George Lowden

Early life

George Lowden was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland in 1951.

Company

Lowden founded George Lowden Guitars in 1974.

In 1976 - 79 Lowden produced his first guitars with A-frame bracing and the dolphin voicing profiles were made in 1976 and in many ways have established the Lowden guitar’s sound.

The first Irish studio/workshop, in 6a High Street, Bangor employed 4 trainee guitar makers, Colin ‘Dusty’ Miller, Frank Kernaghan, Sam Irwin and Michael Hull. It produced approximately 100 guitars during this period, which can be identified by small blue rectangular labels.

Beginning in 1980, Lowden licensed manufacturing of his guitars to a small group of master luthiers in Japan, near Nagoya.

In 1985, as a result of the rise in interest for all electronic instruments in music, sales of acoustic instruments slumped worldwide and the owners of the Japanese factory decided to close it and move production of Lowden guitars to a larger factory where other brands were made. Lowden was concerned about this outcome, and decided to try setting up a new factory in Ireland. With little capital and through the help of an investor (David Jebb), he rented a building in Bangor, Co. Down and began to employ and train new craftsmen.

Change of ownership

The acoustic guitar market had begun to flourish again during the 1990s, but the company, significantly hampered by under-investment, had not been able to achieve its potential. In November 1998, keen to participate in a progressive plan to develop the business further, George Lowden, along with Steve McIlwrath and Alastair McIlveen set up a new holding company to buy a controlling interest in the Lowden Guitar Company. Lowden’s vision was, “...that the company should become as good as the guitars themselves…”

25th Anniversary

In November 1998, a visitor to the factory showed up guitar case in hand with the Lowden guitar serial No.1. The very first guitar Lowden designed and built. This was an excellent reminder of how far the Lowden Guitar had come. As a celebration of this long journey, Lowden designed the 25th anniversary limited edition model. “My aim with the design and build details was to make available in reasonable numbers, a guitar which was as close as possible to the guitars which I am only able to build personally for a very few players each year under my full name. I therefore included as many as I could of the construction, voicing and cosmetic details, found in my own guitars in this limited edition of 101 instruments.”

Millennium Twins

By this time, the community of Lowden enthusiasts had grown considerably. Players were attracted by Lowden’s tone and quality, and by the fact that they were not mass-produced. To fulfill requests for ‘special edition’ Lowdens, Lowden designed the Millennium Twins. “As a luthier, I find that designing a few ‘special’ guitars does stretch my creative abilities and I enjoy that challenge. I believe this does help to develop the art of guitar making in a much wider sense as well. I introduced the limited edition Millennium twins with their matching sets of figured walnut back and sides and adjacent sets of redwood tops sourced from trees, which had fallen naturally.”

In 2003, the License with the Lowden Guitar Co ended and production of Lowden guitars at the Newtownards factory ceased at the end of December 2003.

George Lowden Guitars Ltd.

Since 2004, Lowden guitars have been manufactured by a family-run company in Downpatrick, Co. Down.