Making America's Guitars & The Fastest Guitar Ever Played

Great interview with Peter Brown of Loudo Guitars.

At 14, he took apart his Squire Stratocaster, and then hastily reassembled it when he saw his mom’s reaction. It wasn’t until Brown discovered the Roberto-Venn School of Luthiery in Phoenix, Arizona, that he finally found his calling.

At Roberto Venn, Brown trained himself to work long hours, performing complicated technical guitar repairs and honing in on elements of instrument design. He began to form his own theories about the craft of guitar-making, and set out to explore some of its mysteries.

“In the guitar industry, there’s a whole lot of mojo with how things work,” Brown said. “People know a little bit, and whatever you can’t explain becomes mojo. It seems to be one of those ways people sell stuff.

“I see it as a science,” he said. “If your mechanic tried to sell you on mojo, you wouldn’t take your car there.”

One of them took a shine to his ideas about guitar-making, and told him, “You’re laudo,’” which his classmate interpreted as Latin for “praiseworthy.” The Imperium, Pete Brown’s inaugural guitar model for his Loudo brand. Credit: Matt Walker for Loudo. He would spend the next 15 years restoring and rebuilding guitars, all the while refining the designs of his own instrument models.

One of the first musicians to play the Imperium is Zach LoPresti, a longtime friend of Brown’s and Loudo’s first brand ambassador. A talented improvisational player with the bands Gnarbot and Out of the Beardspace, LoPresti said the Imperium allows him to switch among a variety of feels on the fly.



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