About John Carruthers

John began his musical career by studying guitar for seven years, working towards becoming a professional musician. By playing the guitar and being mechanically inclined, he decided to try and make his own guitars.

After graduating from high school in the late sixties, John decided to move to Los Angeles and obtained a job working at Westwood Music repairing guitars. C.F. Martin the IV was studying at UCLA at that time, and knew that Westwood Music was an authorized dealer and a Martin Service Center. C.F. wanted a part-time job and started working with John, who showed him how to build his first guitar. When Bob Taylor was first starting out, he met with John to gain insight about building acoustic guitars.

Over the years John built a solid reputation and worked on many famous musicians' guitars including the Rolling Stones, Doors, Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, Tommy Tedesco, Joe Pass, Lee Ritenour, Frank Zappa, Eric Clapton, Steely Dan... and many more.

Having had a huge success and an excellent reputation in the guitar repair Industry, Guitar Player magazine invited him to be on staff to write the Guitar Workshop column. Additionally, Yamaha asked John to work for them as a consultant to help design their SG, SA, FG and FC electric and acoustic guitars, and their highly successful BB basses. Yamaha also hired him to set up their service department and train their personnel. When CBS hired Bill Schultz, whom John had worked with at Yamaha to reinvigorate Fender. Bill Schultz in turn hired John to work at Fender. John's career working on design and production spanned from their Fullerton complex to Brea, and finally to Corona.

Leo Fender took notice of John's work, and asked him to consult with him on design and implementation of the Music Man Stingray and Sabre models. Upon Leo's death, John was given the honor to make a limited 600-count run of bodies of the Leo Fender Commemorative Guitar Model for G&L. During the same time period, John also worked for Ibanez and helped them design and improve many of their guitars including the Joe Pass model, and the Artist Series guitars and basses.

With these notable accomplishments, John quickly moved to a larger shop in Santa Monica. After a few years, he bought his historic shop in Venice Beach, CA, where he remained for 30 years. John was approached in the 90's by Mr. Hisatake Shibuya, the owner of Musician's Institute, to establish the Guitar Craft Academy program. The GCA program has continued to grow in popularity every year. It has been rewarding for John to see many of GCA graduates continue on to perform important work in the music industry. Besides the employees that work for John at his shop, he feels that the GCA program has given him a chance to pass on his experiences to the next generations.

In 2011, Carruthers Guitars has moved from the historic Venice facility to a new facility in Camarillo, CA. The new facility is nearly three times the size and is better equipped for manufacturing John's world renowned guitars and basses. In 2016 when DeerRidge Guitars was established John came on board as a consultant on all aspects of our guitar designs and manufacturing. We're confident and proud to continue on Carruthers' tradition of making great instruments with the vintage tone and feel, at the same time offering modern playability!

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