The website of UK-based guitar and mandolin builder Dave Gregory.
What I Do
- Acoustic guitars and basses
- Archtop guitars
- Classical guitars[including 8,10.and more strings]
- Electric guitars and basses
- All mandolin family instruments
- Most types of repair and restoration to worthwhile instruments of these types
What I Don’t Do
- Plywood bodies
- The guitar as canvas for inlay artistry
- Refinishes-except as a necessary part of repair and restoration
I have played guitar myself since my teenage years. This was partly prompted by meeting a guy at my first proper teenage party who was playing one he’d made himself. A couple of years on, I would go to London’s Denmark St. to gaze at all the expensive guitars I would love to be able to afford. The ones that really grabbed me were the amazing creations of Tony Zemaitis…. “Don’t touch that, mate, don’t even look at it!”…and all handbuilt in a South London shed, we were told.
I started Dave Gregory guitars and mandolins here in York in 1978. York has always had a thriving music scene, and there was a need for good quality instruments and a local repair service. The idea was simple: to build the very best instruments I could to musicians’ specification, and to take care of repairs in the locality. Thirty years on, this hasn’t changed much, except that the locality extends as far as New Mexico and New Zealand.
I have always built both traditional and more radical, modern instruments. Detailed knowledge of the classic designs from the past provides an excellent bedrock when one is called upon to design something entirely new. Much of this knowledge, and a keen awareness of potential weak spots, comes from repairing and restoring instruments. In this way, I find that the repair side of the business feeds naturally into the building.
The photos you will see here represent a small sample of my work. The selection is partly based on simple availability, and many of the instruments have given years of service, so are no longer pristine. Nicely aged spruce, though…Hopefully they give an idea of the range of my work, albeit incomplete. Sincere thanks to those customers who let me borrow their instruments for the photos.