I'm Anthony and I run Glover Custom Guitars.
I am Belfast born, studied in Birmingham and settled just outside of Bristol. ​
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This little company is located in the historic market town of Chipping Sodbury, close to both Bristol and the Cotswolds.
My approach to building guitars is to work hard at doing the simple things well, let the natural charm of the materials to sit centre stage and allow the instrument to play and sound as good as it looks.
​In 2017 my son and I re-vamped a £15 Encore Strat that I had found in the corner of a shop. I didn't quite realise it at first, but a passion was born.
Ever since, I have been enthusiastically learning as much as I can about the building and maintenance of electric guitars. ​
My apprenticeship initially involved buying many used guitars, those guitars that had not always had the love they might have enjoyed!
I would work on them and learn how to fix, service or rebuild them. It was nice to be bringing them back to life​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​.
From there it was on to making guitars.
Left over flooring, worktop off cuts, wardrobes bound for the tip etc were all destined for reincarnation in the body of an electric guitar as I explored what I could do.
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This is the first guitar I made. The wood is left over marine ply from a flooring job. As a material it was a good weight, resonant and not too bad to work with! Tip: I reckon it is too expensive to be used in guitars and cheaper plywoods are not good enough quality 😆
Brave enough now to make cuts into fancier woods I explored the world of maple, mahogany, ash, sapele etc. I found a good supplier in Lion Williams, located in North Wales. Different colours, different grain patterns, spalted woods and more. The workflow and quality of the end product increased as much as the enjoyment.
I value learning and where I can, I like to be independent. I soon realised that I wanted to wind my own pickups.
I built 4 different versions of my own pick up winder. The DIY winders made some decent pick ups but when the opportunity arose to get a nice, shiny and very new MojoTone pick up winder, I did so.
Here is one of my earlier efforts!
Once familiar with that I wanted further control of the different components of the workflow and so started to gather more hardware ... 3d printers, CNC machine, diode laser and wood turning lathes.
Learning the software design and implementation of such tools in the guitar building workflow has been been hard work but incredibly engaging.
They allow me to do a lot.​ I can cut my own flatwork to whatever design I want, I could 3d print or machine CNC templates, adapters, jigs, guides, inlays as etc well as making some beautiful wooden control knobs, switch tips, pickup surrounds and more.
​This led to my doing jobs for other guitar builders and pick up winders. Getting feedback was valuable and helped correct mistakes and identify where things were working well. People would come to me with very specific issues and so we worked on finding solutions to problems, creating one off tools and jigs that mainstream retailers and manufacturers just didn't have time for. This was great for learning and meeting some wonderful and likeminded people.​​​​
It isn't all guitars and tinkering. By trade I am a dentist and from that aspect of my life, I cannot help but bring a very careful attention to detail and a strong desire to make something last to my guitar building. I count myself as being extremely lucky being able to spend my working days doing things I love.​ ​
So, there you are! A run through of my journey into the world of electric guitars, pick ups and more.​
Outside of all that stuff above, I am an endurance athlete and compete for Westbury Harriers, Yate and District AC and Northern Ireland Masters. I will race pretty much anything on any surface but I do love 800/1500m on the track. Having said that one of my favourite events is Man v Horse and wearing the TransWorldSport GoPro camera in 2024 was cool! Here
I also volunteer as an athletics coach for both Westbury Harriers and Yate ADAC, helping athletes young and old train and compete on road, track and cross country.
Glover Custom Guitars at the local 10k, the Hogweed Trot.