We have a very close working relationship with Dermot Mcilroy and have been stocking and selling his fine hand made guitars for many years. They offer a blend of wonderful tone and character, and boast a first class hand made meticulouse construction. Mcilroy guitars are hard to get hold of and are a name that continually creates excitement and intrigue with all our customers. Anyone who has ever played one is left in admiration and invariably ends up wanting one. Yes they really are that good!
We asked Dermot 10 key questions and are delighted to share his replies with you below. Please email or call us if you would like to know more about Mcilroy guitars, or if you have a technical question. Our team can help you with any custom order build requests, and we constantly have a selection of guitars on order and in build due to arrive. So if you are after a specific model do just get in touch.
PJM- How many hours on average does building each guitar take?
Dermot- On average, around 105 hours per guitar (currently, that’s down from 120hrs a few years
back). That would include all the necessary admin that goes with the job.
From start to finish, it takes us about 3 months to complete. We work in batches of six at a
time. So, once we have our six orders, we pull the tops, backs and sides from the shelves
and process them in their various ways. That will take about 3-4 weeks. The bodies are then
assembled (about 3 days). Over the next week, the bodies are trimmed and bound.
They then go into the sanding dept for pre-sand. During that time the necks, which have
usually been constructed months in advance, are hand carved and sanded.
Once both components are ready, they are neck-jointed (1-2 days).
2-3 days of fretting follow, then they are heel-capped and ready for spray-shop.
The guitars are finish-sanded and sprayed (3-weeks).
Once ready, they can be bridged and then fitted with nut, saddle and tuners, setup and
shipped out. There’s time in-between processes to allow drying etc, or to work on other
batches.
PJM- What are your favourite combinations of Top, Back and Sides, and why?
Dermot- To be honest, I don’t really have any firm favourites. I’ve always been amazed that no
matter what combination we come up with (we have over 40,000 different models), there
has never been one where we thought, “oh that doesn’t work”.
As a musician, playing Irish Trad and contemporary folk, I do like a spruce top, it has more
head room. You can strum hard or pick softly with a flat-pick and it will give you all you
want. I’ve had spruce tops with mahogany, rosewood, walnut and Laurelwood, and they all
sounded great. The mahogany/Sitka (AJ10) was probably the best. If I played more
fingerstyle stuff, I would almost certainly go for a cedar top, A25, A15, or given no limit, an
A95 (Brazilian RW/Cedar). There are a couple of Braz RW McIlroys out there somewhere.
PJM- How has the guitar building world changed since you were first building guitars.
Dermot- Our process has changed very little since we started. We have tried to maintain the
handmade aspect of guitar building, so you will find very little technological advances in our
workshop.
The internet has made finding materials and tools much easier than it was 25 years ago, and
customers too, but equally the woods that we use have become much scarcer and more
expensive as a result. I would say on average, materials are 5 to 20 times more expensive
than they were 20 years ago.
PJM- How many guitars do you expect to build in 2024?
Dermot- We have no plans to employ more staff and all those currently with us are part-time, but
there are signs that production could increase from 30/36 to 42/48.
The best we’ve ever achieved was 90, back in 2015/16.
Brexit, material costs, COVID and global uncertainties have all contributed to us keeping our
production at a lower manageable level.
PJM- What age were you when you first decided you wanted to build guitars and how old
were you when you started you first job in the industry?
Dermot- As a young teenager, there was a pipe dream of making fiddles, but it wasn’t something I
pursued in any way. I was a joiner/carpenter for 11 years, from the age of 16 to 27, then the
opportunity to join the Lowden team as their wood-machinist arose. That was March 1990.
So I joined as one of the most experienced woodworkers but with absolutely no experience
of guitar making.
But in reality, it’s just glorified carpentry, and I took to it like a duck to water.
I spent 10 years with them but had to leave due to the uncertainties of any future
employment. By that stage I was well on my way to becoming a guitar maker (I’d
participated in the making of over 10,000 guitars), so I decided to investigate the possibility
of setting up my own business. It took two years and a lot of investment, but I left on the 3rd
March 2000 and started my own business on the 6th march 2000, with a completely empty
workspace and zero customers.
PJM- How often do you get a chance to see your own guitars being used in a live
performance?
Dermot- It has increased obviously over the years. For the first 15 years or so, there was only the
occasional sighting (Planxty Live was the first I think), but then about 8 years ago, more and
more Irish artists seemed to be playing them and we were getting a lot of enquiries from
Irish artists. I watch a bit of Irish TV (RTE/TG4) and there wouldn’t be a week now that goes
by without seeing one on there.
I’m often asked, “who plays your guitars?”. I can’t reel off a list of international celebrity
artists but if you’re into Irish music, you’ll know people like Donal Lunny, Steve Cooney, Luka
Bloom, Declan Sinnott and Jimmy MacCarthy, but there’s also a swell of young Irish/Scots
artists now playing or soon-to-be playing a McIlroy, Dermot Kennedy, Paul McKenna, Jack
Warnock, Gerry Paul, the list goes on.
You can also throw in Anna Friel, who has had three from us
PJM- What are some of the bigger challenges you face building guitars?
Dermot- We recently overcame our biggest challenge, to locate and procure the finest Brazilian
mahogany we could, for necks. We used to be able to drive to our local timber yard and
there would have been warehouses full of it, but these days it’s as rare as a NI elected
representative working for a living. This was the single biggest investment we ever made,
although 20 years ago, the price was so much less, it would have been a standard purchase
that we made every couple of years.
So, it’s the procurement of raw materials that’s going to determine whether or not this
industry can continue. I suspect the use of composite materials and faster grown timbers,
will be the future. I strongly believe that we must do everything possible to manage and
protect our natural resources.
PJM- When was you first guitar built and sold, and can you tell us a bit about it?
Dermot- When I joined Lowden guitars, we were encouraged to stay of an evening and build our own
guitars. It was a sort of free training exercise that the company didn’t have to pay for. With
my mentor and tutor Mickey Uchida, and with a little help from the guys I worked with as
well, I made a walnut / Sitka spruce 12 string guitar (I’m a 12-string player first and
foremost). The back and sides came from a tree that was blown down in Kew Gardens
during the great storm of 1988. It was basically an O23 custom but at that stage, a walnut /
spruce combination had never been tried (23 being walnut / cedar). I was also the first to
put a walnut strip up the centre of the neck and for the first time, I chamfered the tail block
to allow the top to vibrate more freely. Something that hadn’t been done. This was 33 years
ago.
There were some other elements as well, like the full abalone soundboard inlay, the 5 piece
back with Winge and maple strips, the Kingswood head-facing and 5 piece heel cap.
A unique guitar that I gigged with for up to 5 nights a week and a guitar that I still own and is
still in the factory.
My first guitar sale was to Anna Friel. Her father is from Belfast (quite close to where I live)
and he’d heard from friends that I was making guitars. He was looking for a guitar for Anna,
so he arrived up one day to my house. I had several prototypes at home. He took away a
mahogany / spruce and that was Anna’s first guitar. These early guitars were a very different
design to the Lowden’s I was working on. I had completely changed the bracing pattern, the
neck angle and made some aesthetic changes. It was and is still very important to me that I
don’t copy other’s designs. The changes seemed to be enough to catch people’s interest and
they have pretty much remained the same to this day.
PJM- Can you provide a few general thoughts on any differences between American and
European guitar builders and the instruments they produce?
Dermot- It’s a great generalization but it’s said that American guitars are much more heavily built
than European. I think by that, they mean that the bracing tends to be heavier, large
rectangular bars and only scooped at the ends, whereas European guitars can often have
lighter triangular braces that are more scooped. There are of course many exceptions to
that, but I believe people are basing that presumption on the differences between the likes
of Martin and Gibson compared to Fylde, Sobell, Spanish and Italian makers and so on.
The European way of building has come from the rich history of instrument making, and
while Martin has also derived from that, the style of playing in the US has made the guitars
evolve into a different animal to that of their European counterparts.
The dreadnaught is very much seen as a US thing, while the Jumbo and small bodied guitars
are seen more as European (a generalization). Personally, I can tell you that the jumbo
shape is much more popular than our dreds, even though they are great guitars.
PJM- Can you think of any examples of guitars sold to customers in especially remote or
far-flung places?
Dermot- We don’t often get to know where our dealers are selling guitars to, but occasionally we’ll
get an email from a far-flung customer wanting to tell us how much they love the guitar. I
know there are quite a few McIlroy owners in Australia and a few in New Zealand. We have
dealers in Taiwan and Japan. I vaguely remember that a Japanese Formula1 engineer bought
an all-Koa guitar when he was taking part in the British Grand Prix a few years back.
I think there are a few in South Africa, but we have yet to hear of any reaching South
America.
We do get requests from dealers around the world, wanting to sell our guitars, but with our
very limited capacity, the core of dealers that we currently have, is enough to take
everything we can make. In fact, most, ask us for more or if any extras become available.
