A Summary of John Greven’s Voicing Method

by Mike Doolin

Originally published in American Lutherie #114, 2013



John Greven has been building guitars for fifty years, and has single-handedly built over 2200 guitars in that time. Doing the math, that means he averages close to a guitar a week. Given that kind of efficiency, it’s not surprising that his methods for controlling the sound of his guitars are simple and direct. He’s distilled the huge number of variables down to the handful that he believes are most important, and has evolved testing methods that take only seconds and require no measurement tools.

While John is a trained scientist, and does speak of the scientific aspects of guitars and wood, he’s quick to point out that his methods are not scientific, but intuitive and experiential. This is a major problem in documenting his methods: in a sense, you have to be John Greven to fully understand them. They rely on John’s vast experience in building thousands of guitars, and playing those guitars and thousands of guitars by other builders, and on his “photographic” memory for sound, and the database of sounds that his experience and memory have created in his head. Moreover, sound is not accurately describable in words, and tactile sense is not accurately quantifiable.