EARNEST INSTRUMENTS are created for musicians who require functional, distinctive, high quality tools for making music. These are not your garden variety music store axes, but uncommon musical instruments designed to meet the needs of innovative players looking for something a little different. Rather than build reproductions of standard manufactured items, EARNEST combines time-tested styles and designs to create unique, original instruments with a classic appearance. Every effort is made to build the finest sounding and playing instruments. Their expense results from the quality of the materials and workmanship rather than unnecessary detail or excessive ornamentation. Materials are chosen for utility, tone, and appearance. Domestic and lesser known exotic tonewoods are favored over rare, overpriced, and often endangered species. Natural and manufactured materials are combined with appropriate adhesives and fasteners, at optimum humidity, to insure the stability and durability of the instruments. Earnest Instruments are built for a lifetime of music making!

I was raised in the potato farming region of northern Maine. After attending tech school I moved to the southeast and lived in Atlanta, Fayetteville, NC., and Nashville over the next eighteen years. Though as a teenager I desired to build guitars, my uneducated early attempts never saw completion and life demanded that I earn a living. I made that living in a cabinet shop in Atlanta where I learned many of my woodworking skills. I married a southern girl, Tracy, who has amazingly remained at my side for 28 years. I did fixits and paint jobs on friends’ guitars along the way but was in my 30’s before becoming serious as a luthier. I was later hired by Gibson Guitars to assist in developing their Dobro line of resophonics. I moved to the coast of Maine in 1999 to be near my family. In 2001 I started my own guitar shop doing repairs and building custom instruments.

JOEL ECKHAUS began building instruments in 1973. He studied woodworking at the Shelburne Craft School and at Rochester Institute of Technology with noted cabinetmaker, James Krenov. He apprenticed at the Tourin Musica, in Duxbury, VT, with harpsichord and viol maker, Peter Tourin, and built his first EARNEST mandolin at the Augusta Heritage Arts Workshop, in Elkins, WV, under the instruction of Paul Reisler. He opened a shop in 1976, and has been playing, teaching, designing, building, and repairing string instruments ever since. 

Featuring handcrafted Made in Maine furnishings influenced by Shaker, Arts & Crafts, and other traditional American designs. Each article has been developed with great care to balance functionality, aesthetics and value. Our pieces are primarily crafted from cherry, chosen for its stable nature, its workability and sheer beauty.

The Mainely Ukes club is located in Brooksville Maine. We are a group of musicians and odd sorts whose aim is to open up the world of music to all those who always wanted to sing and play an instrument but were deterred along the way.

“Mary Uke” Hargreaves was raised on Mozart, apple pie, and polkas in a musical family in southern New England. She learned classical piano as a child and guitar as a teen, and now the ukulele! During her college days in Boston, she became strongly influenced by the Folk Music scene and spent many evenings singing and jamming with musician friends.