I make acoustic guitars and other instruments, and I do repairs on everything that has strings and is smaller than a piano.
I live with my family in the town of Arendal on the south coast of Norway. I also work part time as a librarian in the local, newly built library. Occasionally I am exposing my face (see above) in the information counter, and the rest of the time I am doing mysterious things that only us librarians know of. There are more versions of my face: With sunglasses, on a more formal occasion, by one of our Norwegian fjords, or simply coming up from a hole in the earth. And, as a Norwegian Standard Man, I strongly feel that a standard home page is uncomplete without a picture of the authors standard dog, which, by the way, almost always belongs to the race Golden retriever or as close as it gets without a pedigree.
Over to the rock-hard serious business! You can see an example of my work to the right above, and there will be plenty of others. You may think: "Why is he doing such a thing? Soon he'll be in his fifties, there must be easier ways to make money?" The answer is indeed: "Yes". If you're interested, you can have the whole story (with lots of links to other superb websites), simply by clicking here, but do not read it if you tend to get bored by long stories, because that's exactly what it is! For your convenience I have also put up a special link page! Here you'll find all the links in the text and more, to sites with instruments, musicians, dealers, guitarmakers etc., etc.
On your left here you can see that not only do I make steel-string guitars, but classical as well. Once I used to make banjos, hence the unofficial name of my firm: "BanjoCompaniet", as suggested by the logo on the headstock: "BC" in abalone and mother-of-pearl. I think it is rather nice, so I stick to it. Classical guitars do not have this logo.
I have made other instruments as well, like an acoustic bass, 12-string guitars, dobros, as you see below to the right, and even the dulcimer-like Norwegian folk instrument "langeleik".
And last year I made a couple of electrics for my own use. If you'd like a more thorough look at my work, I have put up several thumbnail galleries:
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Steelstrings #1 - #10
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Steelstrings #11-...
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Classical guitars
- Other instruments
- Repair work
Prices and design
The price of a fairly modestly decorated steelstring or classical guitar is NOK 12.000. This includes: Florentine cutaway, abalone soundhole ring, "diamonds & lozenges" inlays in fingerboard, gigbag and for Norwegian citizens, VAT.
Price without cutaway is NOK 1.000 less. If you want me to build in a transducer, this will add NOK 2-3.000 to the price. I'll be happy to do custom work for you at an individually calculated price. I can custom build just about any size or form without greater price add-ons. My production is small and very flexible, and it does not depend on larger machinery and production series. For other instruments than guitars, I have other prices, please inquire! There is a separate page where I go more deeply into building details and woods, click here.
I promise to keep these pages ...
If something happens (hopefully not every day), I will keep you informed on my latest news-page. These sides are constructed in a very non-sophisticated way by the help of the HTML-editor Arachnophilia. It is freeware, the only thing the author, Paul Lutus wants from us, is that we (yes, you too!) stop whining for a week or two. I give my full support to this humble wish! For the photos and graphics, I use Paint Shop Pro, for the photo galleries I use Power Nailer (a bit tricky, maybe I didn't study it enough), and for the transfer of files I use WS-FTP Pro. Thank you for your patience so far!
LUTHIER Audun Hofseth
Fjellveien 27, N-4838 Arendal, NORWAY
Tel. +47 90842337 - Postgiro: 0540.0639576
E-mail: [email protected]
Copyright Audun Hofseth, 1999 - www.hofseth.biz
