My luthier's journey
I am Louis Manteau, I now live and have my shop in Bordeaux, France.
During the 7 years I studied law, I discovered woodworking as a hobby. During one summer, I made my first electric guitar from scratch, from a Youtube tutorial. That’s when my true vocation and career appeared to me.
I had a first professional experience in lutherie during an internship at Crimson Guitars for a few months.
I still managed to graduate from a M1 Master’s degree in “Droit Notarial”, before I realised it was time to follow my dream.
From a dream to a passionate career
I contacted the famous Ervin Somogyi, showed him some of my work and exchanged a few mails, which caught his interest.
He gave me the opportunity to demonstrate my skills, and I traveled to Oakland for two weeks of tests and interviews.
He was happy and impressed with my work and offered me the position of being one of the few apprentices who studied under his tutelage.
I’ll forever be grateful towards him for his trust.
After COVID, I was finally able to travel back to Oakland, and stayed there for the next two years.It’s been two intensive years, full of work, discoveries, creation and learning. I was able to develop my creative sense, aesthetics and techniques.
It gave me the confidence and skills to be able to run my own shop.
The woods and techniques
Thats where all the magic starts. I deeply love the variety and hidden beauty in woods. Luthiery has the unique benefit from bringing planks of material to life and enables the player to create music with them.
My job is to allow the player to experience a comfortable and enjoyable sounding instrument.
I purchase woods that express something to me, that inspires, has its own story. I bring them to life and turn them into functioning art, that creates emotion.
I carefully select the materials with the player, making sure it’ll meet one’s expectations and making the playing experience as unique as possible.
I also keep in mind that wood is a precious material, and try to limit my use of endangered woods and try to lean forward more commonly available species.
Techniques
During my apprenticeship with Ervin Somogyi in Oakland, California, I learnt a lot of new techniques and my understanding of the guitar as a whole definitely changed.
My guitars are entirely made by hand, using a lot of traditional hand tools. I trust in the precision my hand planes, chisels and Japanese saws offer me.
I embrace the added time to use hand tools, which allows me to keep the love and excitement I first felt during my discovery of woodworking.
