Rob Budzinski
Every RJB guitar starts and ends with one person. For more than two decades, Rob has designed, carved, wired, and finished each instrument himself, in a small shop in Dillsburg, Pennsylvania.
Rob was born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and first found his direction after encountering the guitars Alembic built for the Grateful Dead — deeply chambered, exotic-wood instruments that were as considered in their construction as in their tone. He studied business, earning a BS in Marketing from Edinboro University of Pennsylvania and an MBA from Temple University, before turning that same discipline toward the workbench.
For more than twenty years, Rob has hand-built lightweight semi-hollow and chambered guitars from that shop — nearly all neck-through construction, in the style known among builders as the "hippie sandwich": a laminated spine of contrasting woods running the full length of the instrument. Necks and bodies are shaped, carved, and finished entirely by hand, without CNC machinery, so every guitar carries small variations a production line would erase.
In 2021, Rob acquired one of Bob Weir's personal guitars — now part of a small reference collection that quietly informs every instrument that leaves the shop.
Woods are chosen as carefully as the construction itself: figured maple, ebony, and rosewood alongside denser exotic hardwoods like zircote, goncalo alves, and purpleheart — selected for weight, tone, and figure in equal measure.
Dillsburg, Pennsylvania
The shop is in Dillsburg, about 20 minutes outside Harrisburg. Visitors are welcome to see the shop and play a guitar in person — reach out to schedule a time.