Crimson Guitars

Hi, I'm Ben Crowe, luthier-in-charge at Crimson Guitars, I'm proud to build truly custom guitars, basses and extended range instruments. I started out by trying to be a musician but quickly realised that I just was not up to making a living in that field, six years messing around with small repairs to string and woodwind instruments while formally studying music in South Africa and the UK set the dye and I went back to school learning how to build early stringed musical instruments. After two years building viola da gambas and instruments in the violin family I set up a small workshop in my garage building solid body guitars. Crimson Guitars was eventually born in 2005 and has moved from strength to strength ever since, via a few detours of course; marriage, two children and a few failed apprentices for starters.
Building instruments for such luminaries as Robert Fripp (King Crimson) and Charlie Jones (Goldfrapp) has honed my skills and the Crimson range has developed to encompass all facets of the modern guitar and bass. Everything I create is entirely built by hand, with just a few power tools and a lot of dust, I truly believe in pushing the boundaries with every process and can create custom pickups and even hardware, from 8 or 10 string tuning systems to ball bearing tremolo's! Over the last year I've started using the social media platforms to spread the word and throughout each working day I post photo's of every phase of every build, you can see each instrument grow from timber to tunes live or at weeks end through the Workshop Diary!