MARTYN BOOTH GUITARS

This issue we head off to rural Suffolk and the workshop of Martyn Booth, whose range of high-spec handmade guitars has recently seen an exciting new addition…

Words David Mead Photography Joby Sessions

Owning a bespoke, hand-crafted guitar is in the sights of many players today – the concept of a pristine six-string rising Phoenix-like from a heap of sawdust and wood shavings is an intoxicating image. Deep in the Suffolk countryside, Martyn Booth’s workshop produces a modest number of instruments per year, each fashioned around Martyn’s classic MSG model that first saw the light of day during the 1980s through the portals of Yamaha. These days, though, every inch of the reborn model is fashioned by hand and, having had the chance to view the workmanship close up, we can tell you the quality is of an impeccable standard.

Martyn’s history with guitars began in 1975 when he was working for Norlin, who, in those days, was the UK distributor for Gibson guitars. “I’d been doing it as a hobby for 10 years before that,” he says, “Messing about with friends’ guitars. But really, for a living, I started in 1975.” After his tenure with Norlin, Martyn joined Yamaha – birthplace of the original MSG and also the AEX1500 archtop, which he co-designed with the jazz fingerstylist Martin Taylor.

At the dawn of the 1990s, Martyn went solo and opened the doors to his resource in Little Cornard, near Sudbury. Initially, he was repairing and customizing instruments, but a change was coming. “I decided that making guitars didn’t seem to be successful in terms of trying to make a living,” he tells us, “but I got so frustrated with the amount of repair work I used to get, that I decided to do something and use up the creative energy that was lurking there.

“In 2002, I really couldn’t resist it any more and decided I was going to relaunch some of my designs. I revamped what I originally had Yamaha making, but with a slightly new take.”

So, how do the new guitars vary from the original 1980s versions? “It’s a more refined design,” he says. “The Signature and the Classic are the two top-of-the-range models – the Signature is the tremolo model – and they’ve all got maple caps and often bound fingerboards and bound headstocks and inlays in the headstock. But there is no standard specification for a Classic or a Signature; you can have what you want and that’s reflected in the final price.”

With a broad range of specifications to choose between, what are the variables that customers can choose? “The first choice is do they want a tremolo or not? Then they choose their fingerboards, the shape and size of the neck, whether they have binding or not on the neck and the headstock. They choose the inlays that they want for the headstock, pickups, whether they have tone chambers or whether it’s hollowed… The specification sheet is huge. It takes two hours to go through, because there are so many options.”

It all sounds like it could be a little bewildering, but Martyn is able to put our minds at rest: “When customers are worried about the fact they don’t know whether they’re making the right choices, I always say they don’t have to worry, because I won’t let them make a wrong choice”

What sort of waiting period is there between ordering and receiving an instrument? “Ah, that can be a long time. I try to do it in six months, but I’d say, on average it gets closer to nine months.”

Martyn’s latest customer is Graham Coxon of Blur, who is in the process of having a guitar made, but on the day of our visit, Martyn had just finished work on a brand-new model called The Venetian and it represents a fairly radical – but perhaps widely anticipated – change of pace. “I’ve always said I would never make a single-cutaway guitar,” he smiles, “but I got asked so many times over the years that, in the end, I just thought, ‘How can I do this with integrity?’ Then I thought, ‘I’m going to see if there’s a way of doing it, so it’s still recognisably the Martyn Booth family’ – and, of course, the more I thought about it, the more I though, ‘Actually, this is easy…’ ”

The Venetian is a wonderful addition to Martyn’s hand-crafted stable of designs and the joy of realizing it is obvious in its creator. “I’m happy up to my eyes in sawdust and glue and just feeling it as I go.”