Laurie Williams

Laurie Williams Acoustic Guitars — Ancient Wood, Living Sound from New Zealand

Deep in the Paraoanui Valley in the far north of New Zealand's North Island, accessible by a single road through subtropical bush, Laurie Williams has been building guitars by hand since 1993. His workshop sits on land as remote and primordial as any on earth, surrounded by native forest and the kind of silence that only exists far from cities. It is exactly the right place to build the guitars he builds, because the story of a Laurie Williams guitar begins not at the workbench but in the forest itself.

Laurie mills his own tonewoods. He selects the logs personally, often from wind-fallen trees and salvaged sinker timber recovered from the rivers and peat bogs of the North Island, and carries the wood through every stage of preparation himself, from sawing and drying through to the final voicing of the finished top. That process, documented in the film Song of the Kauri, gives him an intimacy with his materials that no builder who relies on commercial tonewood suppliers can match. Every piece of wood that goes into a Laurie Williams guitar has passed through his hands at every stage of its transformation from forest to instrument.

The Music Emporium put it simply: if you love the innovative guitars of Lowden or Kevin Ryan, you will appreciate the work of Laurie Williams.

The Wood

The tonewoods Laurie works with are unlike those used by any other luthier in the world. Ancient Kauri, recovered from peat bogs on the North Island where trees fell and were preserved for between 30,000 and 50,000 years, is perhaps the most extraordinary tonewood available on earth. Ancient Rimu, Tanekaha, Taraire, Totara, Kahikatea, and Matai are among the indigenous New Zealand species that appear regularly in his instruments, each one selected for its acoustic properties and worked with an understanding of its individual density, flex, and resonant character that comes only from decades of direct experience. Internationally sourced tonewoods including Madagascar rosewood, Indian rosewood, and figured maple round out the palette for builds that call for them.

The result is a voice that players describe consistently as unlike anything they have heard from any other acoustic guitar: warm, immediate, harmonically complex, and extraordinarily responsive to touch.

The Models

Tui — Named after the native New Zealand bird and Laurie's most widely known model, the Tui is a dreadnought-sized instrument built for players who want power, projection, and tonal complexity in equal measure. Available in standard and cutaway configurations with arm and waist bevels for ergonomic comfort, and built with Laurie's indigenous tonewood combinations in configurations that make every instrument a genuinely unique object.

Kiwi — A mid-sized OM-style guitar named after New Zealand's iconic flightless bird, the Kiwi delivers the balance, string-to-string clarity, and dynamic range that fingerstyle players and singer-songwriters prize above everything. A 24.75-inch short scale adds warmth and elasticity to the playing feel, and the indigenous tonewood combinations give the Kiwi a voice that one player described as combining the energy and push of mahogany with the focus of rosewood.

A Truly Singular Instrument

Players who receive a Laurie Williams guitar tend to reach for the same words: magnificent, thrilling, unlike anything else. A guitar that you forget about while playing it, because it disappears into the music. The combination of 30-plus years of building experience, self-milled indigenous tonewoods found nowhere else, and a physics-informed approach to voicing and bracing produces instruments that are as visually extraordinary as they are tonally unforgettable.

Browse our available Laurie Williams inventory. Each instrument is unique, unrepeatable, and unlikely to remain available for long.