In a narrow garage in south Longmont strewn with wood shavings and bursting ideas, Craig Howie leans over a workbench and slowly carves out gleaming guitars from hunks of recycled wood. After carefully adding his own unique designs and finish to the instruments, he eventually puts them in the hands of musicians to produce their own creative flourishes.
Howie, 45, doesn’t give up his creations easily. Each one tells its own story and to the unsophisticated eye looks perfect.
But not to Howie, who winces at every imperfection. “I create every single part of the guitar … from start to finish and complete the most perfect product I can create,” said the wiry Howie, a former math teacher, rock and roll musician and triathlete. “But each guitar has a little flaw, something little is almost always off.”
“That’s the beauty of this, I guess,” Howie said. “These guitars are not made from a factory or from a kit. This is not a cookie cutter approach. Like people, they are all a little bit flawed.”
“I feel so bad for him sometimes.” his wife Jennifer Howie said. “He just wants perfection so badly.”
Howie has made over 80 guitars and sold them to musicians throughout the United States since he and his wife Jennifer moved into their home in 2014. There he started Howie Guitars from a two-car garage.
Jennifer, a STEM, or Science Technology Engineering Math, teacher at Burlington Elementary School encouraged him to drop every other pursuit to build guitars with his own tools and hands.
“He’s a musician, music has always been his passion,” Jennifer said. “Working out here in the garage … it’s been his solace.”
Howie said he also builds his guitars with a patented design based on the principle of the golden ratio. The golden ratio can be visualized almost everywhere, starting from geometry to the human body, according to math experts.
The measurement from the navel to the floor to the top of the head to the navel is the golden ratio, the eye, fins and tail of a dolphin all fall at the golden triangle, according to mathnasium.
“It’s a ratio found in all of nature, in much of geometry and architecture,” he said. It makes a guitar pleasing to the eye. The guitar’s neck is especially important because it lures musicians to pick up the instrument and play, Howie said.
Howie said he began playing the guitar when he was 12 after his dad handed him a cherry red Gibson. “That guitar was my touchstone,” he said.
He played in a few bands and got tossed out of most, he said. He was better at designing guitars than playing them, Howie said.
Depending on the design, Howie can build a guitar in four weeks to three months. He builds four types including the flagship full hollow body known as the Escape Series, according to his description on Reverb.com.
Howie’s U.S. Patented nautilus shell design is placed on the inside of each hollow and semi hollow body guitars, creating a special acoustic cavity and tone. Each is also named after someone important to Howie’s life including his two sons, a former student fighting Type 1 diabetes and gymnast Simone Biles, Howie said.
They have been sold all over the United States as well as parts of Europe and Asia. They cost from $1,600 to $3,500, Howie said.
He said he hopes his guitars add hope and joy to whomever owns one. “Guitars bring people together and cut through race and politics,” Howie said. “You see it all the time, older people, younger people, get together who have nothing in common, but can still enjoy a good tune on a guitar.”
