In this blog post i'll talk about O'Gorman Guitars and their founder, Brendan O'Gorman. How we met, what his guitars are like and how he started in this world of luthiery.
I was first introduced to Brendan O'Gorman at the 2019 Fingerstyle Collective Festival being held at the Exeter Pheonix. This festival features fingerstyle artists from all around the world. A veritable smorgasboard of acoustic talent. We went to support a brand sponsoer of the event 'Mayson Guitars' of which we're the biggest retailer in the UK.
When we setup our stand we noticed Brendan coming in with several guitars. I must say they jumped off the stand in an incredible fashion. You could see the quality from a mile away. At the quiet points of the festival we gravitated towards eachother and had some nice conversations about guitar building, woods, tension and asked Brendan how he got into this world.
Brendan studied in cabinet making and fine woodworking. Studying under David Savage in his prestigious Rowden Atelier Woodworking School in North Devon. After his studies he decided he wanted to build some electric guitars and basses. After building a few and coming to the realisation of how competative the market is he set himself the challenge of building a flat top acoustic guitar. The bug was well and truly locked in and there was no turning back.
Serveral years later and Brendan is still busy building incredible acoustic guitars in his Redruth, Cornwall based workshop. Set in an old engine house. Theres a towering chimney stack where they used to have kilns running, old manual petrol pumps, it's a culmination of various creators all working from this amazing space. Metalworkers, woodworkers, finishers, potters, jewlers, and of course Brendan!
After the Fingerstyle Collective Festival we planned to meet up again. First Walter and myself went to visit Brendan in his workshop. This was a lovely small workshop were we both fell in love with Brendans workbench, which he made himself whilst on his studies. We looked through his planned builds, his tooling, finishing room and after a good chat of course it was lunch time! Brendan later visited us too, we showed him the shop, what our plans we're for the future, our workshop and the rest is history.
We are now the exclusive UK retailer for O'Gorman Guitars.
His work speaks for itself. Each element is perfect, from the fretting to the finish and his unique combinations of woods and colour pallets. You can be assured you will get nothing but unique with O'Gorman. Not only are his guitars beautiful but they sound incredible! Each one sings in it's own way, it's extremely special to experience. With other small luthiers building to this standard charging almost double of Brendan's base price you can be sure to get an investment worthy instrument that you can pass down generation to generation. An heirloom that can be loved by all.
Everyone at WM has experienced his work one way or another. I've made everyone that works here have some time with an O'Gorman guitar. I want us all to understand why we want to support smaller luthiers and instrument makers and let's just say that was a dangerous move and now I think the entire team will be working off a new O'Gorman invoice!
With one more being commission for us this very moment and two in stock. Don't wait to long. He only builds around 6 a year and we may only get half of that. If you're interested in his work or even if you just want to experience what a small batch, handmade guitar sounds and feels like. Please come and visit us or Brendan and see for yourself. Although it may be dangerous, it will be an experiance that any guitar enthusiast will crave for.
Check out Brendan's work here: https://www.ogormanguitars.com/
See what we have in stock here: https://www.wmguitars.com/collections/ogorman-guitars
Thank you for reading.
Written By:
Ryan Havinga
