In a leafy suburb just outside Perth, Andrew Ellis works in his small studio, sanding down the face of a brand new, handmade dreadnought. He is quickly becoming renowned for his prowess in the black art of figuring out exactly what kind of guitar one should be playing, than making it from scratch. It's this sensitivity to the player's individual style and nuances that make an Ellis guitar both strange and exquisite.

There's no accredited school for making guitars that his journalist knows of, which means that there are only about two ways to learn how: from another luthier of from the school of hard knocks. Andrew Ellis graduated with honours from the latter institution. A solid background working with wood was the foundation of his experimentation with luthiery - that and a love for the instrument.

"I've worked in a past life making custom doors and windows out of exotic timbers and things like that. Most of the books - and I've probably read more than you would in a university degree - on guitar making generally tell you how to make something. You can make a table, but the sound side of things is a slow process of making them and experimenting with things and finding out what the crucial things to getting a good sound are. The first thing I did was pull a guitar apart and have a look at it. Then I was able to copy what was there.

I had to learn how to bend wood, which takes a lot of time. Depending on the species it is an experience thing. You have to try to bend the different timbers and see how they work. I bend using the traditional hot pipe method, which entails heating up a pipe until, if you splash water on it the beads will immediately bounce off. That's probably the most common question that people ask - how do you bend wood. That's the way guitar makers bend wood. Martin's custom shop still uses this method. I like to do it that way because I offer a lot of shapes."

Andrew says it took him around 10 guitars to begin to come up with something that sounded good. "I wanted something that I could play on stage, and that I could record with myself that I was proud to show other people. I wanted to be able to put it in front of any musician and be proud to say, 'That's mine' - to put my name on it.

I think I sold my first guitar around 2000. The guy who I sold it to still has it and still plays it. It's not something that looks overly flash, and it isn't the most spectacularly sounding thing I've ever made, but at the time it was the best I could do. Every time I see it I feel how far I've come from that point."

Andrew has three main models, which he adjusts and blends depending on the client. His 000 utilises an Engelmann Spruce Top, and it's a fingerstyle guitar, with slotted headstock and a wider fingerboard. "It's all about getting the ultimate guitar to play with your fingers." The Ellis Dreadnought uses Adirondack Spruce - the holy grail of tops. "I know some guys in the States who will drive around the countryside, talk to farmers, select one tree, cut it down and chop it up and send it out to small makers." Andrew reckons it's this spruce that separates vintage guitars from current models. His third model, a cutaway, incorporates Linda Manzer's Wedge design. "The idea is that the side your arm goes over is thinner that the side that goes on your leg." With the Wedge you can see the fingerboard while you stand up, and Andrew argues you can play longer with less stress on your neck and back.

Ellis' biggest proponents are his customers, an exclusive club of guitar slinging gentlemen that includes a few guys you may have heard of, like Tommy Emmanuel, (who came to Andrew to purchase on of his stomp boxes, which are available in a massive range of exotic Australian woods), Jeff Martin (ex Tea Party - see the new piece on his Ellis seven string resonator last issue), Dave Mann, Nathan Kaye and Nathan Gaunt.

Nathan has been playing Ellis guitars for years now. "Nathan is one of the most popular acoustic players over here," says Andrew. "I read about him in the newspaper and went into music shop to show them my guitars, and he just happened to be there and tried them out and liked what he heard."

"immediately", says Nathan on the experience, "what I noticed was that the projection of his acoustics was a lot more than anybody else's guitars that I had played. I was previously playing a Martin six-string. The way that his guitar projected, to me, felt more open, it felt bigger. It has a lot more highs, more lows and a good mid-range."

Andrew continues, "I'm about trying to match people with the guitar that is going to suit their needs. I don't make more or less money on a particular model. They've all been budgeted out so that I make the same amount of money. It's my job to match a person up. I talk and listen and hear what they play and what they want to get out of the guitar."

"We sat down", says Nathan, "and played quite a few guitars and started refining what it is I was looking for in a guitar. His knowledge of the luthier side of the business is extensive. We ended up coming up with a small-body 000-shape guitar for my six-string, and a slightly up-scaled version of it for the 12-string. The idea was to have a brother and sister guitar. After two months of plaing the six-string that he built, it was very clear that it was the best guitar I had owned, and I've had a few Guilds, Martins and Matons. It became an extension of me, that beautiful cliche that guitarists search for. I've used it on every recording since the day I bought it. I can honestly say it sleeps nder my bed when I'm on tour - it never leaves my side."

"That was a long, slow process," concludes Andrew. "Nathan likes a lot of the old-school guitars, so I built him a traditional guitar with a 12-fret to the body join. What it does is it brings the bridge further down on the body. Most of the sound comes from the sound-hole down. If you've got the strings right in the centre of that spot, it's like the centre of the cone on a speaker. To utilise that areas the best, that's why guitars were originally built that way. The only reason they've gone to 14 frets was not because it sounds better, but because you've got access to two extra frets. I've also done the old-school slotted headstock and that gives more downward pressure over the nut area."

Interestingly enough, it was Nathan who introduced Andrew to the business of stomp boxes, where Andrew now has a bustling trade, even being invited to the Perth leg of the recent Deep Purple tour just so they could check out a couple of his stomp boxes. Nathan brought Andrew one he wasn't happy with, and said, "I don't acre how much it costs, just build me on better than this." Ultimately the pair settled on a compact design with a deceptively big sound.

"The Stomp Boxes that we do are about the size of a CD case, and an inch thick. And we've developed the tone of that so it sounds like a bigger box. Because we make so many of them, we're able to get the cost down to being cheaper than making a box and spending money on a mic."