Craig Sullivan

Craig Sullivan
Stetson Guitars

I bought my first guitar when I was ten years old. By saving the quarters I earned from shoveling sidewalks and mowing lawns I was able to mail order a $12.95 Silvertone guitar from the Sears & Roebucks catalog. The wait was intolerable. Two years later (or was it two weeks?) the box finally arrived. The love affair has never ended.

In the early seventies the bug to build my own guitar bit me hard. With very little information available at the time, I struggled to build first one and then another — each build teaching me something new. As the building progressed so too did my skills at first simple and then complex repairs.

Today, I have chosen to spend my time building primarily guitars and ukuleles, with an occasional banjo. Each instrument is almost always unique in terms of wood choices and ornamentation and built one at a time with careful attention to every detail. Even before the first piece of wood is selected, it’s important to know what the buyer’s playing style is, their skill level, and what their expectations are of the guitar being made especially for them.

My standard repertoire of instruments includes:

Classical
Steel string

Dreadnought
OM
Jumbo
Archtop

Ukulele

Soprano
Concert
Tenor

Five-string banjo

I know that having an instrument built especially for you is an exciting event. As a builder, it’s always exciting for me as well. Handing over a completed instrument to its new owner is a big part of the reward for all my painstaking effort. Because “getting there is half the fun,” I will keep you involved from the beginning with progress reports and pictures.