Lowden Guitars
S-34 Koa & Sitka Spruce
Listed at Matchetts Music · Belfast, Northern Ireland
Tracked on Tonewood Atlas — view the full listing at Matchetts Music’s site.
Photos hot-linked from Matchetts Music’s site — never rehosted.
Specs
- Top
- Sitka Spruce
- Back / Sides
- Koa
- Neck
- Mahogany
- Fingerboard
- Ebony
- Body shape
- S
- Scale length
- 25.59"
- Nut width
- 1.77"
- Frets to body
- 14
- Strings
- 6
- Cutaway
- No
- Condition
- New
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.
Matchetts Music
Matchetts Music is a family-owned shop in central Belfast, ninety years old in 2026. Stanley Matchett opened the original storefront on Wellington Place in 1936; the building was lost during the Troubles in the 1970s, and the business was acquired in 1979 by Derek and Ann Crowther, whose son Neil and daughter Tamara now run it a few doors down on the same street. They sell the full breadth of musical instruments — guitars through drums through brass through pianos — but for boutique-acoustic players, the distinguishing feature is their Lowden room: Matchetts is Lowden's home-region authorized stockist, the closest dealer to where the guitars are built, with Original, 35, and 50 Series instruments typically on the floor.
