Carl Samuels: Lutherie Before the Information Age

or The Pilot, the Brain Surgeon, and the Pole-Vaulting Banker

by Tom Harper

Originally published in American Lutherie #116, 2013



Since the inception of the Roberto-Venn School, thousands of students have gotten their start in the lutherie world by following its well-thought-out curriculum under the guidance of experienced instructors. But what was John Roberts’ introduction like? More generally, how did the small club of DIY guitar builders get their start back in the days before there were instruction books, classes, or the Internet? GAL member Carl Samuels was one of those rare folks, and he related an interesting story that fills in some of the answers. His experience involved a broken $5 classical guitar from Nogales, Mexico, a job hunt, and the three freight-train boxcar loads of wood that John Roberts hauled back from Nicaragua.

Samuels started playing violin at the age of five and was playing with the pit orchestra for Handels’ Messiah by the age of eight, a job he kept for the next seventeen years. He started college with a violin scholarship playing in the college symphony while studying biological psychology. His master’s degree research studied the behavioral effects of psychedelic drugs on animals and an attempt to isolate that portion of the drug molecule responsible for the behavioral effects. He later got a PhD studying the effects of selected drugs on the nervous system.