2019 Bashkin SJ, Indian Bay Laurel/Carpathian Spruce

Bashkin Guitars come out of Fort Collins, Colorado — a one-builder shop founded by Michael Bashkin in 1998. Michael's path to lutherie ran through tropical forestry: graduate work at Colorado State, post-graduate research at Duke, and time teaching forest ecology in Belize before he turned fully to guitars. That science background runs through the work — he reads wood the way few builders do, and the voicing reflects it. He trained under Ervin Somogyi and Harry Fleishman, two of the most influential figures in modern American boutique acoustic guitar making, and his four core models — OM, JM, SJ, and OO — carry that lineage forward in his own hand. The build queue is measured in years. He also hosts Luthier on Luthier, a long-form podcast on the craft itself.