“You get emails saying they’d like to try a guitar and you think, ‘It’s not going to be THAT Audley Freed, is it?… Then the penny drops”: How Ivison Guitars became Britain’s hottest high-end brand

Ivison Dakota Standard in Cadillac Green photographed against its cream-covered Hiscox hard-shell guitar case.

We last caught up with UK guitar builder Neil Ivison just over 18 months ago – and quite a lot has changed and evolved since then. Fundamentally, Ivison is now making its own pickups in-house – quite an undertaking for such a small operation.

Neil explains: “Basically, I took on Paul Cross to help me build the guitars and he wound his own pickups, so it made sense – if we now had someone on staff who can wind pickups – to make our own.