dave Smith
and try a selection of Brook Guitars brought to you by the Shady Grove guys.

This little Clyst is going up to Soundpad in Barnstaple.

We’ve had a few of our older instruments in for set ups this month:
This fourteen year old distinctive narrow bodied lacewood
Tavy of Lucy’s which needed a tweak of the trussrod,

And this lovely little English walnut Bovey of Phil Bird’s we made fifteen
years ago which suffered some damage to the top when he lent it out!

Oops! – Phil Ecclestone also had an unwelcome accident with his Taw,
we can’t expect to carry out an invisible repair this time without replacing the top,

Here’s stage one! More to come as we proceed.

Fabrice’s daughter took this photo of him playing his new Lyn
on this sunny day in Lavande, Provence.

Quite a few repairs again this month,
one interesting one was a refret on this immaculate Hofner Verithin,

And here’s Andy doing a neck reset on a resonator.

Back to that David Oddy tenor guitar re-neck,
Marc thought it would look great with a black top,
rather like the vintage Gibsons so we were happy to oblige,
here’s Andy spraying the first coats,

And the neck and body hanging to dry in the spray room.

Next month we’ll be able to show you some of the new guitars
for Intersound and Project Music along with some other interesting
instruments which are nearly ready to leave the workshop,
also hopefully an update on Robbie’s event at the Wiltshire Music Centre.

December News 2014

It’s been a busy month again. We got couple of batches of guitars out to the shops We completed these three for Ivor Mairants in London,

Then we delivered these five to Project Music in Exeter.

Dave Smith came down for the mahogany Torridge he’d ordered, Dave asked for a rosewood fingerboard, bridge and head veneer.

Here’s a full length photo,

And a close up. It turned out a really nicely balanced, lively guitar!

While our weather is getting cooler Marcus headed out to India again for a gig in Mumbai!

Simon Boulter came down from Bristol for a set up and a pickup on his twelve year old Taw.

We also did a set up on this beautiful 015 maple Torridge we made back in 2003.

This is one of our favourite sunbursts of all the guitars we’ve made over the years.

Steve had a fairly drastic headstock break on this Taw,

We got it back together, you can’t see the damage and it’s playing like new again, Steve was really pleased with the result!

Here’s an interesting project – Marc sent us this fine David Oddy tenor guitar over from Switzerland. He found he wasn’t using it as a tenor and asked us if we’d make up and fit a short scale six string replacement – more of this next month….

Season’s Greetings to all our readers and see you next year!

November News 2014

We’ve just seen the first frost of the year and the orchard was white when we arrived this morning.

A couple of weeks ago we sent this custom Torridge up to Richard in Nottingham,

Richard had sent us this design to inlay in the fingerboard.

We’d found enough of this very old yew to make up a three piece back.

These four Brooks, an OM, Teign, Taw and Lyn, were collected by Mike from Project Music in Exeter,

Amongst them was this left-handed rosewood Lyn custom ordered through the shop.

Here’s the Lyn along with another standard one an early stage of the build, showing the different bracing for the left-handed model.

The customer wanted a rosewood head veneer and Waverly tuners.

John here has a busy touring schedule as lead guitarist and singer with Dire Straits tribute band Dire Streets, He popped in to see us on the way down to their gig at St Ives Guildhall with the intention of ordering a walnut and cedar Taw – but couldn’t resist this Tamar.

Looking at the unusual figured oak back it’s not hard to see why!

This red gum Tamar is going off to Julie in Gloucestershire who custom ordered it through Intersound in Dursley.

Here’s a photo of Roseanne Ball playing her Lyn and in character for her Halloween gig at Tapeley Park in North Devon!

This month we saw a couple of our older instruments: Cams dropped in the Bovey we’d made for him back in 2003 for a set-up and some remedial work on the way down from Arran for a short holiday in Cornwall with his family.

We built this cherry Tavy for Rhyd in Whitstable in 2004, we’ve just had it back to give it a complimentary set up, the tone has developed over the years and it’s playing and sounding even better now than when it left the workshop!

A new guitar still thinks it’s a tree … but a played one knows it’s an instrument!

October News 2014

To start off the October news I’d like to point you towards two new galleries we’ve just added. We thought it would be nice to use just black and white photos for these. Hope you like them!

Tony came over from the Isle of Wight earlier in the year to choose woods for this sitka spruce 015 Taw,

He chose Kew walnut for the back and sides,

He went for a sound-port and of course it’s obligatory to take photos of the inside workings through it!

Tony couldn’t come over to collect his Taw but sent us this photo. We try not to blow our own trumpet too much on the site but he sent us a message to say it was the easiest, nicest guitar he’s ever played!

We’ve had a few international visitors and customers this month: We had Tommy over from Sweden specifically to see us and order a Taw, We had a Tavy order from Aaron in Australia and Tinker here came across from Norway with his family, he’d been keeping an eye on the site for many years and came over to order a Weaver.

Stephen came over from Switzerland to visit and bring along the Taw he’d bought from Ivor Mairants back in 2008, we were impressed that the action and set-up was still perfect after all those years.

This has to be one of the grubbiest Brooks we’ve seen on our workshop benches, It’s a Tamar that came in for a set-up. I’m not naming names but the guilty party has been made aware that an occasional clean wouldn’t go amiss! To be fair the guitar has spent a long time in hot and humid conditions in India where the unamed owner has been busy working on recordings with local musicians.

Here’s the latest bubinga tenor uke, the owner’s well into double figures with his collection of Brooks, hopefully a photo of Steve and some more information when he collects it next month.

Dave came down from Wiltshire to collect the latest two guitars for Shady Grove.

A walnut and Engelmann Taw along with a mahogany and cedar Lyn, if anyone’s interested in these head off to Shady Grove via our Links page.

Now for a few of the many repairs we’ve been working on: This battered Taw came down from Brighton with a broken headstock and various dinks and damage, it’s now back together, looking a lot better and back with its happy owner!

We also worked on these two fine vintage Nationals.

See you next month.

September News 2014

Roseanna Ball is a fine singer/songwriter from North Devon, she picked up her new Lyn earlier in the month, here she is playing the first few tunes on it!

It has a beautiful figured bubinga back

And a rosebud inlay on the 12th fret.

Rose asked us to soften the end of our standard slotted headstock shape with a gentle curve. We’ll look forward to some photos and YouTube clips of Rose and her Lyn in action in future months!

Peter was interested in having a guitar made using some wood from his area. He drove down the other day to spec out an O.M. from this English walnut he’d sourced that came from Letheringsett churchyard in Norfolk.

Andy’s sawing the walnut into sets.

These two Brooks went out to Urs’ shop in Switzerland,

The twelve string Tamar has English walnut back and sides and the six string Taw has walnut with a cherry book-matched centre stripe.

Urs asked for a cherry blossom inlay and Jack designed this for the headstock.

We had a couple of nice ukes in for repair – a koa Kamaka to sort out some intonation problems and fit a pickup, and a vintage Regal for a neck set and new bridge.

Talking of ukes here’s Tony Hazzard live in concert with his much travelled Brook in Hondarrabia, Northern Spain, not far from San Sebastian.

Phil and Anna were also gigging in Spain this month, Phil was using his recently repaired Tamar. Here are the before and after shots!

And here are some photos of Phil and Anna playing at the festival in Catalonia.

The tall lime tree outside the workshop was trimmed the other week,

That reminded us – it was planted in the early days of Brook Guitars, here’s a photo of Andy and me in front of it when it was a little sapling, twenty years ago.

And another of us in front of it now!

We made this Taw for Paul about five years ago, he came back this month and we upgraded the tuners to gold Gotohs.

Pete from Celtic Chords in Stonehaven paid us a visit and picked up the latest maple Clyst for the shop.

Lastly – a couple of photos from the ‘Guitars on the Beach’ event at Lyme Regis which I went along to with my guitar,

Three and a half thousand of us got together with Ian Gillan to play ‘Smoke on the Water’ in the hot sun,

All of which was rather good fun!

August News 2014

We’ll start the August news with a fine photo of Roger and his new Lyn 015 on the quayside in the Moray Firth village of Cullen. Roger’s a songwriter and plays guitar with local band Heatherstay.

Here’s a full length shot of the guitar

And a close up of the Adirondack top,

The reclaimed figured mahogany back

And the 015 trim headstock with Waverly tuners.

Stuart from North Devon came to pick up his new Torridge, living in Westward Ho on the Torridge estuary it was the obvious choice! We laminated the neck from mahogany boards that Stuart had acquired from a friend of his.

We inlaid two very personal designs on the guitar – A rose on the headstock for his daughter

And a monkey on the twelfth fret in memory of his son.

Here’s Jack’s drawing with the woods chosen for the design

Full length shot.

Rich came down from Bridgewater and bought the mahogany Torridge we had in the shop, we were very envious of his VW camper!

This Clyst has also just gone up to Scotland,

The second Adirondack top this month, it’s probably the finest tonewood we know of. Hopefully we’ll get a photo of Tim to add to next month’s news.

The final guitar taking the trip up to Scotland this month is this sunburst twelve fret Teign.

I’ve just found this photo from a few month’s ago – Martin Bell, the editor of our Babbling Brook magazine, came all the way down from Staffordshire to play a fine set at Okehampton Acoustic Club. Coincidentally – the club is situated right beside the Okement, the river we named Martin’s guitar after!

As well as completing these guitars we’ve been fitting pickups and taking on some tricky repairs: We repaired rib damage to this Martin earlier in the month

But that was a fairly minor problem compared to what happened to Phil Bird’s guitar,

A monitor fell on the cutaway side of Phil’s beloved yew Tamar. Here’s an unexpected view of the label! Check out next month to see how we fare with the repair!

A few months ago it seemed to be all Telecaster repairs, this month it appeared to be to be all Strats!

Here’s a link to Steve Benford’s website. He has some beautiful recordings of Carolan tunes, give them a listen here!

Steve Benford

Over the last month we’ve been gathering a collection of Brook YouTube clips for our own channel. We hope the customers featured won’t mind. Please get in touch if you’d rather not be included and let us know if you’d like us to add a clip featuring your Brook.

Brook YouTube Channel

July News 2014

First of the mark in July is Shaun from Cheltenham who picked up the Tavy featured in last month’s news.

Melvyn, from South London, came down and couldn’t resist the cherry Torridge we had in stock.

John Stearn, another avid Brook collector and regular visitor, picked up his second rosewood Bovey. Here he is, making himself comfortable, in front of the workshop!

This Ian Anderson model has just gone off to James in Odessa, Florida.

These three Brooks are ready to go up to Intersound in Dursley,

From the left: an ovangkol Tamar, a bubinga Taw and a Yew Weaver.

Here’s the latest Teign and Lyn for Promenade Music in Morecombe.

We made this Tamar as a bouzouki five years ago, the customer asked us recently to convert it to a guitar, here it is with the old neck!

We carried out some repair work on this fine Sobell cittern and a Harmony Sovereign for Jiggerypipery’s Tony Bayliss.

That’s it for the July news, for all of you preparing for a summer break, enjoy the sun!

June News 2014

We hope you’re enjoying the new website; we’re still working on it, please let us know if there are any problems and we’ll try to sort them out as soon as possible. So far we’ve had lots of positive feedback from our customers.

We had a feature on Brook collectors in the latest Babbling Brook. Tony here is vying for pole position amongst them and is heading for double figures. His latest is thisTaw

He asked Jack to design a kingfisher inlay for the headstock

Diving for a stickleback on the twelfth fret.

The back was a stunning set of English cherry along with Brazilian chestnut using the same woods to laminate the neck.

We used this subtle red and black inlay for the rosette and purfling.

Talking of collections here’s a photo of David Hornsby’s family of Brooks up in Lincolnshire with his latest rosewood Lyn second from the left.

Shaun ordered a Tavy with this pearl inlay based on a pendant of his.

Here the inlay in situ showing the sitka top

And here’s the red gum back.

John, a friend of ours, snapped up this second-hand Okement when it came up for sale,
he wanted a sunburst finish so we re-topped it and made up a new bridge.

Along with all the other custom work this month Jack also inlaid another
oak twig out of yew on a rosewood Tavy for Michael from Redruth.

OK – here we have two photos of two thirds of the ‘Shady Grove’ team. Freddie and Colin have set up a small arts cooperative in Hampshire combining artwork, recording, photography as well as planning to sell some high end guitars, including a few of ours. Freddie and Colin don’t quite know if they should be serious musicians (left) or hedonistic rock stars (right) Any votes?

For those of you who have seen the interview in the latest Babbling Brook, Rosa Rebecka has a special concert coming up at the Phoenix in Exeter on 13th July. She’ll be introducing the Levin we rebuilt that belonged to her grandmother, she’ll be supported by The Resonance, a talented band of young local singers.

We completed this Tele style electric using superb Bare Knuckle pickups and parts, very cool!

Amongst the repairs this month we re-fretted this Les Paul copy and a Strat

And glued the bridge back on this highly decorated Tanglewood, then gave it a good set up.

See you next month!

May 2014

We’d like to let you know that issue 3 of Babbling Brook Issue 3 is now available to download from the homepage, we go into more detail about our customers,
collectors and some of the instruments we’ve made over the years, hopefully this will be of interest to you – let us know! Many thanks to all the contributors and particularly to Martin Bell who puts it all together.

Clive works in Luxemburg and came over to pick up these two beauties earlier in the month,

A sunburst Torridge and a Creedy,

The Torridge was made of exotic walnut and the little Creedy was made of the old favourite – the walnut from the tree that came down in Kew Gardens.

I’ve mentioned that we’ve been busy working on the new website
– here’s a preview of the homepage, we’re going to try and upload it in a couple of weeks so apologies in advance if we have any teething troubles!
Please let us know if there are any problems.

Another preview here, this Lyn is for David from Lincolnshire,

he’ll be down for it next month and we’ll get a photo of him then, but in the meantime here a shot of the figured rosewood back

And a full length picture.

Sandy took a 290 mile round trip to Celtic Chords to come back for this walnut Tamar,
Pete took this for us before Sandy left the shop for the long journey home.

Here’s Tony Hazzard playing his Brook uke at the Cavern Club in Liverpool, He assures us that he didn’t play a single Beatles number, Come on Tony you’d have to wouldn’t you!

As for repairs – This month we were mostly working on Telecasters.

Finally – a photo of the orchard in blossom.

See you next month on the new site with a bit of luck!

April 2014

We’ve had a busy month getting the new Babbling Brook ready and also working
on the new website which should be a lot more accessible on tablets and phones.

We completed a Taw for Shoreline in the States and we’ve just sent that one out.

Chris saw the Teign we featured in the March news and couldn’t resist it!

Another guitar we’d just made for stock, a Taw,

was snapped up as soon as we added it to the shop. Jamie, a fine player from Wiltshire, came over and went away with this one up.

Here’s a full frontal,

A close up of the European spruce top

And a one of the English walnut back.

Two more guitars we’ve added to the shop are this mahogany Torridge

With a sitka top

And this Bovey.

We don’t make many of these so we thought it was about time we bought this
ittle travel guitar to people’s attention. Go to the shop for details.

Jack is on fine form as usual with this inlay as a memorial to Joan and John Middleton’s spaniel on John’s Lowden.

Leon and Rob came down to the workshop for a quick set-up, here they are with their two fine Tavys.

Gareth Hedges brought his vintage Hofner in for some repair work, we gathered some other arch-tops we have here together for a family shot!

We also reset the necks of these two vintage ukes for Gareth – an Alvarez from Spain and a koa Hawaiian soprano.

The finishing shop was given over briefly to spraying Andy’s self-built
350 B40 BSA replacement frame before he put it back together.

Here he is on the 350 mile MCC Lands End trial over the Easter weekend.
Both Andy and the bike survived intact and Andy got a gold medal,

And here he is at the end of the trial at St Agnes with his daughter Xanthia who also got a gold.

We can’t all be award winners but we’d like to thank all of you
who’ve chosen our award winning guitars!

See you next month.

March 2014

This month we’ve four rather special custom guitars to show you:

Simon came down from Nottinghamshire to pick up his drop cutaway Tavy,

Simon chose this dramatic cedar top

And matched it with the five thousand year old bog oak for the back and sides.

There’s a walnut laminated neck with a heel-cap inlay relating to the carbon dating of the oak,

We used Jack’s skills again with an oak leaf and acorn inlay in the fingerboard,

Here’s a close up,

And one of the headstock with Gotoh antique gold 510 tuners.

A couple of years ago we made a fan fretted Tavy for Jake Moutarde, a fine young guitarist and songwriter from East Devon.

Here’s a photo of him playing it recently at Mama Stone’s in Exeter,

Here’s Jake picking up his latest Tamar fan fret,

This time he went for a more extreme 630 mm / 660 mm scale length
with an offset oval sound-hole and textured percussive scratch-plate.

Here’s a full length shot

And a close up of the back with the three piece ziricote and padouk back.
We continued the red theme with coloured purfling strips along with red saddle, nut and pearl markers.

Bob, as always, came up with a challenging design of his own:

His BC-1 model here had a sunburst Alpine spruce top with gold mother of pearl purfling, rosette and position markers.

Bob supplied the stunning Macassar ebony back and sides,

The maple bound slotted headstock is fitted with Waverly tuners.

Our fourth guitar is a Teign we’ve just built for stock using our one remaining set of, fairly plain, reclaimed Brazilian rosewood. This is likely to be the last Brook we make out of Rio because of the restrictions.

Jack inlaid this Harris Hawk on the headstock.

In addition to these four fine guitars this Taw and Tavy went up to Project Music.
Lee came to pick them up so we took a quick photo outside the workshop.

Steve came over from Somerset for his cutaway rosewood Lyn

.

We set up these two fifteen year old Brooks which are standing the test of time well and sounding great!

Tony Hazzard came to have a pickup fitted in his Brook uke.

This photo of Tom Cutler and his son Jed was taken on the South Downs by James Clarke,
Jed’s playing the banjo and Tom’s playing the custom parlour guitar we made for him a while back.

We haven’t had much time to sit and strum though, As you can see it’s been a busy month, We’ll round it off very nicely with two of Phil Taylor’s latest videos,
The first with his Torridge and the second with his Lyn:

One Year On

The Week Before Easter

February 2014

Bendigo braved the floods to pick up his new Lyn Here he is amongst the snowdrops in the orchard. Note the Brooklyn tee shirt!

Here’s the ziricote back

And the ‘V’ decoration at the tail end shows off the great combination
of the ziricote framed by the koa binding.

Laine brought us down this excellent fruit cake designed for the occasion,
not forgetting some very welcome fine wine to toast the new baby!

Here’s a full length shot showing the torch inlay and abalone purfling which also surrounded the fingerboard.

This Tamar has just gone out to Urs, our Swiss distributor,

Urs supplied the renowned and rare Alpine ‘moon’ spruce,

The headstock sported the fancy Roberts tuners. The fingerboard, bridge and head veneer were bog oak

Along with the back.

As you can see from the headstock of this little Creedy,
it’s another guitar we’ve completed this month with a bog oak fingerboard, bridge and head veneer,

We’ve used the ‘fruit & nut’ combination again with a mix of Kew walnut and cherry,

Chris from Oxfordshire asked for his name on the heel cap to match to his last Brook, a Taw.

We had to fill the old saddle slot and cut a fresh one on this
1970 Zemaitas to improve the intonation.
This is just one of a number of vintage guitars owned by guitarist Gareth Hedges
who’s plan is to record his next album using as many of his collection as possible.

This collector’s instrument has the shallowest neck profile we’ve ever come across on an acoustic.

Here’s that re-spray we showed on the bench last month. We have here a Manson body based on a Strat with a Jerry Bix neck, Burns Brian May pickups,
resprayed black by us. That makes it a Mansobixoburnsobrookocaster doesn’t it? Lucky we didn’t have to inlay it on the headstock!

We haven’t suffered as much as Somerset with the floods, it has come up over our bridge a few times though, here are a few photos of the brook in full flood!

As you can see it made access to the workshop a little tricky

And we lost a couple of mature trees which ended up mid-stream

Over in the States bad weather was the culprit when Julie Watson’s Taw survived being filled with water when a pipe burst due to severe freezing, luckily, with some careful drying out, the only sign of damage was a little discolouration down near the tail end – it definitely puts a good case for modern glues and finishes!

Some more fine playing from Robbie to end the February
news –
a hurdy gurdy tune

Halsway Schottische

January 2014

We had a welcome winter break and came back in the New Year with the resolution of getting the bulk of repairs that had been building up out of the way.
First of all though we had to complete these three instruments for Forsyth’s in Manchester,

And these two, a walnut Tamar and a bubinga Torridge for Celtic Chords,

They’ll be going up to Stonehaven in the next couple of days.

I thought I’d start off this year’s news by giving you a quick trip around the workshop and give you a snapshot view of what we’re up to right now.

No artificial tastefully arranged wood shavings,polished chisels or expensive miniature planes, just simple photos of what’s going on.

Jack’s working on the next batch of Brooks, here are the sides on his shelf,

The tops and backs are in the drying room

And he’s preparing the bracing on his bench.

Kevin’s cutting out neck blanks and sanding the bodies ready for dovetailing.

He’s clamped the head veneers onto these necks

And here are more bodies in the process of being sanded.

Upstairs in the spray room Andy’s getting ready to spray. I’ve just carved the necks and given the guitars a final sanding,

He’s just taken out a midi pickup, resprayed and polished this Manson electric.

Andy’s also working on resetting the neck angle on this Dobro

While I’ve been setting up this ornate banjo.

In our display room we’re currently working on two sets of plans for a new guitar shaped mandolin and an octave mandolin.

Back to those repairs: We glued the bridge back on and re-fretted this Gibson, and fixed a broken headstock on this Lowden,

This old Guild 12 string received a well deserved neck re-set and is now a good deal more comfortable to play!

Well that’s most of the repairs out of the way, with a bit of luck we’ll be able to concentrate on building Brooks next month!

This month’s links include two videos with a theme: Robbie starts us off with the seasonally apt
The Month of January

Next Phil Taylor takes us back to A Week in September inspired by a trip to Cornwall last year which coincided with him picking up his custom Lyn.

Paul Rogers sent us a link to this fine song of his

Come Over To Me played on his Tamar

Steve Moutarde sent us this link to his son Jake’s site, Steve’s been working on this animation of Jake’s fan fretted Tavy.

See you next month

20013

December 2013

Here are the latest four Brooks for Project Music in Exeter – front to back – a rosewood Taw,a cedar and mahogany Torridge, a rosewood OM and a walnut Tamar.

This might be a good opportunity to remind you of our take on the OM model for the American guitar enthusiasts out there, this one has rosewood back and sides with a sitka top along with the standard belly bridge and the traditional 640 mm scale.

This figured mahogany, sunburst topped Taw went up to Steve in Manchester.

We asked for a photo of course –

By the way – we’re not far off completing three guitars for Forsythe’s in Manchester.

Good to see our bog oak Taw made it into the top 20 guitars over £1000 in ‘Acoustic’!

We were also featured in a couple of books this year, the latest was ‘365 Guitars, Amps and Effects You Must Try’ by Dave Hunter which featured the Clyst.

We’ve just completed this Ian Anderson model for a customer in Italy.

We reset the neck, made a new bridge and repaired splits on this Fairbanks made in Boston, Massachusetts in the late 1800s.

Another Les Paul headstock repair completed, this one was tricky as someone had previously had a go at it

John, our American distributor at ‘Shoreline’, put up a couple of reviews of our guitars

A mahogany Torridge

A walnut Torridge

We’ll end the year in traditional style with these two carols beautifully arranged and played by Robbie.

Oh Little Town of Bethlehem

Sans Day Carol

We’d like to wish all of you who check out our news every month a very happy Christmas, winter solstice or whatever you celebrate the end of the old year by. We’ll see you in the New Year with the latest Brook news.

November 2013

It’s November and getting colder again out here hidden away in the wilds of the Westcountry.
It’s been a busy month with some interesting guitars to show for it.

Here’s another of Jack’s fine inlays of a Kestrel for Iain’s Teign,

Iain came down from Hampshire to pick it up earlier in the month.

This black beauty was ordered by Louise Loft,

As you can see by the fingerboard inlay.

Jack’s inlay of a tiger takes care of the Tamar headstock.

Louise is a singer songwriter from New Zealand livingin London

We took Louise up on Dartmoor one misty Saturday afternoona couple of weekends ago to take a few photos with the new guitar.

Thanks to Melissa for the photos Melissa Till Photography

A couple of years ago we made a nylon strung Lyn for Rosa Rebecka, she used it on her last album ‘Mrs Beautiful’s Guitar’.
The title track is about her great grandmother’s guitar which has been passed down through the family. The guitar is one of the very first Levin parlour guitars built in 1902. It had suffered from wear and tear through the years.
We had to rebuild it, re-set the neck, re-fret it and make up a new bridge.

Here’s a photo of the inside after some of the repair work!

Rosa Rebecka recently presented a concert at the Cygnet Theatre in Exeter introducing the newly restored Levin and guested on local radio to talking about and playing the guitar.

You can get a free download of the title track of her album here

John here came down from the Yorkshire Dales to collect his Torridge.
When he originally came down to place the order he was inspired by the snowdrops in the orchard for the theme of the inlays.

Here’s a close up of the headstock

And a top to tail shot of the guitar showing the fingerboard inlays,

He picked out this great set of figured Indian rosewood for the back and sides.

We shipped this short scale Torridge out to Marc in Australia.

It has very nice figured walnut back and sides

To help keep the average age of our customers on our newspages down a little
Marc sent us this photo of his son Claude in their backyard with the guitar!

Who’s this scruffy so and so picking his new guitar?

Oh – it me, with our new Weaver model!

The Weaver fits a small parlour size case, it has a standard 630 mm scale length and sits between the Creedy and the Clyst in size. Oh – unfortunately that’s bought the average age back up again!

Now for an extremely well executed project by Andy:

We’ve have some strange requests over the years but this is one of the more unusual ones – Rich Hamer, a fine young guitarist from South Devon, was having shoulder problems due to the depth his seven string Eastman jazz guitar. He asked us if we could make it narrower. Here’s a compilation of some of the photos we took of the job and the result.

A quick round up of some of the Brooks seen out and about this month,
clockwise from top left – Robbie, Colin Shaddick, Martin Bell and John Hegley with Colin.

Well I have to apologise for the length of this month’s news, there was rather a lot to fit in!

To round it all off –

Here’s a late afternoon Autumn photo taken a couple of days ago
of the view of Nymph Woods from the window of our workshop.

See you next month.

October 2013

You may remember the black Tavy we recently completed. Ben Maggs already has a standard Tavy but was particularly interested in one with a cutaway, We tweaked it for his favourite open tuning and he took it away with him!

Here’s Ben with his new guitar recording at Rockfield Studios, check Ben’s site for news on release dates, we’ll let you know as soon as we hear.

Julie Watson from Baltimore flew over to visit her mother in Wales
and came down to the workshop to see where her Torridge started life. She was so taken by the yew Taw we had for sale that we had to send it out to her!

This is the latest instrument for Mike Selley. As Mike’s M.S. progresses it’s getting more difficult and painful for him to play standard guitars so he asked us to build him a nylon strung tenor guitar.

We adapted Mike’s original ideas and came out with this Art Deco inspired instrument.

Keeping to a black and white theme, we built the entire instrument with ebony, maple and European spruce and decorated it with a suitable fingerboard inlay.

Mike came down to pick it up and got in touch the other day to tell us how much he’s
enjoying playing it, he’s had a great response from everyone who’s seen it. We’ll go into more depth about the building of this and other instruments we’ve made for Mike’s collection in the next Babbling Brook.

Paul and his wife run the beautiful Wensleydale Farmhouse as a B&B in North Yorkshire. Paul has named all the rooms after his favourite guitars, he told us he’d reserved Brook for the best room!

Paul!

Colin sent us these photos of the latest two guitars we sent up to Intersound.

Songwriter Paul Rogers came down from Wiltshire for a set-up on his Tamar.

We sent this mahogany Torridge out to Shoreline in the States.

Here’s TV’s latest offering – a live studio recording of some of his best songs with just his Taw and vocal.

It’s available through his website, at live gigs or you can listen and download it through Bandcamp
Acoustic Sessions Volume 1

Now for a couple of videos:

Here’s Donald Simone in Dubai showing that his Lyn can cope with the high temperatures

Donald Simone

Every Time I See You

And Symon Paul with his tale of the Wheal Eliza Mine showing his Clyst can cope with some inclement Exmoor weather!

Wheal Eliza Mine

September 2013

Phil Taylor is a regular YouTube contributor with his Torridge, he came down from Oldham to pick up his new Lyn,

Phil went for a cutaway this time with a sound-port, we found a particularly fine set of figured mahogany with snakewood binding,

A tasteful simple abalone inlay on the 12th fret

And snakewood Waverly tuners to set off the slotted headstock.

Carol came down from the Midlands for her new Little Silver, she wanted a small guitar she could travel with and sent us this photo from the Cornish coast!

Here’s the stunning English walnut back.

Next this month we have three guitars that have just gone out to Urs’ shop in Switzerland. Urs asks us to construct the guitars with non-tropical woods so first off to him was this yew Creedy,

With this beautiful yew back with grain which follows the body contour.

The next two to go were the Clyst and the Lyn,

Kew walnut with a walnut neck and yew with a maple laminated neck.

The three guitars had bog oak fingerboards, bridges and head veneers and were equipped with the exclusive Robson tuners.

Urs sent us these photos when they arrived,

From the rolling hills of Dartmoor to the dramatic backdrop of the Alps!

Tony was up from Bridport to pick up his cherry Torridge,

A little personal touch – his name inlaid on the 12th fret

And this Hipshot D-Tuner.

Now for some YouTube videos –

Pete’s playing his custom Tamar, Here are three excellent new recordings

Quiet Days

Conquistador

Sailor’s Farewell

We recently refretted Shaun Reeder’s Ibanez Les Paul Recording model, he sent us the link to his own composition here using the guitar

Antique

To round of this batch of videos, I’ve just come across this really nice version of Dylan’s ‘Buckets of Rain’ arranged by Dave Thorpe playing his Clyst.

Buckets of Rain

“My biggest fear is when I die my wife will sell my guitars for what I told her I paid for them” Ring any bells boys!

August 2013

For the first time in several years we’ve been enjoying a sunny August, It’s brought down a steady stream of visitors to the workshop. Andrew came down from Gloucestershire to pick up this fine Tamar, Here his is enjoying a moment with his new guitar accompanied by his son Rory!

We kept the decoration on this instrument quite understated. With Rio back and sides and the same for the rosette, binding and purfling,

Topping it off with a bound Rio head veneer, sporting Waverly tuners.

Al runs a bespoke carpentry firm and came to us to make him his first 12 string, A rosewood and sitka spruce Tavy,

He asked Jack to inlay this skull and crossbones on the headstock.

This beautiful bubinga Torridge had a red theme throughout; We used a mixture of red and black purfling

Along with bubinga for the rosette and the top border.

Colin works in a music shop so he knows his guitars, He came down a while back and ordered this rosewood and sitka Taw.

Julian came over from the Isle of Wight for a set-up on his Taw and Bovey.

Jim turned up with the very first Manson Traveller we made many years ago, We were pleased to see it was in immaculate condition and was still extremely comfortable to play.

Keith and Richard here can be seen gigging in North Devon with their Teign and Tamar respectively!

Don Brooklyn was so pleased with the guitar we made for him he took his stage name from his Brook Lyn! He sent us three of his latest songs
‘This is my Life’, ‘Come on Home in a While’ and ‘Craigbuie Hill’. Very good they are too!

Don Brooklyn

Mike Wilkins plays this Martin Simpson tune on his Torridge.

Bob’s Song

Lastly –
A little Summer madness with Ryan Hamilton playing his Taw with our favourites, Bert Miller and the Animal Folk

Don’t Eat Your Friends

See you next month with the latest about Mike Selley’s unique angular tenor guitar which has just come out of the spray room!

July 2013

With the hottest spell for many years it’s certainly been warm here in the workshop. Steve picked up his mahogany Little Silver; it puts Steve’s collection of Brooks into double figures!

Richard is only on his first – this bubinga Taw with a maple neck, but he’s already expressed interest in another!

Mike bought his Lyn from Oasis, he came down with it to collect the Gibson and Bell-Tone we’d repaired.

Earl also got his Taw from Oasis and came down to have a pick-guard fitted, we were happy to make one up for him.

Dave came over for a set up on this Manson we’d made many years ago,
it was one we’d built in the first couple of years of starting Brook Guitars, I’m glad to say after a good set up it was playing beautifully,

Here’s Dave showing off the Magpie’s rather spectacular Rio back.

I’ve previously mentioned Mike Selley’s latest instrument, here’s a batch of photos of the latest progress!

Ian Anderson uses the guitar we made for him in huge auditoriums all over the world.
Surely just as worthy of a photo though is Pat here with his replica of Ian’s guitar accompanied by his son Brandon on percussion when he was asked to play in a Las Vegas furnishing store!

Here’s James in the last stages of building his guitar
with us,
he chose to build a Lyn with a sequoia
top, a solid headstock and a pyramid bridge.

James came to us with the benefit of having very good hand-skills having joinery experience and has produced a superb instrument. He’s also a very fine guitarist – we hate him!!

We fitted a Benedetto pickup with discrete tone and volume controls and jack socket to this unusual Roger arch-top,

It was quite a tricky job to get all this in neatly and sit correctly but it worked very well indeed.

Paul Downing got in touch to tell us he’s put up a short video of his fretless Otter
bass in action

Bb Blues Improvisation

Robbie recorded this Scottish piece on his 12 fret bubinga Tavy

Mo Mhaili Beag Og

Robbie has offered to tab this out for the next of our issues of Babbling Brook

On a sadder note here’s a stunning composition written by Robbie as a tribute to Eric, a friend of his, who died recently.

Summer Rain

June 2013

We’ve a few guitars recently completed awaiting collection, hopefully we’ll be able to include the new owners in next month’s news!

Here’s the latest instrument for our old friend Steve Bennett, Steve’s had about ten guitars made by us over the years!

He wanted a vintage look to this all mahogany Little Silver, we used ‘Golden Age’ tuners on the slotted headstock.

This bubinga Taw with a maple laminated neck is waiting for Richard from South Wales.

Here’s an interesting monochrome cherry Tavy,

Dove inlays on the fingerboard

And ebony tuner buttons.

Next we thought we’d give you an idea of the variety of other things we’ve been working on recently: As I mentioned last month – we were replacing the injection moulded plastic bridges with appropriate ebony and rosewood replacements we’d made up – Here they are –

We’ve also had this rather worse for wear Gibson 160E in for a bridge repair.

These three photos are of a Japanese ‘Foto-Flame’ Fender Strat,
the finish had started to detach from the body and was split in a number of places, it’s being prepared for a solid black gloss finish.

We carried out some essential repair-work on this Bell-Tone and it’s now playing really sweetly again.

Here’s an interesting commission from another of our friends, Mike Selley,

This design is a combination of Mike’s original ideas for a nylon strung
tenor guitar and our own. We’re using maple and ebony to create a strong contrast for this unique asymmetrical, angular instrument.

From plan to inception!

Here’s the first showing of a new addition to our range, another parlour guitar.
It fills the small gap between the Clyst and the Creedy, It’ll have a 12
fret, 630mm scale length and will come with a perfectly fitting small parlour case.

Thanks to Bernard and Dale for their photos with their recently acquired Brooks to add the this month’s news.

Rich and his Ian Anderson guitar continue touring the cities of North America with The Madow Brothers, here he is with Dave outside the PNC Arena in Raleigh, NC

We’ve featured Ewan D.Rodgers before with his Lyn,

Here’s a video of him playing ‘East Virginia Blues’ from his last album
Tomorrow Might Be Monday’

East Virginia Blues

May 2013

Well – one or two days at last to remind us of summer weather! Alan came down from Derbyshire to pick up this little Creedy

With a pyramid bridge and 623mm scale length

And this pretty yew for the back and sides.

This rather special Torridge went up to Lizzie in Hampshire, lots of custom work on this one,

Pearl and ebony rosette, custom bridge,

English walnut back and sides, walnut laminated neck

And custom headstock shape with pearl inlay.

Simon from North Devon bought this Torridge we had in stock and is finding it ideal for his gigs.

Our mate Roger came down to pick up his Martin we’d been repairing and brought one of the first 12 strings we ever made down for a set up.

Here are some of the other repairs we’ve been working on recently: We reshaped the neck on this Brian May guitar, reset the neck on a 1929 Martin tenor,
He-fixed a broken headstock on a Gibson Flying V, refinished this Harmony Stratotone in the original colour – and – whatever were they thinking of when they came up with this plastic bridge for their ’60’s B25?? perhaps not Gibson’s brightest idea! We’re making up a replacement ebony bridge for it.

I’d like to introduce to you a new release I’ve very much enjoyed playing recently by Marcus Corbett, an extraordinary guitarist who’s recorded in India with two of India’s finest tabla players.

Here’s one of the many reviews: ‘ with his deep affinity with Indian classical music and his expertise in soulfully conveying its essence on the humble acoustic guitar. … where other guitar maestros have dipped their toes…. he’s taken the integration a stage further and his collaboration with tabla virtuosos Nitin Gaikwad and Sharanappa Guttaragi on this disc is both fiery and rewarding.’

We made his Tamar from rosewood he brought back from one of his many visits to the country.

Checkout video of Marcus here

Listen or buy on Bandcamp here

~~~~~~~~~~

Here’s a photo of Ben Maggs performing with his Tavy at the Stroud Fringe Festival

And check out this video from a show he headlined recently in Cirencester.

Man in The Moon

~~~~~~~~~~

Lastly – a sad farewell to the master guitarist and ethnomusicologist Bob Brozman

He always was and always will be an inspiration.

April 2013

We’re really pleased to present our latest issue of ‘Babbling Brook’

This issue has twenty pages and includes in-depth articles on the art of inlaying, Interviews with two superb guitarists – Steve Yates and Phil Bird. We also give advice on how to keep your Brook playing as well as when it left the workshop!

We’d like to thank Martin Bell and Robbie for all thetime and effort they put into getting Issue 2 together.

You can download it here or on our homepage

Babbling
Brook Issue 2

And now for the rest of the April news…….

Richard, one of earliest customers, came down to pick up his latest order, this time a trio of instruments with matching woods.

The three had finely figured mahogany back and sides,

With Adirondack spruce tops

And Jack cut these Celtic knot inlays for the two cutaway Lyns.

Rob came to see us to have a Fishman Infinity fitted in his cutaway Lyn,

here he is in the orchard with his two daughters Gwen and Jess.

David from South Wales picked up his cherry Tamar.

Trevor, a local singer with the Wren Trust, came over for his new baritone Tamar,

Coincidentally Rebecca, who also works with the Trust,

popped over with her nylon strung Torridge.

class=”RofMill”>We compared Rebecca and Trevor’s hand sizes in this photo and I guess it helps explain why ‘off the shelf’ guitars aren’t always the best choice for individual musicians!

We built this Tamar for Paul Keeton back in 2001,
here he is playing at the Victoria Club in Mexborough. He wrote to us saying “This guitar has to be one of the best things I have ever bought, 12 years of pure enjoyment. Many thanks for your craftsmanship and dedication to making fine guitars”. Thank you for your kind comments Paul!

We repaired Steve Tyler’s cittern. Steve’s band Woodwose play a mixture of medieval and original music using a range of traditional instruments.

See you next month!

March 2013

More floods brought the level of our little brook up again,

We’re looking forward to the real start of Spring.

Here’s Jack’s latest inlay of a Harris hawk on the headstock of a Taw,

It has a nicely figured Indian rosewood back

Along with a fine grained sitka top, the guitar is going for £2450, if anyone is tempted just get in touch!

James bought a Rosewood Teign from Soundpad.

He’s also spending some time in the workshop learning some guitar making skills.

Steve Broom traded his Gibson J45 for this walnut Lyn.

Bob came came over to collect his Okement which we made for him some years ago, he fancied giving it a face-lift and asked us to re-spray the top a dark aubergine colour.

Here are Chris and Matt Miles in Thunderbird Park in Victoria, Canada with their collection of Brooks.

Matt put together the short film on our home page when he was in college
and has since gone on to make a name for himself in the music world over in Canada and the States as a film maker!

They say imitation is the highest form of flattery, hmm…We were informed that there are these counterfeit Brooks being made in China.

Just a warning – although the name’s the same and the logo and website address are similar
– a quick glance should tell that these guitars are nothing whatsoever to do with us.

Melissa and I had another great weekend at the RMMGA annual meeting in
Chewton Mendip, here are just a few of her photos of the occasion:

A small display of authentic Brooks!

A wide range of guitars and playing styles,

Michael Watts playing my old Radiotone uke,

Adrian Lucas, John Buckley and Tom Doughty warming things up on a cold Sunday morning,

The inevitable raffle…..

I even found a quiet moment to have a play on my vintage Gretsch tenor guitar.

Keep up the playing and see you next month!

February 2013

The majority of this month’s guitars have gone to our shops – These three – a Taw, Torridge and Tamar are now at Ivor Mairants,

A rosewood Teign and cherry Little Silver were delivered to Guitar Classics,

Freddie from Oasis came down with Dave Smith to take another batch back up to the shop.

A mahogany Torridge went up to Manchester as our first order from Forsyths,

And this mahogany Teign and a red gum Tamar went to Intersound,

Here’s a close up of the rather spectacular red gum!

Robbie’s back on the same tree as in his previous photos

when he was collecting his yew baritone Tavy and the cherry Tamar! This time he’s here for his new 12 fret, long scale Tavy.

This beauty was built around a particularly fine set of figured bubinga back and sides,
we also used bubinga for the purfling and rosette. Robbie commissioned this one largely for DADGAD tuning.

Don’t get us wrong – We’re not subscribers to the old banjo jokes but six banjo repairs in a month!! Too much for the sanest of us and we love the things! We’ve also worked on two vintage Gibsons, a couple of old Martins, an Antoria jazz guitar and this sweet little Manson Traveller we made many years ago.

If anyone was tempted to buy a rather expensive magazine called ‘The Acoustic Guitar Bible’ recently you may have come across a very old article on our friend Roger’s guitar collection, two of Roger’s Brooks were included but his Lyn and Little Silver weren’t. If you weren’t aware of Davey Graham, Bert Jansch and John Martyn you might get the impression from the ‘Bible’ interviews that the three of them are still touring and recording, I fear I have to break the bad news – all three have unfortunately passed
on.

On a more positive note we had a good review of the first guitar we’ve made with bog oak back and sides in this month’s ‘Acoustic’. We sent this Taw out to Urs, our distributor in Switzerland, it sold within three minutes of arriving at the shop!

Out and about – here’s Colin Shaddick playing his Lyn with the excellent John Hegley.

Bye for now!

January 2013

Well so far this year we’ve had floods, snow and ice, Hopefully that’s the worst of the bad weather over with now! Andrew Mountain Pike is the concert and artist technician for Steinway so knows fine quality when he comes across it; here he is admiring his new Taw,

A few nice features on this one – ebony purfling and a pearl and ebony rosette

With another fine set of English yew.

John went to Ivor Mairants recently to buy a jazz guitar but came away instead with this beautiful walnut and cedar Torridge which took his fancy!

Mike from Texas bought a Taw and a Torridge from Shoreline, our
distributor in the States. Mike plays a lot of English folk guitar so he’s delighted to use two English guitars! Here he is playing a medley of Irish tunes
Star of the County Down/Carolan’s Medley

Some of our repair work this month included a comprehensive restoration of Dave’s vintage archtop,

Sorting out the loose braces and a making up a new bridge on this rather worse for wear Gibson

And reshaping the back of the neck on this Little Silver.

And now we’d like to introduce you to the weird and wonderful world of Bert Miller and the Animal Folk,

We first met Ryan a couple of years when he bought a Taw to use with the band.

The debut album is now out – check it out on here
Bert Miller and the Animal Folk

We love these guys, if you get a chance go and see them play live,

Last but not least – check out Ryan’s very fine solo album

We’d like to thank John Ackroyd across the globe in Oz for these black and white shots of his custom Okement.

John said he was cringing about the beer bottle photo
– I reassured him that for most of us beer is a helpful part of the music making process.

See you next month!

News 2012

guitars to get them to their owners before we take our winter break. Jamie, who’s at Exeter University, picked up his yew Taw.

Frank came up from South Devon for his rosewood Taw

And Shaun, a teacher at the local school, picked up his rosewood Tavy.

Here’s an unusual one for us – an electric. It’s Bob’s Honeytone Special. Bob designed it around the Taw,

It’s kitted out with a couple of Pete Biltoft’s very fine ‘Vintage Vibe’ Charlie Christian pickups,

With Steinburger gearless tuners and ‘six in a line’ headstock, it’s an eye-catcher with a great sound.

These two, a baritone rosewood Tavy and a mahogany Clyst, went up to Ivor Mairants earlier in the week

And this yew Torridge went off to the shop Switzerland which has already sold two of the guitars we sent out a couple of weeks ago!

We’d like to wish you Season’s Greetings and leave you with Robbie’s excellent version of Dave Wood’s sublime composition
May The Kindness

November 2012

Like the rest of Devon and Cornwall we’ve had our share of flooding this month and our little brook burst its banks several times and came up over the two wooden bridges. Luckily for us it happened out of working hours so we’ve still been able to get in to the workshop to bring you the November news –

Mike made the trip down from Cambridge to pick up his cherry Clyst

Here’s a photo Peter sent us from Sweden of his Lyn.

We took on a thorough restoration of Robin Dransfield’s 1930’s Martin.
This is the guitar he taught a young John Martyn his version of ‘Spencer the Rover’ when he was touring with his brother Barry.

Here’s Steve with the latest two guitars for Intersound,

A Clyst with Vietnamese rosewood and sequoia and a Lyn in golden walnut and sitka.

These are the first three guitars we’ve made for Urs Winkler’s shop in Switzerland,

Urs wanted all sustainable, non tropical woods for these three so we used
bog oak for the fingerboard, bridge and head veneer, we turned some bone for the position dots and used boxwood, stained black for the bridge pins.

The Taw was cherry, the Creedy was yew and the Lyn was the walnut from Kew Gardens.

Here are the three necks in the same woods to match the backs.

Jamie came up from Falmouth College for a two week work placement,
the first week we had him doing the dusty work – a lot of sanding and preparing parts but during the second week he built himself a cigar box guitar.

Here’s a close up, he’s got the makings of a fine craftsman and we wish him well in his career!

I don’t know if anyone remembers the old brochure we had before the days of the internet?
We happened to have one of the guitars pictured back here again – so, just for fun,
we decided to do a re-creation of one of the pages brought startlingly up to date!
Here’s the original with Andy and his daughter Zoë…

Here they are fifteen years on – some aging more gracefully than others!

And we’re pleased to introduce a new generation with Lewis, Zoë and Phil’s lad, to model our guitars for the younger customer!

Check out Phil Taylor’s version of Here, There and Everywhere

See you next month

October 2012

Our latest fan fretted Tavy is off to Paul on the Isle of Wight next week,

Hopefully we’ll have a picture of Paul next month with the guitar!

Colin picked up this Tavy for Intersound,

Here’s a close up of some particularly fine ziricote we chose for the back and sides.

This 015 Lyn will be winging its way off to Peter in Sweden in the next couple of days,

It’s the first time we’ve been asked to build a guitar with a zero fret!

This cherry Little Silver is now up at Guitar Classics in Battersea,

The top is a rather nice set of sitka

Here’s Rich Madow with his Ian Anderson parlour guitar in front of the theatre
in Virginia where he saw Ian Anderson using his to perform ‘Thick as a Brick’,

Rich’s guitar has been played on slightly smaller stages all across North America –
Rich told us in the last two weeks he’s played: Seattle, Washington, Portland, Oregon, Sioux Falls, South Dakota and his hometown of Baltimore, Maryland!

Back in the UK on a slightly smaller scale here’s a shot of Tim Wilkinson
playing his Torridge at the Oxjam Festival in Bury St. Edmunds.

Just a little reminder of our Brook get together back
in July, here are Michael Dunnigan and Johnny Ramsay, joined by the inimitable Dave Wood on slide, in the early hours of the morning playing Michael’s arrangement of
The Highland Faery Lullaby

And Martin Bell has just recorded his first video with his Okement,
it’s an arrangement of David Qualey’s
Santa Cruz

See you next month!

September 2012

We went up to the Acoustic Guitar Show at Olympia last weekend, Ivor Mairants had three
of our guitars on display including Jack’s Nouveau Taw which drew a lot of attention.

This month we’ll concentrate on a couple of really interesting guitars
–
Here’s Robin with his Tamar fan-fret,

It’s a 640mm/660mm scale length like our previous ones, this photo shows the bridge angle well.

We fitted a Fishman Infinity Blend system,

Here’s the yew back bookmatched on the white sapwood, it’s locally sourced, cut and dried here at the workshop.

Jack cut the inlay out of pearl – it’s the initials of Robin, his wife and children.

Some of you may remember from the news we’d found an unusual couple of small boards of English walnut back in October 2011, well here’s Leon who chose one of the sets from it for his long scale, heavily customised Tavy,

To continue the English woods theme we used bog oak for the fingerboard, head veneer and bridge,

Leon designed the rosette using this interesting elm burr veneer.

We can’t leave you this month without showing you the stunning back

With a close up of the mitred flamed sycamore bindings.

See you next month with the latest from our workshop!

August 2012

We haven’t had great weather this August but the sun was out when Bruno picked
up his Tavy, here he is along with a Taw he bought from Intersound last year ,

Here’s the fine sitka spruce top

With reclaimed figured mahogany back and sides

And his surname designed and inlaid by Jack on the twelfth fret.

Andy came up from Cornwall for this long scale rosewood Lyn.

Colin and Freddie from Oasis sent us this photo of the shop with
the latest Torridge, Taw and Tamar we’d made for them

And Miek and Roel send us this photo of their duo performing at a festival in Ghent in July with Roel’s Tamar.

Mike Selley’s old dulci-guitar came in for a change of strings and a new pick guard,

It gave us another chance to check out this early otter inlay.

We had a Brook get-together last month with sunshine, food, drink and the finest players we know –

Michael Dunnigan, Steve Yates, Robbie, Chris, Phil and, of course, our favourite player Dave Wood were amongst the musicians who played plenty of great music for us.

Wizz Jones turned up with Sandy on his way back from playing in Cornwall and played a set,
Thanks Wizz!

Thanks to all for turning up making it such an enjoyable weekend and to Tom for arranging a very fine PA for the occasion.

Thanks also to Melissa for these photos, the pasties, the cream teas (and of course playing uke with our band)!

——–

Here’s a tune Phil Taylor wrote after coming down to visit us –

WhiddonDown

And here’s the latest from Dev, an evocative tune by Isato Nakagawa.

Natsuhiboshi

July 2012

Rob came up from Cornwall last week to pick up his Teign.

Rob sourced this stunning ziricote himself,

Here’s a close up of the back.

Another nice feature is this Celtic dog inlay from Jack.

Kevin from Liverpool ordered this Tavy earlier in the year and sent us this photo when he received it earlier in the month.

Here’s an interesting request – Rob cut down this chestnut tree in his garden a couple of years ago,

He planked it up and brought it along to the workshop to see if we could use some of the timber to build a Creedy for him.

Here’s some of the wood – still too damp, but we cut it into a couple of sets
along with a few neck blanks and stored it until it was dry enough to use.

Here’s the result –

The neck, back and sides were all made from his chestnut, if anyone out there has a similar request just get in touch and we can discuss it!

We’ve given you the odd taster of this Taw over the last couple of months, we’d like to show you completed instrument,

Jack used an Alphonse Mucha painting and Art Nouveau design as inspiration as you can see from the headstock,

The inlay is repeated on the beautiful figured bubinga back,

With more bubinga and ebony laminated into the maple neck,

Same again for the rosette.

We gave Jack the first opportunity to play it as soon as we strung it up – needless to say it sounds as good as it looks!

Here are two video links to end the July news: firstly a fine version of Maggie Cameron by Dev Patel,

And here’s Paul Rogers at the Village Pump Festival in Wiltshire proving you don’t need to mic up when you’ve a Brook and no-one’s put fifty pence in the electricity meter!

Have a good Summer holiday!

June 2012

We’ve had a rainy June down here so far but it hasn’t stopped these
customers picking up their guitars:

Bill nipped over from Brighton to collect a cherry Tavy to match the baritone Tavy he ordered last year.

Michael came up from Cornwall for this classy sycamore Tavy,

Michael wanted us to make the guitar using home grown wood as far as possible,

Here’s the sycamore back with walnut, bindings, heel cap and centre strip

And bog oak for the fingerboard, bridge and head veneer, Andy turned position markers out of deer horn that Michael supplied.

Freddie and Colin came down to pick up the latest Lyn for Oasis in Ringwood.

Mark Waistell ordered a Taw from us back in 2010, it inspired him to start writing songs again,

A chance encounter led to producer Mark Tucker wanting to record his CD,
Mark has produced Show of Hands, Ralph McTell and Chris Wood amongst others!

‘Latecomer’ is the result of the collaboration, and very fine it is too! It’s been getting great reviews and the album launch in Exeter was a sell out. Some superb musicians lined up to help – Phil Beer, Gerry Conway, Barney Morse-Brown and Spencer Cozens. For more information check out Mark Waistell

Amongst the repairs this month we’ve been working on these: this old Giannini, this rather nice Ibanez Stephan Grossman model and this 1930’s Gibson in need of a fair bit of attention.

There was an hour long documentary about TV Smith, a regular of these pages, on BBC4 earlier this month and repeated throughout the week – ‘We Who Wait tells the story of the punk band The Adverts and the continuing career of their former frontman TV Smith, one of the most talented, literate and passionate – yet curiously overlooked – songwriters to emerge from London’s vibrant ’77 new wave scene.’

Good to see some clips of TV with his Taw.

May 2012

Keith bought his Teign from Soundpad in Barnstaple, he popped down and we fitted a Fishman Infinity system for him.

.

Mike ordered this lovely Rio Tavy 015 to complete a trio of similar spec guitars in his collection.

Phil came down with his Torridge to look around and have a K&K system fitted.

Tony came over from Somerset with the intention of ordering a parlour guitar but couldn’t resist the fan fretted Tavy that was reviewed last month.

We completed this cedar Little Silver

With figured walnut back and sides.

Dave Smith asked us to make up this flight case for his two Boveys,

A fine pair!

Now – a few more pictures of this rather special Taw that Jack’s been working on

Here’s the headstock after finishing and fretting

And a shot of the bridge being clamped and glued on, hopefully next month we’ll be able to show you the finished guitar!

Amongst the visitors this month were these two woodpeckers on the bird feeders.

Lastly a shot of the orchard with the workshop in the distance now the trees are beginning to show signs of life,

Looks like there should be a good crop of apples this year!

April 2012

‘Acoustic’ reviewed our yew fan fretted Tavy in this month’s issue, we were pleased to
see it received a full five stars in every category. To see the full review click here for page 1, page 2 and page3.

Chris Ayliffe added another Brook to his collection, our new OM model.

We managed to find a stunning matched set of koa for the top, back and sides,

An abalone border and rosette with a pyramid bridge sets off the top nicely!

Graham was next down this month for his Rio and Adirondack Taw, Graham made the drop top electric in the photo and we sprayed it for him recently,

It’s always difficult to get a good picture of these dark woods due to the
reflection so I can only really give you an idea how beautiful this back is.

Ben bought this Taw from Celtic Chords the same day it arrived at the shop!

John came down so we could fit a Fishman Infinity to his Tamar.

.

T.V’s just completed a six week European tour with the UK Subs,

In that time TV and his battle scarred Taw visited Holland, France, Germany, Poland, The Czech Republic, Austria, Slovakia, Slovenia, Italy and Switzerland.

Matt and Dave are displaying an array of Brooks used to record Robbie in a small church in Wiltshire.

The session went well, interspersed with the sound of thunder and a few other ambient additions! We’ll let you know when you can hear the results.

Last month we showed you the dital harp we were working on,
Here’s a video of Sarah Deere-Jones playing the restored instrument
Ground With Variations

We’ll leave you with Mike Lydiat and Mike Wild playing
Carolan’s Concerto

Oh – and an unashamed plug for Michael Hurley who I went to see in Bristol where he played one of his few UK dates of the last couple of years,

He told me he still uses his little Bovey!

March 2012

We’d like to start this month by introducing our new occasional magazine ‘Babbling Brook; written, edited and designed by fellow Brook owners Martin Bell and Rob Jessep. The idea is that it will give us the opportunity to go into the stories behind our rather brief monthly news updates in more detail and also give our customers a chance to have a say themselves;
we welcome articles, ideas and letters for future issues.

You can download the first issue on our homepage or here.

Now for the other news – Martin came down to add this twelve-string Creedy to his growing collection of Brooks,

The back and sides were this striking set of local cherry,

We used these new Golden Age tuners to keep the size of the headstock and weight down,

We kept the bindings and purfling simple and added a bit of sparkle with the abalone ring in the rosette.

Martin and Les brought their two Little Silver tenor guitars down with them as I’d not had a chance to photograph the instruments properly when they picked them up so here they are,

Les’ tenor is darkened flamed maple and cedar, and Martin’s is flamed maple
and European spruce, here’s a close up of Martin’s maple laminate neck with a nice little additional decoration on the heel cap.

You may remember last year we showed some pictures of us cutting up Bubinga and Sucipira we’d bought from a furniture maker in Somerset, here are the first guitars we’ve made from it – a Tamar and a Taw.

Several repairs this month – we reshaped the neck of this thirty year old Manson classical,

Carried out a neck re-set on this early ’90’s Manson Magpie

And started a major repair on this 1820’s harp lute

As you can see the previous repairs leave a little to be desired!

We’ll finish up with a sneak preview of a rather special guitar we’re working on
featuring Jack’s stunning inlay work, keep an eye out here for the finished guitar.

February 2012

Braving the bad weather Dave came down for his Bovey tenor guitar,

We found some spectacular figured mahogany for the back and sides.

Another rather special guitar this month was this Tavy for Steve from North Devon,

The abalone and ebony rosette represents a clock face.

Here’s a photo of the heel-cap inlay and the ebony bindings chosen to contrast the figured maple.

Now we’d like to introduce a new model – it seems a lot of people out there still want American style guitars so here’s our tribute to the Martin OM,

We’re following the American styling with a simple belly bridge, a squared off headstock shape and a 640mm scale length,

Freddie snapped it up for Oasis in Ringwood and it
was sold within a couple of days of it being in the shop!

Bruno came down with his Taw for his free first set-up and chose some woods for a new Tavy.

We had the pleasure of doing some repair work on the legendary Wizz Jones’ Epiphone Texan, Wizz has been performing regularly since the late ’50’s and has been mentioned by everyone from Clapton and Keith Richards to John Renbourn and Ralph McTell as an early influence.

We re-finished the back of the neck

And the old Texan’s back on the road (along with the old Croydon lad!)

Another repair this month was Thierry’s Tasmanian blackwood Taw which had received rather a nasty break!

When the neck came off part of the rosette pulled off with the end of the fingerboard.

We got it all back together, playing as well as before!

We sent this reclaimed mahogany Clyst and a cherry Little Silver to ‘Guitar Classics in Battersea,

And this Lyn up to Liz in Lincolnshire.

Gavin bought this 12 fret Torridge from Celtic Chords in Stonehaven and was kind enough to send us this photo.

Leon came down to order a Tavy
and took these photos –

This is one of the sets of walnut we cut up last year and have been looking forward to seeing it made into a guitar.

There’s something rather special about choosing the wood for your guitar yourself and seeing your name on it!

January 2012

Chris Woods came down for this rosewood baritone Tavy. Chris is a superb player and is often seen performing at the guitar shows, he also has a regular column in the Acoustic magazine.

Stewart picked up his customised sunburst Lyn,

Here’s a close up of the top showing the abalone border and rosette, and the pyramid bridge.

This is our second fan-fretted Tavy,

640mm / 660mm scale length, nice European spruce top,

And local yew back and sides. This one’s just gone up for review in ‘Acoustic’.

Two guitars on their way to Ivor Mairants – a rosewood sunburst Torridge and also a yew Torridge.

And two on their way to Guitar Classics – a Clyst in reclaimed mahogany and a Little Silver in cherry.

Chris Ayliffe popped in to see how his new all koa OM model was getting on.

Here are a couple of very nice pictures we received from Ewan D. Rodgers

Ewan’s originally from Yorkshire, currently living and playing in Brighton. Check out his website here

Stuart picked up his lute guitar, we had to glue the bridge back on and repair the top.

Two more fine videos from Robbie this month Cranborne Chase played on his Tamar And A Sunday Morning in January using his Tavy