Ruokangas Guitars
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| Musical instruments | |
| Founded | 1995 |
| Founder | Juha Ruokangas |
| Headquarters | Janakkala, Finland |
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Area served
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Global |
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Key people
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| Website | http://www.ruokangas.com |
Ruokangas Guitars builds solid-body and semi-hollow electric guitars, including models such as Duke, VSOP, Mojo, Hellcat and Unicorn. The company builds guitars using traditional methods – no modern computer-controlled machinery or serial production methods are used. Each guitar is built individually by a luthier.
Ruokangas Guitars is a privately held corporation, solely owned by Master Luthier Juha Ruokangas.
1995 – Juha Ruokangas founds the company as a sole trader and rents a small workshop facility in Finland, Hyvinkää at Wanha Villatehdas, building and repairing guitars.
1996 – Juha starts using moose shin bone as nut material in all his guitars and repairwork.
1997 – The website ruokangas.com is published, and the first Ruokangas guitar model – the Duke – is launched. Juha experiments with Spanish Cedar (Cedrela odorata) as the body and neckwood – a tonewood not commonly used in electric guitars. Spanish Cedar is to become one of the fundamental characteristics of Ruokangas Guitars.
1998 – Juha participates in a thermo treatment project (a Finnish invention), funded by the European Union. Thermo treated tonewood becomes a common feature in Ruokangas guitars. The method slowly becomes popular in other parts of the world, too. In the North America thermo treated wood is often referred to with such trade names as roasted, torrefied or caramelised wood.
1999 – Juha starts co-operation with fellow craftsmen Mika Koskinen and Jiri Kaarmela, who are to become part owners of the company two years later, along with luthier Jarkko Lindholm, who joins the team in 2000, but leaves a year later to work on his own Lindholm Musical Instruments. Juha designs and launches new variations of the Duke theme and introduces another uncommon local material – the Arctic Birch tops.
2000 – Juha designs and launches the second Ruokangas model – VSOP, built of thermo treated Alder and Rock Maple – and attends the Frankfurt Musikmesse for the first time.
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Wikipedia