Dennison Guitars: “Guitars Are Very Personal Things”

In our Luthier Interview Series we dive into the world of electric guitar craftsmanship with the experts who bring these instruments to life. This time we feature an interview with Matt Dennison from Dennison Guitars.

Dennison Guitars was founded in 2016 in the UK. According to their website, owner Matt specializes in electric and bass guitars of all shapes and styles, including exclusive extended-range instruments.

Read on to learn all about Dennison Guitars!

What first drew you to guitar building as a profession, and how does your personal experience as a guitarist influence your designs?

Ever since I got my first guitar, way back in 2003, I have been obsessed with custom-built guitars. I remember using the home computer just to browse through the ESP custom shop and hope I’d be able to afford one of those one day.

I have also always tinkered with my guitars to make them more unique to me; I still have that first guitar (a yamaha pacifica) but it has gone through several iterations based on the music I was using it for.

It was covered in stickers when I was a teenager in my pop-punk days, I then sprayed it matte-black and put an EMG-81 in the bridge for my metal band.

Now, as my band moved to playing 7-strings, I sprayed it seafoam green and turned it into a strat copy. Building guitars was the next logical step after tinkering with my own guitars as I wanted to create unique instruments with no real boundaries other than my own.

I am more of a metal/alternative guitarist and that is very much reflected in my designs.

I tend to build modern guitars and am always looking for new hardware/pickup designs. Really, anything interesting things to advance the guitar and create instruments that suit the user.

As a relatively young company founded in 2016, what unique perspective do you think Dennison Guitars brings to the guitar-making industry?

As someone who has played a lot of shows I believe I am able to create guitars that will stand up to the rigours of touring and turn heads at the same time.

Did you have any idol luthiers when you started out, and if so, which luthiers and why them?

As I mentioned before, the ESP custom shop had probably the first custom guitars that really blew my mind, mainly from looking at the paintwork on Kirk Hammett’s signature guitars.

But the luthier who made me want to build guitars was Carillion guitars. The inlay work and the attention to detail blew my mind and the fact that they were all done by hand also spoke a lot to me.

I always remember a message he wrote on one of his pictures of inlay work. He said something along the lines of, ‘if you don’t try doing something then you won’t get better at it’.

In a world of CNC-only guitar builders, that really pushed me to get better at every single aspect of my builds.

Can you walk us through your design process for creating a new guitar model? How do you balance traditional craftsmanship with modern innovations?

To be honest, my first concern is ‘does it look cool’? I want to make sure that the guitar looks the part before it plays the part.

I then look at fret access and comfort to make sure the guitar is comfortable and easy to play. In terms of balancing traditional craftsmanship with modern innovations, I build all of my guitars by hand and I look for the best aspects of traditional/vintage instruments and try to modernise them.

For me it’s like modern vs classic cars. Buying a modern car, you want it to be high performance with lots of features and ease of use. Classic cars, you don’t mind so much if it overheats after 50 miles, is smells and is hard to steer!

What are some of the most unusual or challenging custom requests you’ve received from clients?

Each of my builds is unique to the customers specs (or my own specs), so many have been fairly unusual. I have built a multiscale 8-string with a cycfi pickup which was actually 8 individual pickups for each string – which was super cool.

I also have an upcoming build which will be the most challenging one I’ve done. I went mad with the specs for it as it is a Lord Of The Rings themed-build. I’ll be filming the entire build process to upload to my YouTube channel!

Your models are called Alpha, Omega, Artemis and Perseus. How did you come up with these names and how do you go about designing the body shapes?

My first two designs were the Alpha and the Omega. They were basically named that as I was trying to think of names for the designs that could all fit to a theme.

I’m a big fan of Architects and had been listening to their song ‘Alpha Omega’ which inspired the theme I settled on.

The Artemis was named after I designed the body shape with a friend for a build he commissioned and he requested a moon inlay at the 12^th fret and Artemis is the Goddess of the moon.

Perseus is the demi-god who cut the head off Medusa and I landed on that name for my headless model when I was on holiday in Florence and saw the statue of Perseus holding the head. 

The Alpha and Omega shapes came very quickly, the Alpha is everything I like about Ibanez and  Blackmachine guitars combined with a few more comfort and design tweaks.

For the Omega, I wanted to do a Super Tele as I hadn’t really seen that before and as mentioned before the Artemis was designed with a friend who wanted an offset tele-type design.

The Perseus has been my most frustrating design as I redrew is several times, mainly because it just didn’t look right, but on the 3^rd time (and after adding some carves) it came out great.

How do you see the future of electric guitar design evolving, and what role do you hope Dennison Guitars will play in that future?

I certainly see ergonomics and playability playing a large role in the future of guitar design as well as striving for super unique finishes and instruments in general.

I hope that my work is and can be part of the guitars that are pushing the instrument forward.

As a UK-based luthier, how does the local music scene influence your work, if at all?

I currently play in a metal band called Deference and I also play session guitar for Mimi Barks, so the UK metal and alternative scene is very important to me both in a guitar-building and musician capacity.

I try to offer up-and-coming bands that I really like endorsement with me. I have also toured the UK and Europe extensively so I know what a guitar needs to be able to handle being on the road.

What types of music do you personally enjoy playing, and how does this inform your guitar designs?

As mentioned before I have a metal band, I also enjoy writing and recording emo/pop punk songs by myself as well as dabbling in Synthwave.

My guitar designs are fairly on the progressive/metal side and have been designed as such, hence the longer scale lengths, multiscale frets, 24 frets, stainless steel frets and high output pickups, which you will see on most of my builds.

However, I think my designs would also lend themselves to any genre of music with just a bit of tweaking.

Can you tell us about any upcoming projects or new models that FretboardFrenzy readers might be excited about?

I am super excited about the LOTR guitar I have coming up, I really went mad with the specs and the theme, getting inspiration from imagery from the film – so I cant wait to start that one!

As I said,  I will be doing a full build series of this on my YouTube channel where I’ll deep-dive into all aspects of the build.

How do you approach sustainability in your guitar-building process? Are there any eco-friendly practices you’ve implemented?

I only buy from reputable suppliers but I have also been looking at ways to use my offcuts rather than just stocking the wood burner.

The main problem is time, in that I want to make things from my offcuts but I just don’t have the time currently so my offcuts pile is rather large!

What have been some of your biggest challenges or failures in the guitar-building process, and what did you learn from them?

Honestly the biggest challenge for me personally is imposter syndrome. I have built guitars for the customer and, for whatever reason, they haven’t gelled with the instrument – that makes me feel like a fraud and the imposter syndrome really gets me down.

But then the guitar ends up with someone else who loves it so I just have to remind myself that guitars are very personal things.

I also make sure that I am aiming for perfection with every build without it being detrimental to my mental health.

How do you balance the business aspects of running Dennison Guitars with the hands-on craftsmanship?

I try to use modern technology to my advantage with the business, including social media. Having a phone with access to all of the things I need at all times is both a blessing and a curse.

I do get messages late at night but I try to remind myself that not everything has to be done instantly. 

As a boutique builder, how difficult is it to market your instruments in a niche that’s dominated by brands like Fender, Gibson and Ibanez?

It can be difficult with certain people as they know what they like and what they like is a Strat or a Les Paul.

People like familiarity and are sometimes scared to step out of their comfort zones. My instruments, however, are fully custom so you can get exactly what you want in most cases, which is the major appeal of a custom-built instrument.

The trick is trying to get people to realise what they want from a guitar and give them way more options than the big brands can offer and do it all better, too.

For aspiring luthiers what advice would you give to someone looking to start their own guitar-building business?

Be prepared to make lots and lots of mistakes, but always learn from them. It’s all about not making the same mistake twice.

Also learning the best way that YOU do something, It’s wise to watch how other luthiers approach a certain part of the build, but just bare in mind that that might not be the best way for you.