Ben Crowe, luthier-in-charge at Crimson Guitars, is proud to build truly custom guitars, basses and extended range instruments.  He started out by trying to be a musician but quickly realised that he just was not up to making a living in that field, six years messing around with small repairs to string and woodwind instruments while formally studying music in South Africa and the UK set the dye and he went back to school.  West Dean College is the foremost institution for learning how to build early stringed musical instruments and after two years building viola da gambas and instruments in the violin family Ben set up a small workshop in his garage building solid body guitars.  Crimson Guitars was eventually born in 2005 and has moved from strength to strength ever since, via a few detours of course; marriage, two children and a few failed apprentices for starters.

Building instruments for such luminaries as Robert Fripp (King Crimson) and Charlie Jones (Goldfrapp) has honed his skills and the Crimson range has developed to encompass all facets of the modern guitar and bass.  Each instrument he creates is entirely built by hand, with just a few power tools and a lot of dust, he believes in pushing the boundaries with every process and can create custom pickups and even hardware, from 8 or 10 string tuning systems to ball bearing tremolo's!  Over the last year he has started using the new social media platforms to spread the word and throughout each working day he posts photo’s of every phase of every build, you can see each instrument grow from timber to tunes live or at weeks end through the Workshop Diary!

"Establish the possible and move gradually towards the impossible"  -  Robert Fripp