Solstice Guitars

Ryan Elewaut, founder of Flagstaff’s Solstice Guitars, first picked up a six-string when he was 13 — and became obsessed. It was the perfect muse for a kid growing up in California’s Orange County, consuming music that ranged from classical and acoustic to the polemical sounds of Southern California’s 1990s punk scene. “Music is one of the most incredible art forms that humans participate in,” he says. “It’s one of the most emotive.”

When a friend’s father handed Elewaut (pictured) a book on how to make a guitar, he became even more obsessed. He pored over the pages twice, highlighting text and penciling notes in the margins. He visited a local music shop to learn more about the craft, then worked in the family garage after his father dug out a Shopsmith woodworking tool. That began a lifelong pursuit of luthiery, the making and repairing of wooden stringed instruments.

By age 17, Elewaut had created his first guitar; soon thereafter, he moved to Flagstaff to attend Northern Arizona University, where he pursued majors in music composition and microbiology. But the magnetic pull of luthiery persisted. “It’s all about creating pieces of art that people can fall in love with — that they can’t put down,” Elewaut says. “There’s something really, really cool about making a guitar and then putting it in somebody’s hands.”

Elewaut was running a repair shop in a music store when he and a friend decided to branch out and start their own boutique guitar shop. Elewaut opted to leave NAU and commit to the new venture, Custom Sound Instruments. He spent the next decade developing the other skills necessary for running a business, such as accounting, operations and marketing.

That prepared Elewaut for launching Solstice Guitars in 2017. He transitioned away from retail to focus on guitar building and repairing during COVID-19, but he opened his current manufacturing facility a couple of years later. In addition to creating custom models, the business offers repairs for guitars, banjos, mandolins and other fretted string instruments.

“My goal is to craft the best guitars possible in the style that I build,” Elewaut says. And that, he notes, requires quality wood. “A customer will come to me and be like, ‘Oh, I want a really warm-sounding guitar,’ ” he says — and cedar and mahogany are good choices for that. “After time, you just get to know these woods and how they sound,” he adds. “And you can tap on these woods and start to hear and feel their characteristics.”

But guitar making is about getting to know the customer, too — and being able to translate what they’re looking for into custom work. Elewaut says a good luthier knows how to ask a client about the guitars they already play. “It’s cool to work with a customer and they bring something to the table that you haven’t thought of before — that you wouldn’t have designed yourself,” he says. “Those are always fun projects.”

Solstice offers four base models of guitar: two acoustic, one electric and one bass. Elewaut then follows a process he calls “strategic variation,” turning each guitar into a unique instrument by tinkering with a number of variables. Those could include nut width, string spacing, neck profile, fret and pickup choices, creative inlay designs, or more subtle components.

Once the client provides their input, Elewaut gets to work. “There are a lot of layers going on,” he says, “and you’re thinking, Oh, I’m not going to glue the fingerboard on yet, or [I’ll] do this order of operations a little bit differently.”

The result of that exacting process is an instrument that, in Elewaut’s view, compares to many high-end guitars from manufacturers. And he says he’s happy to be pursuing a passion that began when he picked up that first guitar as a teenager — and to be sharing that passion with clients.

“We don’t make a ton of money doing what we do,” he says. “But what makes it all worth it to me is what we’re doing and what we’re making. … I’m super grateful to be able to be doing what I’m doing and participating in that side of art and humanity.”