Buenos Dias Amigos, welcome to Vintage Cowboy Guitars, the site dedicated to the stencilled cowboy guitars of the 1930s, 40s and 50s.

The golden age of stencilled cowboy guitars took place between the early 1930s to the early 1960s. Unlike most later versions, these guitars were made of solid timer, Birch, Spruce and Maple for the most part.

The guitars themselves were quite well built but their major let down was in the finishing. The frett work and set up was generally terrible, hard work for anyone to play that's for sure.

Whilst at work at The Guitar Repairers, an early Gene Autry round up guitar came through for repair and we just had to have one.

Some searching on the net revealed a little more information, but it wasn't until we discovered Steve Evans' book "Cowboy Guitars" that the vastness of them was revealed, many, many different models. Steve has a shop in Jacksonville Arkansas with a large portion of it devoted to his cowboy guitar collection, hundreds of them. He is considered to be the world authority on all things cowboy guitar.

After collecting a few different guitars, looking at them was not enough. Thanks to John at The Guitar Repairers we experimented with turning them into good sounding and playing instruments. We discovered that by removing the old ladder bracings from inside the guitar and replacing it with a modern style X bracing, they would come to life.

Matt & Luke & their guitars