Finding a fine balance between two creative loves, building and playing…

Well known for the highly regarded jazz guitars that are in the hands of players worldwide, luthier Victor Baker is also an accomplished guitarist, prolific modern jazz composer and active performer. A self described life long jazz guitar nut, when he isn’t in his workshop building a world class instrument he is writing, preparing and playing his original music with his group. Years ago Victor decided to limit a full time gigging and teaching career in order to pursue his equal passion of archtop guitar making, but never stopped his daily music practice. He is always striving to strike a balance between his life’s work of building, playing, writing and performing, considering all aspects of his life in guitars equally indispensable and of identical level of passion.

Victor Baker began playing guitar in 1980 when he stole his sister’s cheap acoustic out of her room. He also had a tendency to tear apart and reassemble every guitar he came across. In 1999 Victor started his journey into guitar making. Originally taken on purely as a hobby, Vic was floored by the art of luthiery and fell completely in love with the craft. He proceeded to read every book and publication possible in order to teach himself the trade, and was soon taking orders from local players. Since then, with the periodic invaluable help of various talented team members along the way, the shop has produced well over 700 custom guitars.

As a side, in 2015 Victor began work on a special commission to build a limited series of vintage D’Angelico archtop reproductions. Using measurements and scans of vintage instruments and after long research, he was able to recreate some of John D’Angelico’s prized archtop guitars, made with his team in his New York City workshop. Unveiled by the D’Angelico Company at the 2016 NAMM Guitar Show, the “Master Builder” series received high accolades. While he ultimately wanted to return to his own instrument designs, striving to reproduce the works of an original master such as John D’Angelico will always be one of the highlights of VB’s long career.