Jean Larrivee
Video
Oral History Information
Interview Date
Job Title
Founder
Company Name
Larrivee Guitars
Jean Larrivee fell in love with the guitar as a young boy growing up in Canada during the folk craze of the 1960s. He imagined a unique sound for an acoustic guitar and set out to create a handcrafted instrument that would produce that sound. The more guitars Jean created, the more demand he seemed to have to build more guitars. He soon discovered that creating that special sound or even recreating that sound was not as challenging as keeping up with the back log of requests. Jean built a new manufacturing plant in California and worked to tool the machines in a way that production would maintain the quality and craftsmanship his customers came to appreciate.