Ken Blount, from Sebring, Florida, is Central Florida's premier luthier. In addition to creating fine handcrafted instruments, he repairs, restores, and customizes guitars, mandolins, violins, upright basses, ukeleles, banjos, and other acoustic instruments. Ken is an authorized warranty center for Martin and Ovation and offers select vintage and new instruments for sale. He has been the subject of feature articles in Frets, Vintage Guitar, Bluegrass Unlimited, Southern Bluegrass, the News Sun, and Highlands Today.
Ken Blount is in his 30th year as a guitar builder, and has built over 300 instruments in that time. In that period, he has had pieces purchased by buyers world wide, both players and collectors. Blount guitars are all hand crafted by Ken. He does not use 'apprentices' or other assistants to construct his instruments. He has built both traditional and cutaway guitars of all body sizes, wood combinations, and of varying degrees of cosmetic enhancements such as inlays.
Ken relies on traditional methods of construction, neck joints on Blount guitars are all dovetail, (not screw in joints like some of the high end manufacturers are doing,) nitrocellulose lacquers, (instead of the less expensive and less labor intensive water-soluble variety,) bone nuts and saddles, and always the fine attention to detail that is a hallmark of a Blount guitar.
Ken searches the world for the finest raw materials. Fine wood is getting increasingly harder to find, so when he can make a purchase, he stockpiles the best grades of Brazilian and Indian rosewood, Koa, Sitka and Engleman spruce, mahogany, maple and ebony.
When Ken plans a guitar for an individual buyer, he will ask many questions to determine the suitability of that guitar to that player. The style of playing, - how hard or soft the player's touch is, if the guitar will be used primarily for finger picking, flatpicking or both, - are all factors in determining optimum string spacing, set up, and even body size and style.
To many players, appearance is important in an instrument. Ken can incorporate a wide range of cosmetic features on his instruments, from custom abalone or mother-of-pearl inlays, position makers, bindings. Everything can be exactly how the buyer desires. On the rare occasion one of Ken's instruments shows back up on the market, it commands high prices, often more than the original purchase price, at dealers such as Gruhns.
Ken Blount repairs virtually all types of string instruments, acoustic and electric guitars, violins, upright basses, mandolins, banjos, and ukuleles. He is an authorized warranty service center for C.F. Martin Instruments, as well as Ovation Guitars. All repairs are performed by Ken, himself. He has no apprentices or employees.
Services Ken performs include neck resets, crack repair, refinishing, bridge and saddle work, repairing loose bracing, neck breakage repair, binding re-gluing and replacement,violin sound post setting, nut work, and major breakage repair and restoration.
Ken will always take into consideration the value of the original appearance of a vintage instrument, and will advise the best course of action to repair yet preserve this appearance.
Acoustic Instrument owners have trusted Ken Blount to repair their vintage instruments. Everything from Martin Guitars, Mandolins, stand up bass, and banjos have beenretored at Blount's workshop.
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