Fame Finds Young Tennessee Guitar Maker

Twenty-three-year-old luthier Joshua Young doesn't waste time talking about guitar players; instead, he prefers to rattle off about tone, wood, bracing, jigs, and fretboards—and he does so with the authority of a master craftsman. By all accounts, he is the youngest maker of pre–World War II Martin-style replicas today.

Take a stroll over to his YouTube channel, and you will see top-notch pickers Brad Paisley, Tommy Emmanuel, and Billy Strings in awe as they test-drive  his custom-built D-28s. Putting it simply, he's a rising star in the world of guitar building.

Young spoke from his workshop in Rock Island, Tennessee. “I knew I wanted to do something with guitars for a living, and that kind of gave me three options. I could play them, sell them, or build them,” he says, looking back on his guitar-building journey.

“I was never dedicated enough to be able to make a living at [playing guitar]. It's such a competitive field—there are no guarantees. Then there was selling guitars, and I did that for a while—like all through my teen years. I probably went through over 100 guitars, buying and selling them.” [laughs]

His dream was building guitars

“I [contacted] a bunch of different builders because that is what really interested me,” recalls Young. Sharing his preferences, “Not so much the factory-made guitars, but old Martins and the new [guitars] that are being hand built today. Those were two things that I really loved, so I just studied all I could about those.”

Young’s friend, guitar craftsman Nathaniel Wright, helps

“I called him my luthier's hotline. I would call him when I had a woodworking question. Sometimes I'd drive 25 minutes to his shop, and he would help me fix whatever it was that I couldn't figure out.”

Luthiers Wayne Henderson and John Arnold were also willing to teach the aspiring guitar builder. “Wayne Henderson helped me with a lot of my building process, while John Arnold taught me a lot about how wood influences the sound of a guitar,” Young shares.

Young sold his first guitar to a friend and renowned musician Shawn Brock. “[The guitar] went to my buddy Shawn, who actually years before gave me a set of guitar tuners for my birthday and said, ‘When you build your first guitar, put these on it.’” Young remembers, “When he got it, he was completely blown away by it.”

2025 Amigo Guitar show 

“I walked around with two of my guitars and met all these celebrities. People started gathering around me. At one point, Vince Gill came over to play my guitar!” recalls the proud craftsman.

Documenting the event, “It launched my social media,” shares Young, whose videos of country and bluegrass artists Brad Paisley, Bryan Sutton, John Nutter (Vince Gill), Billy Strings, and fret master Tommy Emmanuel earned him recognition. “I got all of them playing my guitars!” He adds, “I went from having less than 500 followers on Instagram to, right now, 26,000!”

Talking specs

“My guitars are mostly based off of 1937 Martin D-28s,” Young reveals. “My bracing template is from Wayne Henderson, and my bracing dimensions are from John Arnold's 1937 schematics that he traced out from his guitar,” explains Young, whose starting price is $7,500.

“You can email me on my website at youngguitars@hotmail.com. You can also reach me by phone or text.” Adding, “There’s a $200 deposit to get on the waiting list.”

A documentary by Minnesota filmmaker Marko Zitzer

“He saw one of my social media videos,” Young says about Zitzer. “He emailed me and said he works for Netflix in Hollywood and that he is making documentaries about small businesses.”

“He thought it would be really cool to do a documentary about my guitar building,” Young shares. “Marko will come to my shop, and I will walk him through the process of building a guitar and how I got started. We might have some other guitar players that own my guitars in it as well.”

Sharing A moment of gratitude

“God has blessed me in every way that is possible!” says Young, expressing joy over his newfound fame. “All I wanted to do was build guitars. I love what I do! To me, this is the best job possible!”

www.joshuayoungguitars.com