About Us

Rune Custom Guitars is two friends in Lilburn, Georgia: one who shapes the wood and one who makes it sing. Every guitar is carved, assembled and set up by hand, and each one is one of a kind.

The name

Our logo spells "Rune" in runic script. It comes from Andreas's Swedish heritage and love of history, and from Andy's interest in the ancient runic alphabet.

Andreas Sjödin, woodworker

Andreas grew up in Sweden and started woodworking at about age 7, building soapbox cars. By his 20s he was building furniture. He moved to the United States in 2000 after earning a PhD in chemistry, and kept building furniture at home. At the start of the pandemic he opened Premium Handmade Wood, an Etsy shop for handmade jewelry and watch boxes. It has grown to nearly 1,000 sales and hundreds of 5-star reviews, which you can read on our Etsy shop. Now he brings that same care to every guitar body he carves. Outside the shop, Andreas is a long-distance hiker who disappears for weeks at a time in the Grand Canyon or above the Arctic Circle in Scandinavia.

Andy Makely, builder and guitarist

Andy has played guitar for more than 45 years, performing throughout Atlanta with Picasso band, the Atlanta Falcons house band, the SportsSouth basketball show band and the Metro Jazz Club jazz orchestra. His blues group, the Andy Makely Band, played many of Atlanta's favorite blues clubs for years. Rune Custom Guitars lets him turn a lifelong passion for the guitar into instruments people will enjoy for a lifetime. He knows what a great guitar feels like, and he makes sure every Rune instrument is built and set up to that standard.