Who is Tom Sands?

Tom successfully graduated from the prestigious Glasgow School of Art, Scotland. His talents didn’t go unnoticed, and was quickly awarded the Q.E.S.T Scholarship Program for his dedication to craftsmanship.

After years of dedication to Industrial Design and Award-Winning Luxury Furniture, Tom set his sights on a new pursuit: Lutherie. Soon after, he apprenticed to Master Ervin Somogyi in Oakland, California, where his craft was truly honed by the Godfather of the Modern Acoustic Guitar.

Since spreading his wings and returning to Ripon, England, Tom has become known for his piano-like guitars, with notes that seem to ring forever. His design sensibilities lie in the subtle art of texture and tone, creating timeless guitars that don't adhere to trends or gimmicks.

His customers shout from the rooftops about their guitars and the experience that Tom creates throughout the build process. That experience combined with an energy to outwardly share his process and learnings, has led to Tom quickly becoming "one of the most in-demand luthiers in the world today”.

Interview:

Tell us, what sparked your passion?

I've always been fascinated by making things from wood. That comes from my Grandy Norm. We would do projects together, not just woodworking projects, but anything practical and that's how we'd spend our time together.

During my late teenage years, he passed on a lot of his woodworking tools and machinery to me, in what you might describe as a slightly irresponsible fashion.

The first woodworking machine he gave me was a really janky radial arm saw, which is a really aggressive tool - funnily enough, I still use it - but it's the kind of thing that could very quickly take your arm off.

At school, my best friend Simon wanted to build an electric bass for his design technology A level project. He had no woodworking chops at all and the design that he'd come up with was quite elaborate, so he enlisted my help in exchange for bass guitar lessons. Even though we never actually finished it, it got him his pass and won a prize, and I learned to play bass. We are still really good friends to this day! I found it recently and I would love to get it working.

That was the ignition point where I discovered the world of stringed instruments. And also the idea that you could make a guitar by hand and it wasn't just something that rolled off a production line.

Throughout university and my career as a furniture maker, I kept tinkering with my own projects including the first acoustic guitar I ever built. But, I reached a point where I felt creatively unsatisfied which is what led me to contact Ervin Somogyi and embark on this journey to pursue guitar making at the highest level. I’m also a perfectionist, so not doing something to the highest standard isn’t really an option.

Was there a specific moment that made you decide to make guitars, or was it a gradual process?

It was a gradual process, but there was a sense that something needed to change. I knew I wasn't satisfied and that a part of me was dormant. I had contacted quite a few creatives who worked with wood and visited them in their work spaces.

When I went to do my interview with Ervin I really felt that this was where I needed to be, this was what I needed to be doing.

I felt like I’d found myself. I felt like me again. I felt like this part of me that had just been asleep had reawakened.

What valuable lessons did you learn during your apprenticeship with Ervin?

The apprenticeship was intense and immersive. I was surrounded by highly motivated individuals striving for excellence. No cutting corners, no half measures. Everything was meticulous and was all about perfection and performance.

One of the biggest things I learned was the importance of patience and accepting that not everything is perfect the first time. If you have to do it 10 times to get it right, that's just how it is.

What is the most rewarding part of building custom guitars?

It's always quite difficult when you are building something for somebody. You have to get inside their psyche and you have to come up with a way of describing something non tangible, that makes sense to both of you. You have to have a shared vocabulary of what sound is and what sound means. There's a journey of discovery that you go on together to arrive at this notion of what it is that you're going to try and build.

It’s an interesting challenge.

But also quite often customers will come with a preconceived idea of what they want - what they think they want - but when you start peeling back the layers you actually realise that something else is probably going to work for them so much better.

And I get a kick out of that - making suggestions that they probably never thought of before.

It can be really rewarding at the end of the process, when we build a guitar that was not what they had originally envisaged as being their guitar, but by the end of it, it couldn’t have been anything else and you know it's the best guitar as a result.

Were there any challenges when you started your business, and how did they shape you?

Guitar making requires so many tools, jigs, fixtures…

There's so many components, and so many different bits and pieces that you need to make really good, high quality instruments.

When I moved back from California, I moved back to essentially an empty, clean slate of a space that I would build into my workshop.

I had absolutely no money, so I really had to think on my feet and be really creative when it came to making and getting the things that I needed to make the guitars. It was quite overwhelming to begin with and I took some time to process what I had learned and what I needed to do.

Once I did get started and actually put my apron back on and was in the workshop, every time I went to do a process, I invariably had to source a tool, make a jig, or come up with some way of holding the guitar in the way that I'd been accustomed to working before, even down to things like making sure I had the right light bulbs to cast the right type of light.

And that has continued in some way or another as the business has grown. Every day, we're figuring stuff out and new challenges present themselves all the time. I'm quite good at problem solving, thankfully!

What’s your vision for the future? Where is Tom Sands Guitars going next?

I'm always looking for ways to improve and how to get better, how to eke out every little drop of performance from the guitar.

But also how to provide the best experience that I can for my customers with regard to what it is they are paying me for and what they get at the end.

We are living in a time of dramatic technological change and advancement and there are some really interesting applications.

I think the challenge is how to use these technologies as tools to make better instruments, as opposed to using these tools to do things just because you can. I think a lot of the backlash to embracing new technologies is that they're used improperly.

In addition, anyone who follows along with our YouTube content will know how passionate I am about materials. We are focused on driving change in this realm, there are so many amazing alternative tonewoods out there!

How do you strike a balance between honouring traditional aspects and incorporating new techniques?

I think it comes down to the fundamental need for humans to create and make things with their hands. To take ideas from their heads, using tools and using their hands to create something tangible.

In the most basic form, that is the tradition.

As people spend more and more time in front of screens and more and more time in offices or at home, in front of a computer, working digitally and immersing themselves with technology, there is an overwhelming urge to make things by hand and to appreciate things made by hand and by humans - things that we can tangibly hold and touch and appreciate.

That's why I think technology certainly has its place, but it can never really replace human creativity.

How do you bring your personality into your guitars? Are there any signature touches or elements that make your guitars uniquely yours?

For me something is more than just one thing, it's the sum of its parts.

There are things you can point to and say, “Oh, Tom Sands does that”, but I would say that I am still working towards a kind of oneness, an aesthetic that is instantly recognisable - a holistic completeness to the instrument where it's more than just its parts and pieces.

How would you describe your guitars and what makes them different from other guitars on the market?

My focus has always been “material choice, colours and textures”. I let the materials say all the magic for me rather than doing all the decorative embellishments.

My guitars are becoming increasingly more simple or Minimalist.

I've really embraced material colours and textures, borrowing not from the guitar world, but from consumer design more broadly, furniture product design.

I take the work very seriously, but I don't take myself super seriously. I would hope that is what my guitars say, - this is a serious instrument that performs optimally, and will do everything you want it to do musically, but there is a kind of playfulness to it.