Larrivee Guitars

Jean Larrivee fell in love with the guitar as a young boy growing up in Canada during the folk craze of the 1960s. He imagined a unique sound for an acoustic guitar and set out to create a handcrafted instrument that would produce that sound. The more guitars Jean created, the more demand he seemed to have to build more guitars. He soon discovered that creating that special sound or even recreating that sound was not as challenging as keeping up with the back log of requests. Jean built a new manufacturing plant in California and worked to tool the machines in a way that production would maintain the quality and craftsmanship his customers came to appreciate.
 

Grit Laskin grew up in Toronto and as a teen had his mind set on playing the guitar during the folk boom of the 1960s.  He performed, recorded and wrote music, some of which was recorded by the likes of Pete Seeger.  Along the way he found a few ways to adjust the guitar to suit him better and thus arrived at the idea of becoming a guitar builder.  He signed up as an apprentice with John Larrivee in the early days of Larrivee’s own pioneering career as a luthier.