Gillander Guitars

Gillander Guitars is the one-person shop of Chad Gillander, a luthier and player who builds and repairs fretted instruments in Oneida, in upstate New York. He works to order — rather than a fixed catalog, each guitar is specified around its player, and Gillander frames the process as a relationship meant to outlast the sale. The stated goal is an instrument tailored to how someone actually plays: responsive and comfortable in the hands, and warm, articulate, and well balanced across its range. The building blends traditional methods with a set of modern refinements. Necks are reinforced with carbon rods on both sides of a dual-action truss rod and capped with a banjo-inspired headstock; many bodies carry the Manzer Wedge — a design credited to luthier Linda Manzer (herself on the Atlas), in which the body is shallower on the treble side so a larger guitar tilts back into the player and feels smaller than it is. Gillander voices forward-shifted, scalloped X-braced tops — often torrefied Adirondack — over ladder-braced backs, mixes dovetail and bolt-on neck joints, and builds a number of models with hide glue throughout. Some instruments include an adjustable tone port, a few with a sliding door, that a player can open for a little extra output on stage. Finishes range from polyester and nitrocellulose to hand-rubbed oil and thin French-polished shellac — the last chosen for the way its thinness lets the top resonate, and, Gillander notes, for being kinder to the builder's health than lacquer. The range is broad for a solo maker — 12-fret Concerts and 00 Grand Concerts, Orchestra and OM shapes, dreadnoughts, and the small-jumbo Model 1 — in woods that run from black walnut, cocobolo, and wenge to ziricote and pau ferro, with detailed inlay and appointment work to match. That decorative side shows in projects like the Four Diamonds Orchestra Model, a charity build with royal-blue opal inlay that raised $10,000 for a children's cancer charity at the 2025 Artisan Guitar Show. His guitars have been recorded and performed on by working musicians — among them fingerstyle and old-time players such as Kinloch Nelson and Bruce Molsky. Instruments are available directly from the shop and through Acoustic Music Works in Pittsburgh.