I have been a student of music my entire adult life. I have worked as a DJ for radio and nightclub, studied sound engineering, have worked as a music buyer for a wholesale recording distributor and have been a professional guitarist. The other passion in my life has been for woodworking. I have studied cabinetmaking at Minnesota State College Minneapolis Technical and have worked as a professional craftsman for over fourteen years. During that time my work has appeared on the TV show “Home Time†and in publications including Builder magazine, Better Homes and Gardens and Architectural Digest and on the cover of a Midwest Home and Gardens. Building guitars seemed to be the logical next step, so I furthered my education by enrolling at Minnesota State College Southeast Technical to study musical stringed instrument repair and construction.This seems to be what everything in my life has been pointing towards all along. My mother is an artist and my father is a retired science professor, and I think that right and left brain upbringing is very much needed in the building of a guitar. We luthiers pay a great deal of attention to what happens to the sound when small changes are made to an instrument. And it is also important that the guitar be an object of beauty. I take great care to find that colors complement each other or that the shape of inlays work with entire instrument.I think of myself as a traditionalist. The guitar is a complex system and it is important to look to the past to learn what has worked, and to build from that knowledge. I use many designs and materials and methods that have proven to be worthy. The dovetail neck/body joint, hot hide glue and scalloped X bracing are examples of traditional influence.In the last four years I have been showing my guitars around Minnesota and in Baltimore MD, Tacoma WA, Newport RI, Springfield MO and at the Healdsburg Guitar Festival in California. I will be bringing my guitars to the Miami Guitar Festival in April of 2008. I am also working with dealers in Minnesota, New Jersey and Arizona. For more information about my guitars, click on this link to my web site. www.reedeguitars.com
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