Larrivee Guitars

A Larrivee guitar is a guitar every musician can trust. The Larrivee Guitar company mission focuses on a musician's needs which are the production of truly fine sound and playing capability whether the guitar is priced for beginners or highly skilled professionals. The price of a Larrivee guitar will vary based on the needs of the musician - ranging form casual to custom orders for professionals.

Every Larrivee acoustic guitar is hand-made, in both the California and Vancouver plants, because John Larrivee cares greatly about his product and cares just as greatly about the musicians who play his guitars. For over 50 years, John and his family work hands-on, bringing every one of their guitars to life with their own skilled hands and with assistance from other specialists in the field. Regardless of selling price, the same loving care is given to each instrument throughout the life of the guitar before, during, and forever after the building phase.

Since the first guitar was produced, every Larrivee guitar has had a label pasted internally backboard before the guitar being glued together. Each label bears the guitar's name, the last two digits of the year when it was built, where it was built, and ever since 1970, John Larrivee has put his signature on the labels. Larrivee's name was misspelled on the first set of labels, so these specific guitars are now infamous collector's items.

The Larrivee company provides an online tour which gives plenty of interesting and detailed insight into their guitar production methods and everyone is invited to take a personal tour as well. You can just tell that John Larrivee must be a very honest person that has a lot of integrity because he is happy to share photographs of the workplace, the workers, the different production phases and to describe how each style of guitar is produced at both of his plants. One of several photos shows two family members cutting down the "Quilted Mahogany" wood requested for a particular set of guitars.

Climate control, different varieties of wood, (each guitar is not made from the same piece of wood), albalone and herring bone inlays painstakingly placed in the appropriate places, the processes of steaming, bending, shaping, gluing, sanding, buffing and painting the wood all ultimately contribute to the final look and sound. How the neck is dovetailed and joined to the guitar, how the frets are inlaid, how the strings are attached, how the final product is shipped, etc., are important to John Larrivee. And these are only a few of the details considered by this thoughtful instrument maker who has made guitar-making his lifelong passion, ensuring that he provides the best product available for musicians.

It takes one person approximately 3 hours to string a guitar and approximately 12 guitars are strung per day. Over time, all musicians and collectors are ecstatic and quite lucky if they own more than one Larrivee guitars. Moreover, audiences who hear them being played are very fortunate too!