A guitarist first, Adrian moved to Michigan to attend Central Michigan University and began working in music retail at Cook’s Music in Mount Pleasant. In 1997, he joined Elderly Instruments in Lansing and eventually became a Vintage Acoustic Instrument Specialist.

Elderly became an education of its own. Surrounded by historic Martins, Gibsons, mandolins, musicians, and repair people with extraordinary knowledge, Adrian was able to study the instruments that had helped define American guitar and mandolin making. He bought vintage instruments when he could, attempted repairs, asked questions, and, importantly, played them.

It established an idea that has followed him throughout his career: old instruments matter not simply because they can be reproduced, but because they provide evidence. Materials, proportions, construction methods, successes, failures, feel, and sound can all offer clues about what an instrument might become next.

In 2002, Adrian moved to San Francisco to work in product development for Saga Musical Instruments. The role took him throughout Asia, working directly with instrument workshops and manufacturers in China, Japan, and Korea. In 2006, he, his wife Katie, and their young family moved to Qingdao, China.

Living there changed the trajectory of his life. Instead of visiting factories, Adrian worked alongside craftspeople, suppliers, and manufacturers and learned how an instrument moves from an idea to a drawing, through prototypes and materials, and eventually into repeatable production. The relationships became personal as well as professional. Adrian has described the people with whom he built Northfield as family; his children grew up knowing them and team members have travelled back and forth between China and the United States for years.

In 2008, Adrian began a small mandolin workshop in Qingdao with longtime collaborators Kosuke Kyomori and Zhang Xi Sheng. That experiment became Northfield Mandolins.

Northfield allowed them to test a different model of instrument making: skilled handwork and modern manufacturing, American and Asian experience, historical knowledge and experimentation, all working together rather than being separated into categories of origin or price. Adrian’s goal has remained remarkably consistent: make the best instruments they can, not simply the most.

His career, however, reaches well beyond Northfield. Adrian served as Chief Operating Officer and manufacturing partner with Voyage-Air Guitar, contributing to the development and production of its patented folding-neck guitars. His fascination with historic instruments also led to his participation in a project using CT scanning to examine important violins from The Henry Ford collection, applying contemporary imaging technology to instruments made generations earlier.

A longstanding relationship with capo designer Rick Shubb developed into another significant chapter. When Shubb needed a new manufacturing solution, he turned to Adrian and his Qingdao team. The collaboration eventually grew into Shubb International, extending Adrian’s work into product development, manufacturing, international distribution, and brand strategy.

Despite the breadth of that career, Adrian still describes his path as largely instinctive. He entered the industry because he was a player fascinated by how things worked, not because he had planned to become an instrument-company executive. Northfield’s progression from F-style mandolins to octave instruments and eventually guitars followed much the same pattern: one musical question creating the next. He has said that the underlying goal was to find out whether they could make instruments they wanted to play and perhaps influence music by giving musicians tools on which to create something new.

That makes Northfield’s recent move into guitars particularly personal. Adrian grew up wanting to be a jazz guitarist, in a family where jazz and the electric guitar were central influences. After a career that carried him from Rochester to Michigan, California, China, and through almost every corner of the fretted-instrument world, six strings are less a new destination than a return to where he began.

Today, from historic Marshall, Michigan, only a short distance from Kalamazoo and the place where many of the Gibson instruments that first fascinated him were built, Adrian continues essentially the same pursuit that has occupied him for decades: study what made great instruments great, understand why they worked, and then ask what might happen next.