Lowden Guitars
S-50 Madagascar Rosewood and Adirondack Spruce with Bevel and Leaf Inlays Used (2023)
2023 · Listed at Down Home Guitars · Frankfort, IL
Tracked on Tonewood Atlas — view the full listing at Down Home Guitars’ site.
Photos hot-linked from Down Home Guitars’ site — never rehosted.
Specs
- Top
- Adirondack Spruce
- Back / Sides
- Madagascar Rosewood
- Neck
- Mahogany
- Fingerboard
- Ebony
- Body shape
- S
- Scale length
- 25.59"
- Nut width
- 1 3/4"
- Frets to body
- 14
- Strings
- 6
- Cutaway
- No
- Condition
- Preowned
- Year
- 2023
Lowden Guitars
Lowden Guitars are built in Downpatrick, County Down, Northern Ireland — the work of George Lowden, who turned professional in 1974 and has spent fifty years refining a voice unlike anything else in the acoustic world: shimmering, harmonically layered, with a long singing sustain. Much of that character traces to choices George arrived at early — his "dolphin" strut profiles and A-frame bracing, a five-piece neck, a soundbox designed from the physics up rather than after the American dreadnought — and the result is a guitar players recognise instantly. Lowden was fingerstyle shorthand long before Ed Sheeran carried one onto arena stages; Pierre Bensusan, Alex de Grassi, Richard Thompson, and Paul Brady are among those who've made a Lowden their own. Since 2004 it has been a family firm, with George's sons now in the workshop.
Down Home Guitars
Down Home Guitars has been a Frankfort, Illinois fixture since 2008 — set inside the historic Trolley Barn just southwest of Chicago, with a deliberately narrow focus on hand-built acoustic instruments. The shop carries Bourgeois, Collings, Huss & Dalton, Lowden, and Santa Cruz alongside George Lowden Master Series and Hinde, with new and used inventory rotating side by side. Owner Steve Haberichter has tied the shop deeply into the regional bluegrass community: the affiliated Frankfort Bluegrass Festival has won IBMA Event-of-the-Year recognition, and weekly jams Steve hosts at a nearby brewery keep musicians circulating through the doors. The Down Home Music School operates upstairs — more than three hundred lessons a week across six insulated lesson rooms — and a full repair shop covers everything from setups to neck resets. The retail floor, the school, and the festival presence together make the shop a regional anchor for acoustic musicians across the Chicago south suburbs.
