How did Luthier Wood come to be?

How did Luthier Wood come to be? – A interview with John Ambler on the history of the business, by Millie Dearing.

The first guitar John ever received was at eight-years-old and it was a terrible acoustic thing that was way too big. The strings were miles away from the neck and it was next to impossible to play. He muddled through for a couple of months with the guitar, having a wrestling match with the strings. When you first learn to play, your fingers get sore from pressing the strings, but this was extra impossible for John. He was sent over to his guitar teacher, who agreed he was going to struggle to learn to play anything on it, but he kept going for a couple of months.4de

John’s parents realised after this, that it was not just a phase he would lose interest in, and his dad took him over to Sheffield to buy a better guitar. It was the first time John had ever stepped foot into a guitar shop, the smell of the aged wood and hint of sweetness from the lacquer lingered in the air. He looked around at the amazing instruments hung on the walls, ones that he had seen rock stars play on TV.

He was hooked.

A gloss black guitar caught his eye, one that was built the same year he was born. It was a Gibson Melody Maker, and he picked it out there and then. His dad bought it for him and John was over the moon with it. It was his prized possession, and he still has it to this day.

“I first started with woodworking when I got a job for my dad at 18-years-old, he’s got a business called ChurchWood Design which makes high end handmade custom kitchens and fine furniture,” John Ambler, 40, says. “I started working as a cabinet maker for him and very quickly took like a duck to water.” John was 22 when he first started making guitars. “As soon as I cut my teeth with making furniture and kitchens, I very quickly got the idea that I wanted to start making my own guitars,” he says. “I just started experimenting, trying to figure out how to do it myself because I have always had a very specific artistic style of my own.”

It took John a couple of years to finish a guitar he was completely happy with and proud of, because he had always been a bit of a perfectionist. 

“I was probably about 24 or 25 when I actually built my first guitar and finished it,” he says. “I was really happy with it and knew that if I walked into a guitar shop and saw that on the wall and played it, that I would be over the moon with it, so after that point, I started making a few more.

“Once I got that first one together and I was happy, it all sort of clicked into place and from that moment it was like a little explosion went off in my head of what I could do next, what designs new shapes, it blew the doors wide open for the creativity side of things.”

When plugging a guitar into an amplifier for the first time, you do not know if there is going to be an issue with the wiring or how it is going to sound. “That moment when you plug your first one in and strike a chord through the amplifier and you know there is nothing wrong, you know all the wiring is correct the strings are ringing out beautifully, it should come alive almost. It is fantastic,” John says. “Because I am so critical of myself, I refused to sell my guitars for quite a long time and I probably made 10 or 12. I was putting pictures online and I was getting a huge amount of interest back saying, ‘are these available, can I buy this’, but I kept putting people off.”

The first guitar John sold, he was not really at the stage where he was happy to be selling them, even though they were perfectly fine. “A friend of mine, his older brother, it was his birthday, and his parents wanted to get him something special, he says. “I had known his parents for a number of years, and they turned up at the workshop one day and asked if I would make a guitar for their eldest son and they looked at a few bits of wood and I finally gave in and said I would be happy to make him one.”

They had recorded a video of him opening the present and sent it to John.

“He was absolutely over the moon with it, he looked close to tears, and that’s the part of it that I enjoy even more than making the instrument in the first place, is seeing that enjoyment and excitement on the customers face, it never gets old, it is an absolutely fantastic feeling,” he says.

“When I was making furniture and kitchens no matter how much time and effort and how amazing it looked there is only so much excitement that the customer would show because at the end of the day kitchens aren’t all that exciting,” John says. “Whereas making a guitar for someone, an instrument someone has been dreaming about for years and years, that day when they walk through the door to the workshop and see it for the first time, they are completely over the moon every time.”

The demand for the guitars got very overwhelming, so John had a chat with his dad and asked if he could manage without him making furniture. “Luckily, he was happy to help me get started, he let me work out of his workshop, so I just had a little workbench in one corner of his workshop,” John says. “I had a little tiny showroom space in the same building, I got a proper website made and I started doing the guitar shows. 

“It snowballed from there, all the orders started coming in, I was taking orders for custom built instruments, and I very quickly got a full order book with about three years’ worth of work on it.”

It was in 2016 when John went full-time self-employed and started the guitar business, Ambler Custom Guitars. It specialises in high-end, custom-built guitars and bases. 

“The guitar making business was all going absolutely great and I kept getting people asking a lot of advice on how to build their own guitars and where to source woods, which was a problem I had been having,” he says. “Whenever I needed wood to make guitars with, I would go to a specialist timber supplier who would tell me something was suitable for making guitars with only to find out that it wasn’t, they weren’t a luthier, they didn’t know anything about guitar making.”

As john’s business was expanding, he was struggling to get a hold of properly seasoned, or properly cut timber. “I kept getting in touch with various timber suppliers and timber merchants that deal with exotic woods and rare woods and the amount of times they would ship it to me and it would be off,” he says. “Whenever I would put pictures of pieces of woods on my pages, I would always get a lot of people getting in touch saying where did you get that from, or will you sell me that piece? I have always had a very specific eye.”

John had built up a good collection of wood and had it stored carefully. At the time, he had about a three-year waiting list for the guitar business, with a lot of orders coming from America.

“Then Covid kicked off and everyone was in lockdown and during that period I lost about 50% of my order book because a lot of the guys who had placed orders, particularly in America, had lost their jobs,” he says. “So, I lost an awful lot of my order books and people needing their deposits back and that kind of thing because they didn’t know if they would be able to afford the instrument, so it was a very difficult time, and I was sat at home unable to work.

“It was during lockdown I had the idea of creating my second business Luthier Wood, with the aim of being able to supply woods for luthiers that have been selected and cut by luthiers to try and erase the issue I had been constantly running into.”

He got a website built and social media pages set up, but still had a huge amount of work to do with the guitar business. “I didn’t give the wood business my full attention for a little while, but I had it going in the background and just let it grow nice and naturally,” he says. “I still don’t really know why it kicked off as much as it did, but word seemed to get out and it became very busy and very popular, and we have had a fantastic load of customers.

“Whether the customer is a well renowned luthier themselves or someone having a go at making their very first instrument, it is always amazing to see people’s creations and their vision with that piece of wood.”

When people finish building their guitars, they often send John a photo. “It’s always absolutely fantastic to see the finished products and I seem to have a bit of a weird photographic memory with these bits of wood I cut, even if it has taken someone about three years to make, as soon as I see a finished guitar I know instantly that it’s a piece of wood I cut,” he says.

The business has gone from small and online only, to having a unit where they can accept customers through the door and run guitar building courses as well. They have continued to grow in strength and now cater to other wood craft types to become a destination for Wood Turners, Axe/Knife Makers and more.