Sankey Electric Guitars — Instrumental Honesty in Form and Sound
Mike Sankey built his first guitar at nineteen years old while studying visual arts at university in Ottawa, Canada. It was a thinline acoustic archtop with both electric and piezo pickups, built almost entirely from salvaged materials: birch plywood from a door, scraps from a flooring project, pickups and tuners pulled from the miscellaneous bins at local guitar shops. He presented it as a school project. His sculpture professor was not impressed.
That first guitar still works. Mike has never stopped building.
Since 1997, working from his workshop in Ottawa, Mike has completed more than 120 completely unique instruments and spent over a decade exhibiting at some of the most prestigious boutique guitar events in the world, including the Holy Grail Guitar Show in Berlin, the NAMM Boutique Guitar Showcase in Anaheim, and shows across Europe and North America. Through that body of work he has established himself as one of the most genuinely experimental and original luthiers working anywhere today: a builder whose instruments challenge every conventional assumption about what a guitar should look like, while never losing sight of what a guitar should feel and sound like.
No two Sankey guitars are alike. There is no catalog. There are no standard models. There is just Mike, his materials, his instincts, and the guitar that emerges from their conversation.
Built Without Blueprints
Mike does not consider himself a designer. He rarely sketches. He does not work from templates or plans. His background in fine art and his deep study of lutherie history gave him a foundation of technical knowledge, but what he actually does in the workshop each day is closer to sculpture than manufacturing: a process of listening to the wood, following his instincts, and trusting that the right form will reveal itself if he pays close enough attention.
That approach produces instruments of extraordinary visual originality. Sankey guitars are often headless, frequently asymmetrical, and built with raw edges, unconventional wood finishes, and surface treatments that other builders would sand away. What might appear as imperfections in a conventional guitar are, in Mike's hands, deliberate expressions of the material's natural character. Responsible use of available materials and an instinct for finding beauty in what others overlook run through everything he makes.
At the same time, the technical foundation of each instrument is uncompromising. Carbon reinforcements in the necks allow for thinner profiles without sacrificing stability. Stainless steel frets are standard. Hardware is sourced from premium makers including Hipshot, with custom modifications and 3D-printed metal components fabricated by Mike himself when standard parts don't meet the specific requirements of a build. Pickups are chosen individually for each instrument, with makers including Lace and Lindy Fralin appearing across the catalog depending on what the guitar calls for. Every neck is hand-shaped and, when exotic tonewoods are used, aged on the workbench for up to two years before carving to ensure complete stability.
The Instruments
Because every Sankey guitar is unique, what follows is not a model list but a portrait of the kinds of instruments Mike builds and the sensibility that runs through all of them.
Archtop and semi-hollow designs form a significant part of Mike's output, rooted in a lifelong fascination with carved top construction that stretches back to the viola da gamba his father built and that Mike used as the model for his very first guitar. His archtops draw on a deep study of historical lutherie and violin-making tradition while pushing their forms into shapes no classical luthier would recognize, with sculpted curves, asymmetric bodies, and surface treatments that make each one a genuinely unique object.
Solid body and headless designs round out the lineup for players who want the tonal directness and ergonomic advantages of a compact, balanced instrument. Builds like the Destroyer, a headless tiger maple solid body with a raw wood finish and Lace Alumitone pickup, and the Electric Feather, a strikingly lightweight instrument that has been performed publicly by guitarist Nathaniel Murphy, demonstrate the range Mike operates in: from elegant and refined to bold and avant-garde, often within the same instrument.
Premium tonewoods including zircote, tiger maple, black walnut, figured cherry, ebony, and a range of rare and responsibly sourced woods appear throughout the work. Finishes are typically oil or wax rather than lacquer, allowing the natural character of the wood to remain visible and tactile in the player's hands.
For Someone, Not Everyone
Mike Sankey has never built for the market. He builds for the individual, for the player who has spent years looking for something that no production guitar, no matter how fine, has been able to give them. With fewer than twelve instruments completed each year, a Sankey guitar is one of the rarest instruments a player can own, and one of the most personal.
Browse our available Sankey inventory. Each instrument listed is a complete description of a specific, unrepeatable object. If you don't see what you're looking for in current stock, reach out to discuss a commission directly.