At Cole Clark Guitars we precision manufacture guitars to provide the optimum in sound quality and playability. The fact that we use modern technology should not be mistaken for a lack of respect for past methods. Acoustic guitar making remained relatively unchanged from the mid 1850’s Martin “X” braced design until now.

The original “X” was modified in the early 20th century to accommodate steel strings, and the “14 frets clear of the body” design to give greater fret access arrived just prior to 1930. From then, not much changed. There have been a few excursions into alternate materials, “space age” laminates, odd shapes etc., but mostly acoustic steel string guitars have been made the same way for a long time. Players agree that timber is the material that sounds best, and timber is our medium.

We combine the benefits of an integral neck heel with an accurately tuned face and back for exceptional clarity and sustain. The integral neck heel, while held in high esteem, has always been difficult to produce well, which is why most manufacturers opt for the more accessible but less efficient dovetail joint, screws or dowels, all of which are more at home in the furniture industry. Our ability to accurately make the integral neck heel enables us to manufacture with incredibly tight tolerances and this allows accurate assembly of our instruments.

The violin makers of history understood the necessity of tuning the vibrating plates of an instrument ( the top and the back ). We carve our tops and backs to achieve the best possible sound, using CNC router technology for extreme accuracy. The results are instruments which perform like no others.

Part of the design brief for Cole Clark Guitars was to make a better acoustic guitar. We have achieved this, with Patented methods which we also apply to other acoustic instruments such as lap steels.