The Women Makers: Female Luthiers, Amp Builders, Pedal Builders - oh my!

A few years ago, Ellen (y’all know Ellen – they are frequently found in their natural habitat at the Fanny’s front desk, or seen shredding guitar regularly with country star Cam) whipped out their new axe, and shoved it forcibly into my hands. “Check it out,” they said, “this guitar was customized for me by a woman here in Tennessee — she makes everything out of salvaged material!” This gorgeous guitar was the work of Gwen Forrester (Dismal AX), who hand-builds guitars out of old barns, fences, and other structures, and honors the inherent beauty of time’s imperfection — keeping everything from nail holes to machine marks. As I played it, I was floored by Gwen’s vision of respecting tradition while making this instrument contemporary, futuristic, and yet rooted in the natural world.

Here’s the thing though. In addition to the beauty and skill of her work, Gwen was also the only female-identifying luthier I had ever heard of, and certainly the only one whose work I had experienced first hand.

A Changing Landscape… on stage

A lot of us in the music world are familiar with the recent Fender study that revealed that 50% of emerging guitarists identify as women. To us female working musicians, this comes as less of a surprise than to the average Joe (as someone who teaches lessons to children, 26 out of my 32 students identify as girls!), but it begs the question — what about the other areas of guitar culture? We know that revolutionizing our culture’s relationship to the guitar needs to include all areas of the culture. And at the heart of this revolution are the builders — the ones without whom there would be nothing to shred on.

We will have representation not just when we see more women and non-binary folx on stage, but when people of all genders on stage are using gear designed by a diverse and representative group — not just cis-gendered white men.

In a really great Youtube mini doc called “Where Are All The Women Pedal Builders?”, She Shreds founder Fabi Reyna says “When I look [at] the 30’s and even the 70’s, and that simply because women weren’t allowed to [professionally build gear], men were building communities around it, teaching one another, supporting one another, creating magazines, creating brands, it was exclusively men, for the only reason that it was culturally and socially accepted.”

Aisha Loe, of Loe Sounds “I go on forums a lot for my pedal building, and a lot of the chatter on there is really misogynist.” If this is what a world-class pedal builder experiences on a regular basis, we have a lot of work to do.

To change this, we must build community and make spaces where women feel supported enough to suck for long enough at building, that we get good. (T-shirt idea: “Let Women, and Not Just the Hot Ones, Suck At Stuff!)

And I think the first step, is to encourage all of us in the music world, to intentionally support the current makers. Those of us who teach should show our young students their work!

So as a starting point, here is a list of current Women Builders.

I’ll start with a disclaimer calling out my own internalized misogyny. I thought this list would be a lot shorter. This is by no means a complete, or even close to complete, list! I encourage everyone to continue with their own research!