As early as 2011, SLM senior vice president Chris Meikle has acted as Alvarez head of development, overseeing the redesign of Artist Series and other models and rolling out new instrument lines such as the 2014 Masterworks Series, the Alvarez 50th anniversary 1965 Series, Alvarez-Yairi Honduran Series and the Grateful Dead Series. Louis Music) brought the management and distribution of the guitars back to St. In 2009, Mark Ragin (owner of US Band & Orchestra and St. įrom 2005 to 2009, the brand was owned by LOUD Technologies, which also owned Mackie, Ampeg, Crate and other music-related brands.

Yairi” in Europe and other parts of the world. Similar instruments were also sold under the factory brand of “K. Louis Music's Spanish guitar line “Alvarez”. Louis Music and the Yairi factory started to design and develop steel string acoustic guitars and imported them into the United States. Louis Music's founder, Gene Kornblum, met Kazuo Yairi, a Master Luthier in Japan who produced handmade concert classical guitars. Alvarez manufactures steel-strings, classical guitars, ukuleles and, for a time, solid and hollow-body electric guitars and basses. Alvarez is a guitar brand founded in 1965 by the owner and distributor St.