The Guild of American Luthiers is a nonprofit educational membership organization whose purpose is to facilitate learning about lutherie: the art, craft, and science of stringed musical instrument building and repair. Since 1972, we’ve been the foremost source of information for makers, repairers, and restorers of all kinds of string instruments.

Guild membership and publications are open to all. Whether you’ve been making instruments for years, or have just acquired the lutherie bug; whether you live in Brooklyn or Bangladesh; whether lutherie is your livelihood or your passion or both; we invite you to join the Guild and learn more about the many ways you can benefit from and contribute to our information sharing system!

Membership Benefits

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Member Discounts

Members get discounted prices on our books, back issues, plans, and more.

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American Lutherie

Our respected journal American Lutherie is the main benefit of GAL membership.

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Articles Online

Members can read a growing selection of our articles online.

CURRENT ISSUE OF
AMERICAN LUTHERIE

American Lutherie #150 - Winter 2023

A Dutch luthier makes a recreation of a quintessentially American Instrument, based on a model that is a century out of date: the Gibson L-1 round-hole archtop. Does string tension make the action of an archtop guitar get higher or lower? Kinda both, and here's the math of it. Richard “R.E.” Bruné is a founder of the GAL as well as of the American Lutherie Boom. He and his son Marshall run an important shop collecting, selling, restoring, and building fine classical guitars. Image a Dobro mashed up with a Hawaiian lap-steel into a double-neck WeissenBro. January Williams is back with more fine jigs from the estate of the late Denny Stevens, explaining them to us as he figures out their function. Professor Mark French a couple of his post-grads show us the physics behind the latest developments in electric guitar intonation improvements. A group of older luthiers hijack the shop of their woodworkers’ club to present a two-day class for kids and families to build a uke kit. Here’s a neck carving jig to make it repeatable and accurate. It’s possible to locate a buzzing fret on a guitar with a VOM, but this little gizmo project does it better. Jeffrey Elliott shows us his self-centering jig for cutting a side sound port in a classical guitar. Mike Doolin makes nice solid wood linings starting with veneer from the hardware store. The late Robert Lundberg is legendary as a lute maker and educator, but Birck Cox knew him before all that, back when Lundberg was working on fiberglass race cars. George Smith was a self-starter guitar maker in the 1950s. We offer three remembrances by people who knew him well. Harry Fleishman is back with another look at simple, small, perhaps overlooked things that help our lutherie efforts. The Hammond Glider saw is a rare and wonderful thing. Apply superglue with a quill pen that you made from a Q-tip. Make try squares and bevel squares with clear-plastic blades. See more.

Scheduled to be shipped to 2023 members in January

New Instrument Plan

1982 Douglas Ching Slack-Key Guitar
GAL Plan #81  Drawn by Tim Olsen

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Resources

Are you just getting started in guitar making, or thinking about becoming a luthier? Or are you an experience builder looking for an event or hard-to-find supplies? See our Resources page with links to lutherie schools, suppliers, organizations, events and more!