T.P. Noble Guitar Company

The figured maple makes the guitar top appear to shimmer like wind through wheat.

T.P. Noble guitars are built by me, Tom Patten. The Noble comes from my grandma Elinor Noble Patten.
I was born in 1951, and I’ve been making music since before I can remember. My mother says that I used to pick up anything (a cotter pin, a coffee pot, a tube of toothpaste) and I’d get it to make noise, and I’d listen closely.
Well, I still do that. You’d be surprised at the tone you can get out of a tube of Crest.
I come from a very musical family, and for this I am eternally grateful. I grew up in a house full of music, both live and recorded. My mother was classically trained and spent summers at Tanglewood; my uncles all played the guitar and sang (we ALL sang). My father has jazz recordings that go back to the twenties. My Uncle Dick spent formative time with Woody Guthrie and Josh White. And somehow this aural orientation trickled down to me. I am blessed.
I took my first guitar apart when I was 14, and I’ve been doing it ever since.At Bennington College, I took a course in acoustics with Gunnar Schoenbeck, and it was the beginning of a career (though I didn’t know it at the time). After scuffling and working construction in the early seventies, I realized that I should study piano technology, and so I headed off to Boston for two years where I studied with Tony Steffanelli and worked in a few rebuilding shops. My first job as a tuner was in Burlington, VT, where I lived for about eight years.
I am a Registered Piano Technician in the Piano Technicians Guild and I have taught seminars on the local, regional, and national level. My wife Kate and I run The Great Susquehanna Piano Company in Milton, PA, and I spend much of my time keeping Central Pennsylvania in tune. We do piano restoration and retail as well.
T.P. Noble is an adjunct business to Great Susquehanna Piano. The guitars are built in our piano shop, and I apply the knowledge I have gained over the years inside pianos to the guitars.
I have been a member of both the Guild of American Luthiers and The Association for Stringed Instrument Artisans for many years.
I played with The Usual Suspects for about 18 years, with the extraordinary guitarist Joey DeCristopher, sweet and sturdy bassist Tom Mattern, hard-working and air-moving drummer Jamie Earnest, and the late Carrie Smith-Belleson on vocals.
My wife helps me make important decisions. When I talk about either GSPC or TPN, I use the plural (we) because without her help I probably would have been bankrupt or in jail years ago.