Although my formal training is in mechanical engineering, I’ve been designing and building things since childhood. Growing up on the coast of Maine, my first love was boats. Most of my summer jobs as a teenager were spent working in local boatyards or building small rowboats for friends and neighbors.

I didn’t start playing guitar until high school. My father had an old Gibson archtop that became a great source of fascination for me, I knew that someday I wanted to build guitars of my own.

After college, I joined a luxury yacht builder near my hometown, where I spent five years participating in every phase of construction - from hull infusion and composite fabrication to fine finish joinery. In addition to gaining extensive experience with modern composite construction, I was moonlighting as a guitar maker, building hollow-body electric archtop guitars inspired by that old Gibson my father had. That business, Painter Archtops, was represented in the United States by Wolfe Guitars and in the United Kingdom by Fould’s Music, in addition to direct sales.

After several years, I stepped away from the business to pursue another venture, but I never completely stopped building guitars—or thinking about guitar design.

The guitars you see today are the culmination of decades of continued experimentation and refinement, combining traditional lutherie with modern engineering and composite construction. My goal is to build instruments that are more responsive, more serviceable, and more inspiring to play.