A New Addition to the DG Line-up: EddieLee Brown
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We are pleased to add EddieLee Brown to our line-up of builders here at Dream Guitars. Let’s get to know more about this great up and coming builder.
EddieLee Brown’s first love is music. He played guitar and bass in a traveling rock band in the 70’s. More recently he has fallen in love with fingerstyle guitar playing. “Whether playing electric or acoustic, for me, tone is everything. I have always worked hard to develop a great tone as a basis for playing any instrument,” states EddieLee.
EddieLee has also been a photographer, a Bonsai artist and landscaper, and studied drawing. Each of these helped him develop a sense of design, proportion, and what is pleasing to the eye. He practiced as a Doctor of Oriental Medicine helping heal people with acupuncture, massage, and herbal medicine. This helped him develop a sensitivity of touch and understanding that one part of a system will affect other parts. EddieLee also has a master’s degree in electrical engineering with a strong background in physics and mechanical engineering. He loves physics and determining, from a scientific view point, how things work. This helps him be able to predict how a system will behave when one part of it is changed.
New ELB Guitars OM1937M-D
Brown had a nice stable of electric guitars and basses from his band days in the 70’s and 80’s but in the 2000’s, he found himself playing his acoustic guitar most of the time. When he decided to upgrade his old acoustic, he found the world of hand-built guitars. “The first time they handed me one, I could not believe the difference, and it changed my world. I bought a Goodall Rosewood/Red Wood, Grand Concert and fell in love with the guitar all over again. After playing and hearing the great tone and feeling how responsive it was, I would just stare at the beauty of the wood, design and construction. That is when I got the desire to start building,” quotes EddieLee.
EddieLee has now been building guitars for about 6 years, although 
he had studied guitar design and preparing a few years before that. He also spent time prior to starting his first guitar honing the woodworking skills he would need to produce great looking instruments. The first instruments he built were Native American Flutes which are wooden flutes. EddieLee has been playing these for many years, and loved the instrument. Their construction uses many of the same techniques and skills used in guitar building, so it seemed like a good “warm-up instrument” for him. “They are so much fun to make and I love the feedback I get from people when they get them in their hands. Guitar building followed soon after. It is a real joy to turn a pile of wood into a beautiful instrument and then hear other players make beautiful music with them,” says EddieLee.
Mahogany back of a ELB Guitars OM1937M-D
In EddieLee’s building style, he works to combine elements from his past careers. “I think there is real value in mixing together the old methods using touch, feeling, and tapping and meld into that the newer science to produce a very vibrant instrument with great tone”, quotes EddieLee. Among others, he is currently using Chladni patterns, along with traditional methods, for sound board voicing. He also uses techniques to produce spectrographics of the sound produced by tapping the guitar and its components during the build process. This tool gives a visual and measurable representation of what he hears when tapping the guitar. “Although it can never give me all the information that my ears can, it does allow me to see the frequencies of the main vibration patterns, allowing me to adjust them precisely. I believe these and other science based ways of measuring and determining how the guitar is operating, lets me produce an instrument with better and more consistent tone. And for me, tone has to be there” quotes EddieLee.
Outside of building guitars, EddieLee Brown is still a musician. “I play mainly fingerstyle guitar but still love to get an electric now and then a fire up the old Mesa Boogie Mark IIC”, says EddieLee.
“EddieLee is one of the guys you meet and just know that he builds a great guitar. He came to lutherie later in life and brings all his vast experiences to a new form of expression, the acoustic guitar. I was so impressed with the tone of his instruments that I broke my own rule of waiting until a maker has built 20 or more guitars. EddieLee has some special design elements as well like internal mass elements to manipulate the character of tone. Very fresh and exciting” – Paul Heumiller