Jens Ritter

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Jens Ritter

Jens Ritter (* 1972 in Bad Dürkheim ) is a German guitar maker .

Life

Ritter, a trained mechanical engineer, began tinkering with his electric guitar as a teenager. He had learned carving from his grandfather and his father gave him the tools he needed. He played bass in various regional bands and created his first two electric basses from 1994 ; He left this to an author for the magazine Guitar & Bass and received a good review. For the first three years, Ritter was a hobbyist building electric bass, then he devoted all of his time to it. He exhibited his instruments at the Frankfurt Music Fair and at the National Association of Music Merchants in the USA and was able to win several well-known customers; Doug Wimbish and Phil Lesh were among the first . After initially creating electric basses, Ritter also began manufacturing electric guitars , and was able to win George Benson as a customer here .

Since 2007, Ritter’s manufactory has been located in a former winery in Deidesheim , Palatinate , where he and his team produce around 70 to 80 instruments every year, most of which are exported; about 60% go to the USA. It takes up to a year and a half or more to produce a copy that costs up to € 240,000. Ritter's electric guitars and basses are not only acquired by musicians, but also by collectors and museums; his instruments can be seen in the Metropolitan Museum of Art ( New York City ), the Smithsonian American Art Museum ( Washington, DC ), the Museum of Fine Arts ( Boston ) and the Technoseum ( Mannheim ).

Woods such as maple , mahogany or ebony are used for Ritter's instruments , but occasionally also those that normally do not sound good; for the electric guitar " The Pechstein " he used oak wood and in 2019 he presented an electric guitar that he had created from the " Kerwebaum " of the Deidesheimer Weinkerwe , a spruce.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Press release No. 305 of November 2nd, 2017: Three candidates nominated for the Pfalzpreis für den Kunsthandwerk. District Association of the Palatinate, accessed on September 1, 2019 . (PDF; 0.1 MB)
  2. ↑ a b c Petra Depper-Koch: Sleeping beauties from the Palatinate In: The Rheinpfalz , your weekend. At home in the Palatinate, No. 255, November 3, 2018.
  3. ^ A b Franz Holtmann: 20 years of Ritter Instruments. Music media, accessed August 25, 2019 .
  4. ^ Electric Bass, 2011. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, accessed August 25, 2019 .
  5. ↑ "Riesling-Guitar" goes under the hammer. Südwestrundfunk, accessed August 25, 2019 .
  6. ↑ Jochen Willner: Kerwespitze: For 1410 euros to Neustadt-Haardt In: Die Rheinpfalz, Mittelhaardter Rundschau No. 194, August 22, 2019.
personal data
SURNAME Knight, Jens
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German guitar maker
DATE OF BIRTH 1972
PLACE OF BIRTH Bad Dürkheim