Froggy Bottom Guitars

Froggy Bottom Guitars started in 1970 in Michael Millard's Lower East Side apartment in New York City, where he built his first instrument by bending the sides over the heat riser running through his kitchen. He was working at Gurian Guitars on Grand Street at the time, where he had absorbed the free-form classical-guitar tradition of building without a rigid mold — a method Gene Clark, David Rubio, and Manuel Velazquez had brought to Bob Gurian. Michael's first Froggy Bottom was a Gurian-shaped jumbo built for the bluesman George Gritzbach; the bracing pattern was already his own.

Froggy Bottom Guitars started in 1970 in Michael Millard's Lower East Side apartment in New York City, where he built his first instrument by bending the sides over the heat riser running through his kitchen. He was working at Gurian Guitars on Grand Street at the time, where he had absorbed the free-form classical-guitar tradition of building without a rigid mold — a method Gene Clark, David Rubio, and Manuel Velazquez had brought to Bob Gurian. Michael's first Froggy Bottom was a Gurian-shaped jumbo built for the bluesman George Gritzbach; the bracing pattern was already his own. He moved with the Gurian shop to New Hampshire in 1973, left to go full-time on Froggy Bottom in 1974, and eventually settled in Newfane, Vermont, where the shop has remained. The Froggy Bottom philosophy was fixed from the first commission: build the guitar for the individual player, not a fixed model. Every component of every guitar — top thickness, brace cross-sections, neck profile, scale length, body shape — varies to the specifications and feel a particular musician asks for.