My story
“Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what to do with your life.
The most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives.
Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don’t know.”
Do you recall this song “everybody’s free to wear sunscreen” from the end of the 90s. Well, not really a song, more of a kind of a pamphlet with a commercial voice delivering some kind of advices to a lost generation…
When I was nearly 22 I had no clue what should I do with my life. I was born in Paris and grew up in a small village in the south of France. I had managed to save enough money to fly to New York and I quickly found myself in front of a guitar store near the 5th avenue, staring at an old Tele… The seller was a smiling little man that said nothing at my sight. He only nodded and handed me the old Lady. From the very first tone, the feel and the sound took me completely over. I felt as if it was my lost soulmate…
I could not afford it.
Few years down the road and I still did not know what to do with my life. I somehow ended up to be a lawyer, quit law before getting 30, founded an internet company in the middle of the 90s…. and then just quit everything and move to Israel within 48 hours after I met Hila, now my lovely Israeli wife.
However, the sound of that old Lady was still playing in my head.
Few years later, a good friend of mine asked me a simple question: would you start everything from scratch, what will you do? After few seconds, the answer stroke me! I would be a guitar builder! Why didn’t I think of this before? Well, sometimes you just need a good friend by your side…
I was then lucky enough to meet with Master luthier Jacob Algrenati and to join his lutherie course in Tel-Aviv. The most important thing I have learnt from Master Jacob is that what makes a handmade instrument so special, beyond the quality of its materials, is the soul that the builder breathes into the “body”.
I started building guitars, eager to start “breathing my soul” into the newly created “bodies”. But there are no shortcuts in life and years have passed until I felt the moment has arrived, and the instrument I crafted has the spirit I so desired.
Only then I felt ready to take things one (Huge!) step further and I created La Grange guitars.
La Grange guitars are reflections of this special moment, in which the instrument and the musician become one. Each guitar is 100% handmade with passion and love, aiming for absolute perfection. Guitars that have something from my soul in it, and some of that old Lady from the streets of Manhattan.
I am proud and thrilled to share here with you the instruments that I hand build.
Feel free to contact me and share your remarks, comments and support.
Passionately Yours!
Benjamin W.
Contact me
Benjamin Wasservogel
lagrangeguitars@gmail.com