Local man crafts custom guitars in east Hamilton

A local man has been crafting custom guitars for the past ten years.

Brett Bailey is a luthier. “I’ve been building guitars for about ten years now. I went to school at the Canadian School of Lutherie in Toronto. They are no longer around.”

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When he was 13, he really wanted a Gibson Les Paul guitar and one day his dad surprised him with one.

“That core memory and that feeling is something that I want to pass on to others, and this is a way I can do that.”

So Bailey started Contriver Guitars, he has a shop in east Hamilton and it takes about 8 months to craft one of these instruments from scratch.

“Blood sweat tears, it’s all here.”

They range in price from about $3,000 to $7,000 Canadian.

“The design process is a big one, it’s a lot of math, drawing, coding to get the machine to do what I want it to do,” Bailey said.

He has sold about a dozen of his guitars and still keeps track of them all.

“So these are like my children, when they go out in the world I like to check up on them. It feels great to know that players are creating what they’re creating with my instruments.”

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