Tacoma guitars are now the third largest in the US (after Martin and Taylor). The company had it’s origins in a Japanese-owned wood-processing firm, the Sound Mill, set up in the early 1990s in Tacoma, Washington State, to produce soundboards for pianos.

The company also supplied woods to luthiers throughout America, and launched it’s own Tacoma brand guitars in 1997. The first of these was the Papoose, an unusual small-bodied instrument with a raised pitch, a perfect fourth higher than a standard guitar. It also has an offset “paisley”-shaped soundhole and contoured bridge.

Tacoma builds it’s instruments using a combination of traditional craftsmanship and computer numeric control (CNC) technology.