Musical Instruments: Billy Tarrant
Billy Tarrant: Luthier
Billy Tarrant creates a wide range of guitars in all different shapes and sizes including 6, 8, and 12 string acoustic, hollow neck weissenborns, ukuleles and Irish Bouzouki's using solid tone wood from local and international sources. Billy also makes electric guitars and lap steel guitars.
Tarrant Guitars also hand crafts a select number of Weissenborn Style hollow neck lap slides each year. Loosly based on the original Hermann Weissenborns of the 1920's, the "hollow neck" on these instruments are deeper than most standard Weissenborns, with the intention to bring even more depth and tone out of an already "big" sound.
All Tarrant Guitars are custom made from scratch using only the best materials available. All solid tonewood is used instead of vaneers like in most lower range factory guitars, this means your guitar's sound will improve with age, as it opens up. Timber Bindings are used instead of plastic, as well as bone for the nut and saddle. Nitrocellulose lacquer is used for the finish in either high gloss or satin.
Location: Devonport, Tasmania
About Billy Tarrant
After previous years spent intensely building/ repairing and studying in Far North Queensland alongside a great friend and mentor, Master Luthier Stu 'Sonny Boy' Forbes, Tarrant Guitars is now based on the north coast of Tasmania.
Billy's passion for fine detail, structural integrity and superior tone are obvious when seeing and playing a guitar built from his hands.
"Creating guitars by hand is a dying art form and one i am proud to give my energy to; to keep it alive. I don‚'t use the large computerised machines that are found in guitar making factories. The hand crafted touch, gives the guitar and unique feel and sound and i think musicians respect the instrument more because of that. Timber has a natural beauty about it. There is no better feeling than when you hear the first few chords strummed on a new guitar you'vve just spent 160 hours working on. It really is incredibly rewarding".
When not custom making to a specific client, Billy takes full creative control and builds guitars to his own specifications, desires, functions and these are the instruments that are currently for sale in shops and on the Tarrant Guitars website.
Owning one of these instruments means you truly have a guitar for a lifetime. Every guitar is unique. Whether it be the combinations of timber, combined with size, bracing etc. There are so many different elements that make up each guitar, you really have the "only one like it".
