Becker Guitars Carves New Designs in Attleboro

Daniel Becker, owner of Becker Guitars, has been working on guitars for more than 15 years, and now he says he's making his own line of guitars.

"These guitars just have more soul I think," he said.

Becker said started with a repair shop from his basement, and in the mid 1990s opened his own shop.

"I just hated working in an office," he said. "I wanted to work with both my hands and my head. I loved the guitar, and it all seemed to point in this direction."

Becker said he started making custom guitars, and quickly found a calling.

"We wanted to build, and I met my partner Ryan Martin," he said. "He moved down from Maine in 2006 and we started from there."

Now, he's moving away from custom work and developing his own line of guitars with those in his shop.

"We want to keep it small, not get bought by a chain," Becker said. "We wanted to do our own thing. There's a lot of people building copies of a Les Paul or a Stratocaster, but we wanted to do our own designs. I think we're building some of the best guitars being built today."

Becker said he has had a great deal of success since building the first prototypes in 2007. He said guitar players from bands such as Moe, the Disco Biscuits, Umphreys Mcgee, Twiddle and Fuel own one of his builds. He said he has also built a guitar for Larry "Ler" LaLonde, but added he wants to build a bass for the group's front man Les Claypool.

"We've met them a few times," Becker said. "Most of the instruments we sell are to people that have never played on [the brand] before. They're just fans of the artists."

Becker said he, his partner Martin and the rest of his staff work together on any particular build. He said they fill the niches of each other to make a really collaborative project.

"Everybody has different skills, and everybody does their part on the instruments," he said. "Between everybody in the shop, we got it all covered."

He added the look, feel and sound of each guitar is vitally important in the construction.

"It's got to look like you want to pick it up," Becker said. "Then, it's got to feel like you don't want to put it down, and it's got to sound like you're never going to stop playing."

Becker Guitars is located at 44 Union St. in Attleboro behind the Attleboro Area Industrial Museum.