Posted on August 1, 2022May 19, 2025 by Dale Phillips On Becoming a Successful Luthier On Becoming a Successful Luthier by R.E. Bruné Originally published in Guild of American Luthiers Newsletter Volume 2 #6, 1974 A question I am often asked by visitors to my shop and other luthiers, is, “are you making it?” as if to say “anyone who looks like he’s having such a good time doesn’t deserve to make money too.” Well, I am happy to report that yes, I’m “making” it. To be judged a successful luthier, I think it is really necessary to examine exactly what “Success” is, especially in terms of today’s somewhat unstable economic climate. Unfortunately, for many of this country’s working people, the only tangible measure of success is the monthly bank statement. The balance of the account has become the end in itself, and the product be damned. Become A Member to Continue Reading This Article This article is part of our premium web content offered to Guild members. To view this and other web articles, join the Guild of American Luthiers. Members also receive 4 annual issues of American Lutherie and get discounts on products. For details, visit the membership page. If you are already a member, login for access or contact us to setup your account.
Posted on August 1, 2022May 20, 2025 by Dale Phillips Wood Salvaging Down Under Wood Salvaging Down Under by Des Anthony Originally published in Guild of American Luthiers Quarterly, Volume 6 #2, 1978 and Lutherie Woods and Steel String Guitars, 1998 Woodstock. No, not that Woodstock, but a one-shop, no-houses Woodstock in North Queensland, Australia. At last the moment had arrived. It was a typical hot summer’s day and I was armed with the necessary tools. There was still that feeling of uncertainty in my mind that what I was to do was totally criminal. Sharing the shed with the ’dozers and tractors was an old upright Victor piano. Nobody wanted it anymore so I was able to carry out my plan. At home, our towns usually have a festival each year, and in that festival procession there is always an old car whereupon, for a fee, you may smash with a sledge hammer. Well, I wasn’t in that kind of mood, but I was still going to reduce this piano to an unrecognizable mess, but, I hope with a more dignified ending. Become A Member to Continue Reading This Article This article is part of our premium web content offered to Guild members. To view this and other web articles, join the Guild of American Luthiers. Members also receive 4 annual issues of American Lutherie and get discounts on products. For details, visit the membership page. If you are already a member, login for access or contact us to setup your account.
Posted on August 1, 2022March 5, 2024 by Dale Phillips Review: Guitar; An American Life by Tim Brookes Review: Guitar; An American Life by Tim Brookes Reviewed by Ervin Somogyi Originally published in American Lutherie #87, 2006 Guitar: An American Life Tim Brookes ISBN: 0-8021-1796-1 Grove Press, 352 pp., 2005 I found Tim Brookes’ Guitar: An American Life while browsing in a bookstore in Manhattan. I’d never heard of this book, but it’s one of the most enjoyable and informative reads I’ve ever had about the instrument I’ve built my professional life around. It’s written much in the spirit of Richard Halliburton’s marvelous and magical travel books that I read many years ago and that opened up my young mind’s vistas. It was a pleasant surprise to find that this book is, on the initial level, about a guitar building collaboration between the author and Rick Davis, a fellow luthier with whom I have a friendship. A book about a guitar making project written from the client’s point of view: Wow, what a great idea! Become A Member to Continue Reading This Article This article is part of our premium web content offered to Guild members. To view this and other web articles, join the Guild of American Luthiers. Members also receive 4 annual issues of American Lutherie and get discounts on products. For details, visit the membership page. If you are already a member, login for access or contact us to setup your account.
Posted on August 1, 2022March 5, 2024 by Dale Phillips Letter: Statistical Listening Test Letter: Statistical Listening Test by Kenny Hill Originally published in American Lutherie #98, 2009 Hi Tim, What do you do when a “scientific” study directly contradicts your own experience? Which are you more inclined to believe, a statistical body of “evidence,” or your own ears? This is my dilemma now, having read R.M. Mottola’s paper on his statistical listening test with soundports (AL#97). This experiment seems at first glance to be thorough and well designed. In his conclusion he states that there is no perceivable difference between port open and port closed. This is followed by the comment that this may be “of practical value to those considering adding soundports.” Become A Member to Continue Reading This Article This article is part of our premium web content offered to Guild members. To view this and other web articles, join the Guild of American Luthiers. Members also receive 4 annual issues of American Lutherie and get discounts on products. For details, visit the membership page. If you are already a member, login for access or contact us to setup your account.
Posted on July 8, 2022May 22, 2025 by Dale Phillips Quickie Sander Fence Quickie Sander Fence by John Calkin Published online by Guild of American Luthiers, July 2022 Every lutherie shop has jigs hanging around. Often, lots of them. Every sort of stringed instrument is easier and faster to build using good jigs. If you decide that you'd like to build all of the instrument types commonly played in America you will accumulate a serious number of jigs. These days just about all of the most useful jigs can be purchased from a variety of dealers. They are very pretty and often better-made and more useful than a jig we would bother to make in our own shop. Well, prettier, anyhow. If you have entered lutherie in the last fifteen years you may have grown tired of old-timers complaining about this, as if making all of your own jigs was a right of passage that should never be skipped. "In my day we couldn't buy a guitar jig of any kind anywhere! We were lucky to find a book with pictures of guitars, let alone instructions to make them. Huff!" Well, sometimes we need a jig or fixture (what's the difference, anyhow?) that isn't instrument-specific, but machine-specific. I have vague memories of making a right-angle fence for my 6×48 belt sander. I still have the same sander, so when I rediscovered the jig---er, fixture---a few weeks ago I was glad to see it. But as soon as I turned my back, darn if it didn't go into hiding again. I have bumped around my little shop a number of times searching for it but to no avail. So, today I made a new one. I remember having to shim the old one to get it square. The new one came out dead on the money. I'll claim that forty years of experience was responsible for that, rather than blind luck. Old-farts in the game are entitled to that. Belt sanders vary enough in design that I won't bother listing any dimensions. I have included enough photos to suggest the jist of it. Anyway, you'll probably want the fence to be longer, or taller, or shaped like an animal for all I know. I sat it on a thin spacer to clear the belt, and it remained there nicely while I put on the clamps. Use the smallest clamps that will work in order not to bump them against the underside edge of the belt. Good luck. ◆ All photos by John Calkin.
