Johann (Hans) Brentrup has been a woodworker all his life and has built instruments since the 1970’s.  He worked as a repairman at several top instrument stores and built guitars and mandolins during the ‘70’s and ‘80’s.

At the urging of his musician friends, Hans began building mandolins exclusively at his shop in Minneapolis, where he has built over 250 mandolins and mandolas. He has earned the reputation of being one of the finest mandolin builders in the United States. 

In the last year Hans has turned his attention back to guitar building and is bringing back the classic instruments of the past. His focus in particular is the Larson style instruments and his guitars feature many of the Larson innovations.

He has been admiring the various Larson style instruments for some time, and finally decided to model his own instruments based on the Larsons. He is featuringGrand Concert 12 strings with long and regular scale made for either medium or heavy strings. He is also making a Larson grand concert shape 6 strings and a 12-1/2” parlor size.

The instruments feature cylindrical radius tops,  15’ radius backs, laminated back braces, some tops are ladder braced ala old Stella intruments, and some feature carbon fibre “tone tubes” similar to the Larson Prairie State instruments. Stay tuned because the next instruments will be gloss finished, dark reddish stained quarter sawn white oak...just about the coolest tone wood I've seen. Reminds me of an early 12 string that Paul Jeremiah restored and plays which I thought was about the neatest vintage 12 string I had ever seem.

Hans hand makes the very cool the Larson Brothers style purflings of the past. While the instruments are not exact duplicates of Larson instruments, they are heavily influenced by them and have the “flavor” of the 1920’s.