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Out of the Basement

Out of the Basement

by Richard Bingham

Originally published in American Lutherie #7, 1986 and The Big Red Book of American Lutherie, Volume 1, 2000

See also,
“H.L. Wild” by Paul Wyszkowski
“A Scene from Dickens” by Steve Curtin



About five years ago, when I was in the middle of my second C.F. Martin guitar “kit,” (thanks to Dick Boak, who saw me through this madness and was very generous in fitting it out), a good friend of mine who moves houses and buildings for a living presented me with one of his “finds.” It was a cardboard carton with variously-sized pieces of wood; bookmatched slabs of spruce and maple, very rough and indifferent looking pieces of ebony, a few sticks of bass wood, and a rather gaudy rosette glued to a piece of tag-board. The materials were noted on a slip of yellow paper printed by a spirit-duplicator and checked off in pencil, and dated May 12, 1964. The label told that the contents were from “H.L. Wild, New York City.” Apparently the “kit” was too much for the party who requested it.

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