James creates the finest handmade instruments from only the best, top-quality, hand-picked tonewoods.

From start to finish your instrument goes through a process of inspection, touching, sanding, touching again, listening, sanding, listening and touching again, inspection, tapping, listening over and over again many times. This is to ensure that you receive only the greatest instrument you have ever or will ever play with the sweetest, clearest tone with resonance to astound along with complete ease of playability. From James' creations we have handmade guitars - Parlour, OM & Dreadnought, handmade octave mandolins, handmade bouzoukis and handmade ukuleles - Tenor & Baritone.

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James has been playing guitar himself since he was around 12 years of age. At that age, he developed a keen interest in the making of instruments and was always very curious as to how they could form wood to produce such effective sound. He pottered about with it for years trying to produce his own guitar. He left school at a very young age and started working on construction sites taking a keen interest in carpentry while also keeping the candle lit on his interest in building his own instruments. He ran a carpentry business for many years until the boom went bust and building work started to quieten down whereby then he concentrated more on his instrument making. He went on to train under Paul Doyle in Galway to learn some of the finer details of guitar and mandolin making and to master his craft. He continued to craft and fine tune many, many more instruments until he was satisfied that he could complete a fine sounding instrument. Many years later he is still making plenty of tweaks here and there to succeed in making his own unique sounding instrument. Working in the workshop James carries out all the aspects of luthering by hand. They don't use any CNC machining, absolutely everything is completely handmade except the hardware! James's son Jamie works with him on holidays and evenings. He has been working with James since he started so as Jamie says himself he's surely qualified at this stage!

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To purchase a James Martin instrument a non-refundable deposit of 25% of the overall value of the instrument is required first. The final payment would be due once the instrument is finished and ready to be picked up or shipped. James Martin instruments are shipped worldwide.