R Robinson

R Robinson Acoustic Guitars — Classical Roots, Chicago Courage

Bob Robinson grew up in St. Petersburg, Florida in the 1960s, listening to Jeff Beck and Jimi Hendrix while studying classical guitar with the seriousness of someone who understood early that the instrument deserved it. In 1976, needing a hand-built guitar and unable to afford one, he walked into the workshop of Harley Day and Michael Betel in his hometown and talked his way into a position as workshop assistant. He built his first classical guitar there, and discovered a lifelong calling in the process.

He moved to Chicago in 1981, building instruments and furniture simultaneously while living in a neighborhood where, as he has noted, survival demanded courage and persistence. That combination of qualities never left his work. When he and his wife Deidra co-founded Troscan, a Chicago furniture design and manufacturing company, in 1999, the demands of manufacturing at scale reshaped his approach to lutherie: a love of structural innovation, a search for new solutions, and a refusal to accept a design that worked adequately when one that worked beautifully was still possible. He builds today from his workshop on North Ravenswood Avenue, and every instrument he makes carries all of that history.

Craft, Artistry, and Engineering

Bob describes his approach with three words that appear across his workshop and his instruments: craft, artistry, and engineering. They are not listed in order of importance. They are all equally present in everything he makes. His acoustic builds integrate lessons from classical luthiery, decades of furniture design, and an ongoing structural curiosity that leads him to rethink bracing patterns, neck construction, and material combinations that most builders take for granted.

The current acoustic lineup spans the Model 10-C, a concert-sized instrument available in Adirondack spruce over Claro walnut, and the Model 24, available in Sitka spruce over either ebony or mahogany back and sides, each one built entirely to custom order with the level of care and individual attention that a one-man Chicago workshop produces when it has no production schedule to meet and no output targets to hit.

The Domino Resonator, available in West African ebony or walnut with a Beard cone, Waverly tuners, custom Robinson ebony bridge, and Hoffee case, extends the lineup into resonator territory with the same structural imagination and material sophistication that runs through the steel-string acoustics. Developed for acoustic session playing, it delivers strong fundamental and projection that makes it equally at home on a recording stage or a front porch.

Browse our available R Robinson inventory, and reach out to discuss a custom commission directly.