Ian writes.....

"I’ve been playing the guitar now for over 30 years and have collected a few over the years…if only I’d managed to keep my hair like my instruments!! It all started in the late 1970’s learning how to play Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells on a Kay acoustic bought for £10 from my sister Sylvia’s Littlewoods catalogue over 26 weeks. And what’s more she’s recently found this guitar having cleared her loft!

Over the last few years I have been lucky enough to be able to ask David Oddy, an instrument-maker  based in Exeter who predominately makes instruments for Phil Beer and Steve Knightley (Show Of Hands), to make a cello-mandolin (also known as a mandocello) and acoustic guitar for me – these are the ones I use for my Odd@Ease and solo work.

The cello is based on a Bulgarian instrument brought over to this country in the 1970’s, and the guitar is a replica of the Martin OM guitar, built using the same sitka spruce and Indian rosewood as used by CF Martin & Co., and features on the extreme left and right of my website logo header! Both were built in the late 1990's especially for me, and feature heavily in my solo and band recordings, as well as live performances with Odd@Ease.

I do have several other instruments and will update the page with some photos and blurb about them over time. In the meantime, here's some photos about my prized possessions mentioned above..."