Week 1: Interview with Taran Guitars

I am now into my final year of University. For both semesters I am expected to research, design and craft a product which I will have total creative control over. For this first week I was not certain of what issue I was going to address: only that it would have something to do with guitar making as that is what I hope to do once I leave University.

In order to help me gain a better understanding of the problems that luthiers face I went out and interviewed Rory Dowling, owner of Taran Guitars. Rory was extremely helpful throughout the interview and gave me a lot of interesting insights that could generate great ideas. One of the most interesting things we discussed was the issue of describing the tone of a guitar. Rory tends to craft bespoke instruments and in order to aid this he talks to his customers face to face to get an idea of what sound and construction suits them. More than that he often gets them to play several different guitars (a process he was kind enough to demonstrate with me) and observes what suits them best; to him this is far more effective at discerning a customer’s needs than simply asking.

We spoke about many other issues luthiers face, including the structural issues that the sound hole causes, the use of nationality in advertising acoustic guitars, the use of traditional production methods against newer ones etc. All of these could inform fascinating projects in their own right but the issue of describing tone is the one that interests me the most. For now I will investigate this subject further by speaking to other guitar makers and doing further research online to find what people already have to say on this issue.