Christian Allen Luthiery

Home
United States
Nevada City, CA
Christian Allen Luthiery

Custom built guitars and expert repair so they play and sound the way you want them to. Call or email for an appointment. Thanks for looking and take care.

Christian Allen Luthiery, located Nevada City, CA, specializes in building high-end custom instruments, with a focus on electric and acoustic guitars ad basses. It was started by Christian Salisbury in 2010 while the idea first arose in 2005. Inspired by his entirely musical family, Christian developed a great interest in both music and woodworking at an early age. He started building guitars when

he was fourteen while in his high school wood shop class and worked extensively at a cabinet shop post his high school graduation to hone his woodworking skills. During those years he was also one of the guitarists of the band Alta, and often played on guitars that he had built himself. In 2004, Christian began serious study of instrument-making at The Roberto-Venn School of Luthiery and received his certificate in 2005. Upon graduating from Roberto-Venn, Christian worked at The Guitar Workshop, a custom repair guitar shop in Sacramento, CA where he continued to gain experience in professional instrument repair and studied what made good guitars tick. After working there for six years, he opened his own shop in Nevada City, CA where he currently makes and repairs fine custom instruments.

12/20/2025

This baritone and standard are still available. What special person in your life needs some extra wowza?!

12/19/2025

A newer client has been steadily bringing his guitar collection for set-ups and modifications; and he has a knack for finding some real fun guitars. In order there are:
-Langejans,
-Iris
-Tele
-Atkin
-Gretsch
-Gibson SG
-And a great Martin OOO18 that I evidently took no pictures of🤷‍♂️

All of which are very groovy, great sounding guitars. The Gretsch got a set of Lollartrons, the SG got a set of Seth Lovers, and they all got some fretwork, set-up work, and are playing quite nicely if I do say so myself.

Big thanks to for sending my way; we’ve been having some fun!

12/13/2025

I got to have some fun with a workhorse of a guitar for and it just so happened to be his signature guitar from
It had a loose brace, some finish chips and a bunch of fret wear to take care of. All in time before his first tour in India! It’s fun seeing your buddies name in the long list of names on a pack of strings.

12/12/2025

For the last couple months I’ve been getting a deep dive schooling into chisel and blade sharpening; a skill I’ve never felt comfortable with, with my friend and master builder Mathieu Peeters.

Mathieu is in charge of East Wind, a shop specializing in building homes in the Japanese tradition, awesome joinery, no nails, and the work he and his small team do is absolutely amazing.

And because of his generosity, my chisels and planes have never been so sharp and pleasant to use!

The video is of his microwave gun, that’s right, a microwave gun! It helps speed the process of glue drying when it’s really cold out. Little did I know that at some point in my life I would want a microwave gun 😅

12/11/2025

This dude is on its way to be finished by the one and only , can’t wait to see what magic he works into it.

This has been a fun guitar to figure out; all sorts of firsts for me in this build. Bent sides, carved back and top to mention a couple things.

12/06/2025

I heard a noise late last night in the shop; found this little dude storing acorns in an old classical of mine. This little dude has been stashing acorns all over the shop, I find them everywhere 😂

10/17/2025

There’s nothing like having awesome musicians come to the shop, play and melt all nearby faces. does this very well. I got to work on his fretless bass adding a ghost piezo bridge along with the additional mini switch and piezo volume control. And there’s no feeling like routing into a custom instrument to make room for a battery.
There was JUST enough room to get all the electronics to fit into the control cavity. It was like it was meant to be…
Wrapped it up with a leveling of the fretboard and a set up, it’s ready for all sorts of tomfoolery.

10/05/2025

Rest in peace Ken Parker! Truly, one of the most innovative people and guitar builders to ever walk this earth. Your creativity knew no bounds! 🕉🙏❤️🎸

06/27/2025

This was a fun project. A late 80’s Japanese Strat with their version of a Floyd Rose. The high E fine tuner was stripped and no longer working; which made for the perfect excuse to work with He made a new fine tuner with a larger thread size and re-tapped the threads on the base plate to match. It now tunes as intended, thanks James!

I also installed a fun combination of new pickups; a JB in the bridge and two of new Super-Caster pickups for the middle and neck positions. It is a great combo!

I used a CTS 295 series volume pot with a no-treble-bleed circuit and a CTS no load tone pot.

Throw in some shielding and a set of 11’s, this guitar is all sorts of fun to play.

05/25/2025

A few months ago I finished an all mahogany tenor ukulele for a dear friend of mine and musician yogi extraordinaire, Sam. We were both at a week long meditation retreat and it was the perfect time to present it to him.

I had built him a baritone ukulele a number of years back so it was a joy to make a tenor to round out his collection.

Big thanks to for doing the beautiful nitro lacquer finish😍. So damn well done! Another big thanks to budding film maker .chakravarty for taking the wonderful photos.

The top, neck and sides are mahogany and the back is sapele. The fingerboard, head cap and bridge are macassar ebony. Bone nut and saddle. Those discontinued micro tuners from and a aloha twin pickup.

Address

Nevada City, CA
95959

Website

http://www.christianallenluthiery.com/

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Christian Allen Luthiery posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The Business

Send a message to Christian Allen Luthiery:

Shortcuts

Want your business to be the top-listed Business in Nevada City?