With his sophisticated guitars now being played by such world-famous artists as Bon Jovi, Bryan Adams and Sinead O’Connor, Irish luthier Alistair Hay is enjoying ever-greater success.
Having taken on very unusual projects over the last 15 years—including building luxury 26-string double neck guitars—no design challenge seems impossible for the amiable founder and owner of Donegal-based Emerald Guitars, which specializes in carbon fiber instruments.
He first broke into this highly competitive sector when he produced an intricately-designed guitar for American rock musician Steve Vai. The design, based on his ‘The Ultrazone’ album cover which showed a half-alien, half-human cradling a highly-decorative one, was presented personally to the star in Los Angeles after 1,000 hours of dedicated work.
Since then, he has produced a dragon-shaped electric guitar, now simply known as ‘Bahamut,’ for one of Asia's biggest pop idols, Wang Leehom. Traveling to Malaysia to see the artist perform in Kuala Lumpur, Alistair was left delighted. “It was my first time experiencing what Leehom’s live shows were like, and it was amazing. There were close to 50,000 people chanting ‘Bahamut,’ calling for the guitar I had made back home in my workshop in rural Ireland. It was a wonderful feeling.”
It was more than obvious that Leehom was pleased, too. “I had never seen a guitar like this. In Ireland, there is a master; every guitar he makes is a one-of-a-kind masterpiece made by his own hands,” he said. “His name? Alistair Hay.”
Recently, Alistair completed a guitar for Brendan Lewis, a Chicago client, with an intricate design based on Taoist philosophy regarding water. He traveled to the Tibetan region of China accompanied by cameraman, Alan McLaughlin, to have it custom-decorated with Eastern art by Canadian artist Kristel Tenzin Dolma Ouwehand, whom he had met previously in Donegal. Ouwehand was teaching at the Amdo Art Project, in the monastery town of Labrang. “We chose a Shan Shui-style with a flowing river as the central theme, based on a 300-year-old mural inside the monastery itself,” he said.
It has been a long learning curve for Alistair over many years. He began designing children’s toys, including slides and go-karts with his father, Bobby, then later speedboats in the US, and finally guitars. “My father was a natural, skilled handyman who started his own engineering company,” he recalls. “He encouraged me ever since I was child to experiment with different materials.”
Alistair’s big break arrived while studying polymer engineering at the Institute of Technology in Athlone, through which he got the chance as a to go to St Louis, Missouri, “to learn the American way.”
“It was a remarkable period for me,” he recalls about the experience he gained working with Bill Seebold Jr., a legendary US Formula One boat racing world champion. “He took me under his wing, bringing me to lunch many days, teaching me, inspiring me to achieve something with my life. One day he told me, ‘Anybody can be a world champion, if they find what they can be a world champion in.’ That made me think about what I could be best in the world at.”
