Roger grew up in New York City in the 1950s with a Dad who listened to Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole and a Mom who loved listening to songs from Broadway musicals. He began playing guitar in the spring of his junior year in college, learning to fingerpick by playing Gordon Lightfoot and Paul Simon tunes.
While working his way through a PhD program in psychobiology at Rutgers University, Roger became friends with a group of professional folk musicians and immediately admired their wonderful vintage Martin guitars. He soon became obsessed with the guitar and began writing to guitar makers all over the world to seek an apprenticeship. A year later, he left his PhD goals behind and began working with luthier Augie LoPrinzi building acoustic guitars in New Jersey.
Within months of opening his workshop in Manhattan, Roger was servicing the guitars and basses of the top session players in town. Bassists such as Will Lee, Neil Jason, Oscar Cartaya, Hugh McDonald, and others were having Roger customize their basses and installing an active treble/bass boost tone circuit he was working with. The immediate feedback was that they never sounded better and engineers were noticing how perfectly the bass tracks sat in the mix and cut through live. The legendary “Sadowsky Sound" was born.
In those early years, working musicians would approach Roger wanting advice on getting a good guitar or bass. He would have them buy an early-’60s Fender, which at the time could be purchased for about $800. They would bring those instruments to Sadowsky Guitars, where Roger would do his magic. At the end of the day, for the reasonable sum of around $1,300-$1500 (including the purchase price of the instrument), Roger would provide to them a first-class instrument.
Guitarists also received the significant benefits of Roger’s success in bass building. In addition to creating a very popular line of chambered solidbody guitars, including an especially renowned Electric Nylon guitar, he developed a very special line of archtop hollowbody and semi-hollowbody electric guitars. These instruments have become standards in the industry for superior tone, feel, playability and especially value.
Notwithstanding his increasing success in the marketplace, Roger maintains his commitment to staying small and wanting to primarily sell directly to the working musician rather than to music stores. He enjoys dealing personally with the player and seeing the entire guitar building process through from design to completion. And after many decades of producing some of the world’s most coveted instruments, Roger’s greatest joy continues to be witnessing the complete satisfaction a customer receives when making music with a Sadowsky instrument.
