His work recording the acoustic guitar for his Windham Hill label with Michael Hedges, Alex DeGrassi, himself, and countless others literally established the modern standard for the sound of these instruments. As a player, a producer, and an engineer of acoustic music, there is simply no other individual who has ever had the impact on the listening public regarding the acoustic guitar which Will has. There are two things I have to cite about this exception.įirst, the depth and scope of Will’s impact on the world of the guitar is universally acknowledged. In the Spring of 2014, we introduced a Will Ackerman Signature Model Froggy Bottom Guitar. And that highlights the exception we made to the rule. Any serious player deserves better than to be simply handed someone else’s guitar. We understand that most of you have your own needs in your guitars, and we do our very best to address your needs on your personal terms. We have an impressive list of players, famous and otherwise, for whom we have built guitars, but we do not advertise them. We wanted to rest in the assurance that anyone who is playing a Froggy Bottom guitar is doing so because it is their guitar of choice – and decidedly not because the company was happy to ship him a selection of free instruments a week before the latest tour hit the road. The message was clear: we wanted our success to be driven by our instruments. (Needless to say, Elvis did NOT play a Froggy.) It’s a game we do not play.įor years around the shop, we joked that, “When the King leaves the building, He takes His Froggy Bottom with Him”. One need only look around the world of acoustic guitars to realize that instrument making companies circle famous players like vultures in search of possibilities to get the latest guitar hero to hang his or her name around another so-called signature instrument. Since starting Froggy Bottom Guitars with the construction of my first guitar in 1970, we have strictly avoided celebrity endorsements.

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