occasions that there might be a position here
for him, but he loves Montana too much to
leave it.”
“I revere Ren as a superb craftsman,” says
Mike McGuire, director of operations for
Gibson’s Nashville plant. “Plus, he is just
a great guy.” Comparisons between Ren
Ferguson and Lloyd Loar are frequent and
well deserved. Both Loar and Ferguson have
taken big liberties with the design of Gibson
instruments, and both men placed intense
scrutiny on the physical structure of the
instruments they revised. Loar changed the
bracing inside the F- 5 mandolin from a single
cross brace in the round soundhole version to
two vertical, parallel “tone bars” or braces in
the the revised F- 5.
Additionally, Loar changed the openings to
F-holes on the F- 5 mandolin, the K- 5 man-docello, the H- 5 mandola and the L- 5 guitar.
Ferguson, on the other hand, took LeRoy
Parnell’s 1930s L-00 to a chiropractic office
to have an X-ray taken of its bracings so he
could understand just what made it so special
of a guitar.
“I’m really flattered by the [Lloyd Loar] comparison,” says Ren. “Loar brought a engineering background to Gibson and I brought an
experience background with me. We are
both musicians, too.”
The praise for Ferguson’s work isn’t just
limited to those within the guitar industry.
Between 500 and 600 orders come into
the Bozeman plant annually with a request
for Ren’s signature on the label inside the
soundhole. Ren is glad to oblige because his
signature is now in such demand that it helps
sell guitars from Gibson Montana. Perhaps
modern day investors are speculating that the
value of the Ren Ferguson period at Gibson
Montana will equal or exceed the Lloyd Loar
period of Gibson in the twenties, but what
is certain is that guitar investors are betting
on the future. In the years to come, the time
to do the elaborate inlay Ren does, and the
materials used for that inlay, will become
more scarce. Solid abalone is hardly ever
used anymore, so Ren’s involvement not withstanding, these “Master Museum” models, as
Gibson calls them, will definitely appreciate in
value for years to come.
Ren was originally born Lawrence Ferguson
on February 26, 1946, in Detroit, Michigan.
As was family tradition on his father’s side,
all first born males were to be named after
their paternal grandfather – in this case, Ren’s
grandfather, Lawrence. Not a big fan of the
nickname “Larry,” Mrs. Ferguson intervened,
instead giving him the nickname, “Ren,”
after a favorite artist. “My mother, who had
been an artist at Disney for a while, had a
great admiration for an airbrush artist named
Renwick,” he recalls.
Ferguson in his early mountain years
Ren began his luthier career, as it were, in
shop class at Westchester High School, in
Westchester, California. By the early sixties
Ren had a Harmony guitar and his brother
had a banjo – both rather poor excuses for
instruments. Ren decided he could make a
banjo in shop class for his brother. “I had no
idea how complicated instrument building
was back then,” he says. “I soon found out
how critical tolerances had to be for frets and
bridges and the like.” Ren’s father had a furniture business with a spray booth in it, and
he got to experiment with refinishing wood
furniture that people would trade in – in addition to plenty of Nocasters and Telecasters.
“I ruined a lot of potentially expensive guitars
back then,” Ren recalls.
Later in high school he took a job selling guitars at a local music store, Westchester Music,
which is now part of the runway at LAX
airport. Westchester Music was a big store
with a large record department in those days;
they offered lessons on piano, organ, guitar
and most any other band instrument. The
store had a large rental department, and Ren
was kept busy. “I learned a lot about what it
takes to keep band instruments in service,”
he explains. “The airport would break about
one guitar a day, and they would ask us to
replace the instrument or repair it. Often the
passenger would sell me his broken guitar or
even give it to me after being reimbursed by
the airport for the damage – I had a big stack
of guitars from airport passengers. Back in
those days it was easy enough to get a brace
from Martin or a neck from Gibson.” Ren
cut his luthier teeth learning how to rebuild
these broken guitars before taking a brief
hiatus from Westchester to sell Dobros for
the Dopera family. “I would hustle Dobros on
the street, in clubs or wherever there were
musicians I could demo the instrument to. I
even designed a thin profile Dobro we called
the ‘Californian,’ which was going into production about the time that the company was
bought up by Mosrite and Buck Owens and
ultimately moved to Bakersfield,” he says.
Eventually he set up classes teaching guitar
and mandolin building in California before
being drafted. While in the Navy he met two
brothers, the Millers, who kept telling him
how beautiful Montana was; soon after his
discharge from the Navy in February of 1969,
he traveled to Montana for his first Mountain
Man Rendezvous, an event where men cavort
as rugged outdoorsmen from days gone by.
“I still wonder what would have happened
to me financially if I had stayed in California
and built guitars, instead of coming up here
to Montana to eat dirt and chew grass,”
he says. Ren wonders if he would have had
Bob Taylor’s place in history as the premier
California guitar maker.
MONTANA AND MANDOLINS
Ren eventually moved to the Bozeman area
in the mid-seventies to make gunstocks for
Shiloh Sharps and to do some trapping. He
was playing music in a church band and was
at his minister’s house when he got a call
from Steve Carlson, the owner of the Flatiron
Mandolin Company. Steve had already decid
