New youtube footage of Mike Dunnigan playing wedge-body Pavilion http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxjqaytJAyo&feature=channel

I'll be showing my latest offerings at the Cheltenham Guitar Show on September 13th-14th http://www.guitar-show.com/ . I will have a cutaway Arbour in local and reclaim woods and a wedge body Pavilion in bearclaw sitka spruce and cocobolo, among others. There will be a cornucopia of great British luthiers there and it should be a great weekend, as it was last year.

I will be exhibiting at the Newport in Miami guitar show on April 11th - 13th. I'll be showing a Pavilion featuring the new bolt-on adjustable neck and two-part lacquer finish. I'll also have a Rufus guitar built out of eco-friendly woods: the soundboard is made from a Douglas fir door from 1930 and the other woods are locally grown English timbers: yew back and sides, walnut neck, laburnum fingerboard and head facing, and holly bridge.

Come and say hello if you're visiting the show.

http://www.newportguitarfestivalmiamibeach.com/

I play with an instrumental acoustic guitar trio, The Pavillionaires. All three members play Lucas guitars - two Pavilions (of course!) and a Laptop. We have just released our first CD entitled Acoustic Playground. As well as being a nice piece of work it's also a great showcase for the guitars. You can buy it from CD Baby or directly from The Pavillionaires via our myspace. I have a four-track sample CD taken from this which is available free of charge if you send me your address.

I'll be exhibiting at the Cheltenham Guitar Show on 8th and 9th September http://www.guitar-show.com/ Stop and say hello if you're there.

I have set up a myspace site http://www.myspace.com/ajlucasluthier   where you can see and hear clips of Lucas guitars being played.

The Rufus guitar is finished and now living in Mexico. It was a great success with its 12 fret neck and short scale (630mm) and has a lovely sparkly top end. I like this body shape and will most likely use it for 14 fret versions. The cutaway works very well for access to the upper frets.

I've been building a lot of classical radial guitars lately. I'm currently experimenting with a variation on the bracing pattern and will be able to report on the results in a few weeks.

In the workshop at the moment I have an old Italian-made Eko Rancher, a cheap plywood dreadnought made in the late 60s/early 70s and built like a tank. I'm making a new soundboard for this guitar and am intrigued as to how it will sound with a high quality top on a thrown together plywood body.

Phil Daniels with his new Rufus guitar

I've begun work on the 12-fret Arbour cutaway. With the top being redwood, the customer has christened this guitar 'Rufus' and I'm considering that as the model name. Although based on the Arbour shape, the body has a lower waist because of the lower bridge position. The back and sides are figured Tasmanian blackwood - one of my favourites. The neck is from a bookshelf which formerly resided in Lincoln Central Library. It very straight grained and has a nice ring when tapped.

I've completed a radial classical with 640mm scale length for a customer with smaller hands, and I have to say it works as well with this scale as the more usual 660mm

I had a table at the Stamford Guitar Festival on the second weekend in June. They have an exhibition room co-ordinated by John Montague, who does a great job. Next to my table was Diamond Bottlenecks, who make bottleneck slides using lead crystal glass. They have some very interesting designs. I also met David Hodson, who builds very nice gypsy jazz guitars. The festival performers drop by, and my guitars were sampled by New York bluesman, Guy Davis, who played a very nice blues on my classical radial, and by Clive Carrol among others. On the Sunday there was some jamming going on in the exhibition gallery and I played my Hawaiian lap steel along with Guy Davis, Michael Roach and John Montague.

the wood for the Rufus guitar before work begins

Guy Davis plays the blues on a radial classical

I've just got back from a wonderful weekend at the annual UK meet up of the RMMGA acoustic guitar newsgroup at Hargate Hall near Buxton in Derbyshire. Around fifty of us spent two and a half days living, playing and eating together. I was guest luthier for the weekend and did a talk on my approach to lutherie. I took along several guitars and had a lot of interest from the participants. I also got to play with a few people in the evening performance sessions. One of the guitars I took was the new baritone Pavilion (right), which several people were smitten with. It was very interesting for me to hear my instruments played by so many people, each bringing out different aspects of their sound.

Billy Jenkins interview in August issue of Guitar magazine

Billy Jenkins, in the interview, says 'He (Peter Bennett) had this Lucas guitar. I went round his house and started playing it. It was so beautiful, I said "Let's make an album with this guitar"'

Billy Jenkins new CD

Billy Jenkins has released a new CD 'When the Crowds Have Gone' on the Babel label www.babellabel.co.uk. On it he plays an A.J.Lucas parlour guitar exclusively. See  www.billyjenkins.com

Billy shows off the guitar nicely, using it on all tracks apart from the acapella ones.

Guitarist review

British magazine Guitarist have published a review of one of my pavilion guitars in their December issue no.257.

Lucas Wheeler CD

Andy Wheeler and I have just completed our first CD of acoustic music entitled '13 Ways to play the Pavilion'. Virtually all the instruments used on the album were built by me and include Pavilion, Radial Classical, Radial Hawaiian, solid electric and semi-solid electric guitars and mandolin. This makes a great showcase for my instruments. If you're interested in a copy please contact me.

I'll  be posting some mp3s on the site shortly.