About Us

Phil Maynard is the luthier for Ghost Town Guitars, the business he started in 2020 after working for 12
years with Dan Roberts at Roberts Stringworks in Belgrade, Montana. As an apprentice to Dan, Phil
learned the technical process of building high quality custom guitars, repairs and restorations. His
appreciation of music and friendship with musicians encouraged his desire to develop guitars capable of
producing superior sound with clear and balanced resonance and comfortable playability. Phil’s prior
training and artistic background as a painter of watercolors, and early years restoring and painting
custom and vintage cars has given him a unique ability to master the nuances of detail, materials, and
colors needed to achieve a high-quality finish applied to an instrument that has been constructed with
thoughtful attention to every component and step.

Ghost Town Guitars is located in the historic mining community of Rimini Montana. Although Rimini is
listed in several publications featuring ‘ghost’ towns of Montana, it is actually a small community about
15 miles southwest of Helena with 30+ year-round residents who appreciate the beauty and solitude of
living in the shadow of majestic Red Mountain. Phil is a Helena native whose maternal great grandfather
operated a thriving blacksmithing business in Helena from 1892 when it was a busy gold-mining hub to
1946 when the auto industry made blacksmithing obsolete.

After learning the custom car painting trade in his teenage years Phil moved to Seattle and studied
sculpture and painting at Cornish College of the Arts under well recognized artists such as Buster
Simpson, whose ‘recycled art’ utilizing discarded industrial materials includes the Seattle George
Monument honoring Chief Seattle located in the Seattle Convention Center. Following his studies at
Cornish, Phil returned to Helena where he met his wife. In pursuit of his desire to preserve Montana
history, in the early 1990’s Phil moved his family to Rimini where their property includes historic miner’s
cabins, the original Rimini post office and Headquarters Saloon, a blacksmith shop, and a boarding house
that is now the renovated building housing Ghost Town Guitars. The Rimini logo on the headstock of all
Ghost Town Guitars custom models pays tribute to this unique Montana location.