ABOVE: Most of my builds, in no particular order. There are a few missing here, but I’m currently constructing numbers 50-54! I appreciate and celebrate a multitude of woods with my instruments, and often build household items from my excess beautiful scrap-woods.
BELOW: Exhibiting at the Rose Quarter Guitar Festival, December 14, 2022.
Colin Warling: Luthier
Welcome to my website, I’m a luthier and multi-musician originally from Los Angeles. I primarily design and create electric guitars, basses, and other less-available oddities while constantly testing the boundaries of industry specs. I frequently bend the rules of scale/string lengths, and body thickness/weight.
Prior to attending Roberto-Venn School of Luthierie in my early twenties, I constructed six instruments: two rudimentary electric-ukuleles, two electric-basses, and two electric guitars - steadily improving with each build. I’m in my forties now, and the instruments that I create are professional grade. Each is unique: I never build the same guitar twice. ShoutOut LA Nov. 2023 write-up
With a trade certificate in Luthierie, I returned to Los Angeles quickly landing a repairman job at the fabled Westwood Music, and working for the legendary Fred Walecki. Due to the economic recession of late 2008, my employment lasted less than a year. I found supplementary work briefly as the luthier for the Blueridge Pickin’ Parlor in Granada Hills (CA), and additionally as an apprentice to Luthier, Jim Ellsberry in Lomita (CA). There, I helped build production-level archtop guitars, as well as designing and constructing the jigs required by the various processes.
In March 2010, Roland Belloir, a French music-lover and entrepreneur hired me to help build-out and open an acoustic guitar shop in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles. Together, we opened The Fretted Frog in June of 2010 at the corner of Sunset Blvd. and Alvarado Street. I designed and constructed the repair service bench, a stage, lesson rooms, storage space, and several mobile guitar fixtures, thereafter employed as the luthier of the shop. In 2014, Roland and I closed and transported the entire shop and stock to a new location in Pasadena, together constructing the interior, opening the new location, and growing the stock to over 160 stringed instruments. During my eight years as the primary repairman for the Fretted Frog, I diagnosed and completed nearly eight-thousand ticketed repairs to both acoustic and electric stringed-instruments of all cultural variety, focusing my abilities as an inventor, and fabricator. These skills have contributed to the quality of the instruments that I continue to design and build. Additionally, G&G Quality Case Co. has supplied me with custom fitted cases that have complimented and added to the beauty and value of my builds!
In August of 2017, my partner, Amanda and I relocated to Portland, Oregon. Within six months, we opened a guitar shop in the Southeast called Taborella Music, offering handmade instruments by local luthiers, including my own. Just as things were beginning to flourish, the pandemic interminably labeled the business ‘nonessential,’ so with regret, we promptly closed the shop. Rather than ‘wait out’ the pandemic, I swiftly enrolled at Portland State University, graduating with a Bachelor’s of Science in History in spring 2022.
I currently work in Portland as the service manager and an apprentice technician for a company that builds, restores, and services pipe organs, Bond Organ Builders, Inc. The experience has already taken me through 50+ pipe organs needing tuning and repairs, and additionally allowed me to tune organs for both the Oregon Symphony as well as the Portland Baroque Orchestra.
I will likely continue to construct, and make available stringed instruments. I usually have a few in stock, a few in progress, and am constantly updating my website. Check the menu for available instruments, or just feel free to contact me! Thanks for visiting my page.
-Colin Warling