IN A WORLD IN which mammoth guitar companies take smaller ones to court to clamp down on any perceived infringement of design trademarks, one resolutely small-shop maker is working symbiotically with a legendary brand to make the world a better place, one guitar at a time.
Luthier Matthew Hughes founded Banker Custom Guitars in Dawsonville, Georgia, in 2017, and respect for his old-school approach to the craft has grown exponentially in the five years since. The Banker name was chosen because Hughes was a banker before he switched to building on a full-time basis. The company reached wider attention in 2019 when it became the first boutique maker accepted to Gibson’s new Authorized Partner Program, which licenses Banker to employ certain historical
