🔒Music makers: These small Maine manufacturers now serve a global market

From an 1850s mill in Lewiston, Bourgeois Guitars owner Dana Bourgeois and his team of 20 employees produce nearly 400 steel-string acoustic guitars a year.

Each is custom built using “tonewoods” — species that lend the guitars a tonal quality — like mahogany, rosewood and spruce, some sourced from Maine’s forests and others from around the world.

“Mahogany has a woody, rich, sweet tone and rosewood has a more bell-like tone,” he says. “And there are lots of woods in-between.”

Known for his high-quality work, Bourgeois commands prices ranging from $7,000 to $30,000. Since opening in 1992, the business has experienced steady growth that lately attracted the attention of Eastman Music Co., a large instrument-manufacturer headquartered in Pomona, Calif.

Last October, Bourgeois finalized a partnership with Eastman that’s expected to expand Bourgeois’s production by creating lower-cost models that attract a bigger customer base. The initiative will draw on Eastman’s global manufacturing, sourcing and distribution capabilities.

The partnership comes, Bourgeois says, at a time when worldwide demand is booming. He already ships some of his guitars abroad, and foresees further potential in places like China.

Kick in the pants

“The Chinese musical instrumental market is a huge growth market,” he says. “Small companies like ours have a hard time exporting one or two instruments overseas. But Eastman distributes worldwide. They’ve already given us a good kick in the pants because they have a worldwide distribution network.”

That burgeoning demand is supporting a robust instrument-manufacturing sector in Maine, and it’s expected to reverberate into the foreseeable future.

Bourgeois maintains more of a factory model of production that supports mentorship, but Maine’s instrument makers are mostly one-person shops, perhaps with a part-time helper or apprentice. Although small, most sell well beyond Maine and have backlogs of orders.

As a livelihood, the profession works out well: the cost of materials might be several thousand dollars for instruments selling for as much as $30,000.

In some instances, Maine’s remote location can be tricky: Not everyone wants to travel to Maine to try out these hands-on products. But in general, makers find that word-of-mouth and dealerships generate national and even global sales. Indeed, these are products made to be heard, so when an instrument is used in performance, that often entices new buyers.

“The way this business works, it’s almost all word-of-mouth,” says Toby Rzepka, who makes classical guitars and violas da gamba in Portland. “People have heard my guitars. Or, say, a guitar teacher in a university program will recommend me to a student. It’s old-school marketing.”

Self-taught

Instrument makers expect the market to remain robust and even grow. They cite factors such as a worldwide love of classical and pop music and the emergence of genres such as world and Renaissance music.

“There are so many more classical guitar performances now than 50 years ago,” says Rzepka. “Same with early music.”

There’s also a growing number of institutional training programs. That helps feed the industry but also creates more competition, makers agree.

Institutional training was not the case at the beginning of older makers’ careers.

“I’m self-taught,” says Bourgeois, who built his first guitar in 1975 and began his career soon afterward. “When I started out, there were a couple of how-to books. These days, you can go to a guitar-making school. We’ve hired from all of the guitar schools.”

In the 1990s, John Slobod also started out learning on his own. Eventually he went to work for Bourgeois and then two other top luthiers, Julius Borges and Eric Schoenberg. He started Circa Guitars in South Portland in 2008. With almost zero advertising during his first years, his one-person shop now has a multi-year backlog.

“I showed some of the first guitars I built to well-known players who loved them and bought them,” he says. “They then started telling their friends.”

He averages 15 guitars per year, basing his patterns on designs produced by Martin & Co., a renowned manufacturer dating back a century. Slobod’s instruments average $12,000.

“People who spend significant amounts of money on guitars are pretty committed,” he explains. “They might have a collection of three, four, five hand-built guitars.”

"Customers generally have specific ideas for style and voicing.”

Most are direct sales, but he also has dealers in the U.S. and overseas.

“There’s a growing market in South Korea and China now, and Japan has always had a fanatical guitar market,” he says.

Eric Clapton effect

When Slobod started, most small builders were making Martin-inspired instruments, he says. Then other makers started producing their own designs.

“Initially, you’d see inelegant designs and not-good craftsmanship,” Slobod says. “That gradually changed. Now we’re in a full-blown renaissance of guitar artistry. People are pushing the envelope in design and technical aspects to get noticed.”

That works for Slobod, whose vintage style now stands out.

What’s driving the renaissance?

“Baby boomers,” he says. “They were interested in acoustic guitars when they were kids. They listened to the Beatles and Joni Mitchell.”

Slobod says acoustic music got reenergized by Eric Clapton’s 1992 record “Unplugged” and the 2000 movie “O Brother Where Art Thou?” Consumers are willing to pay more for good instruments.

“Some of my friends were expressing concern that, once the boomers die off, our industry is going to die,” he says. “I don’t believe that. There are so many young people playing acoustic instruments now. They can’t afford a $12,000 guitar. But they’ll keep the industry alive and, at some point, they’ll have money to buy a hand-built instrument.”

Exotic woods

Finding the right wood is integral to the business.

Rzepka uses woods like African blackwood, cocobolo and Brazilian or Indian rosewood to custom-make about 10 classical guitars per year, priced between $6,000 and $8,000, for customers around the U.S. His violas da gamba, a cello-like instrument harking back to the Renaissance, go for $8,500 to $12,500. A set of Brazilian rosewood sides and back costs him about $1,500.

“A fun part of the job is sourcing,” Rzepka says. “It’s like little treasure hunts. I get spruce from Switzerland, Italy and Germany; African blackwood from Mozambique; rosewood from Yucatan and South America. There are a lot of amazing Australian woods. Western red cedar is usually from the Pacific Northwest. It’s a global sourcing operation.”

The trick is finding the right piece of wood. Commodities like steel are consistent.

“But every species of wood is different,” he continues. “Even in one tree, there’s huge variety of quality.”

Sourcing is more difficult these days, due to international protections of endangered species.

“Brazilian rosewood is famously problematic now because it’s an endangered species,” he says.

Shaping sound

At Slobodkin Violins in Bangor, Nathan Slobodkin uses traditional woods like willow, maple and ebony.

Slobodkin runs a full-service business, including making and repairing violins, violas and cellos, rentals, and product lines. A Michigan native, he has more than 40 years in the field, including internships and employment at prestigious shops handling rare vintage violins. He builds on spec rather than commission and sells at his retail shop or through a dealer. His craft has less design flexibility; the instruments are based on models developed centuries ago.

He was recently building a cello, which takes about 200 hours. The wood costs about $1,000; the cello will go for $30,000.

“If I sell direct, I keep everything,” he says. “If I go through a dealer, commissions are usually about 20%. For my 200 hours, I’m doing pretty well.”

Slobodkin speaks to the sculptural quality of the craft and the maker’s ability to understand how shapes and materials work together to create excellent sounds.

“You’re paying for the interpretation of the wood and what will make it sound right,” Slobodkin says.” It comes down to experience and, to some degree, gut feeling.”

Being in Bangor has its pros and cons. It’s hard to get skilled help, and Slobodkin has stopped trying. Although training programs have proliferated for violin-making as they have for guitar-making, graduates generally want to be in a big city, where they can make a good living just doing repair, he says.

In terms of repairs and sales, “This is not a hot spot, especially for higher-end instruments. It’s not like you’re in New York and can go to 20 different makers. If someone comes up here, they pretty much have to have seen my instruments and know they want one.”

But rents are “ridiculously low compared to Boston,” he adds — less than $1,000 for his workshop, varnish room, stockrooms and retail shop.

“I just sent a viola to a guy who has a shop in Harlem,” he says. “He pays $10,000 a month for space that’s a little bigger than this room. The economics are very different.”

Like the guitar-makers, Slobodkin expects global demand for the violin family of instruments to remain steady and likely even surge, given the love of classical music around the world.

But it’s not about the market, makers agree. It’s about the music.

“The relationship between professional musicians and their instruments is in some ways closer than a married couple,” says Slobodkin. “They’re literally spending more time with their instruments than they are with their spouses, not to mention depending on it to make a living.”

Says Rzepka, “The better and more successful the player, the less they care about the branding and even the look of the guitar. They just want to sit down and play.”