Posted on January 11, 2010March 7, 2024 by Dale Phillips Review: Ring the Banjar! The Banjo in America from Folklore to Factory, by Robert Lloyd Web Review: Ring the Banjar! The Banjo in America from Folklore to Factory by Robert Lloyd Web Reviewed by Woody Vernice Originally published in American Lutherie #58, 1999 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Five, 2008 Ring the Banjar! The Banjo in America from Folklore to Factory Robert Lloyd Webb The MIT Museum, 1984 ISBN 0917027019 In 1984 the MIT Museum sponsored an exhibition of banjos that focused on the companies that existed in and around Boston. This book is a catalog of the instruments exhibited, and the essays sort of explain why such a prestigious organization spent so much energy on such a humble instrument. Contemporary luthiers think that they are leading the way for the factories. Webb maintains the reverse, that individual builders were basically hackers who kept the instrument alive until the large factories brought it to its zenith. The banjo began life as a stick and a gourd. It evolved rapidly into a recognizable configuration and the Victorian banjo craze that followed the Civil War made it a hot-ticket item, bringing a rush to make better and fancier models. Venues changed from parlors to large burlesque halls, and louder and gaudier banjos filled the need. The jazz age and the banjo were both put to death by the Great Depression, and Webb credits Pete Seeger and Earl Scruggs as the men who resurrected the latter. It’s a thumbnail sketch, but a good one. 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 January 11, 2010February 7, 2024 by Dale Phillips Letter: Sloane Bass Tuners Letter: Sloane Bass Tuners by Fredrick C. Lyman, Jr. Originally printed in American Lutherie #66, 2001 Dear Tim and Deb: Sorry to learn of the passing of Irving Sloane. I met him at a convention in Pennsylvania. He was displaying his precision guitar machines and I remarked that there was nothing comparable for the bass viol. He asked if there would really be a market for such. I said there really were no good bass machines and all bass players were agreed about that. I have been so out of touch that I have not seen his bass machines, but it appears that they are the new standard of the industry. I drew pictures of strange imaginary instruments for years before I got Irving’s book and found it was really possible to build something. It’s great that you have been reaching a young audience that has the possibility of developing their work over a sufficient time to solve the problems. In retrospect I should have done many things differently. I did build a lot of the instruments that I was interested in, but it was not a really sustainable enterprise and I found myself too old and feeble to go on. In January I discovered that I had the same disease as Irving Sloane. I had drastic surgery and it seems to have been a success, but my overall vitality is not great.
Posted on January 11, 2010February 7, 2024 by Dale Phillips In Memoriam: Lance McCollum In Memoriam: Lance McCollum March 1, 1958–February 1, 2009 by Harvey Leach Originally published in American Lutherie #98, 2009 We are members of one of the greatest fraternities on earth. Luthiers get to take nature’s greatest materials and reshape them into things of beauty and functionality. Our creations leave our mark on society because for each piece to reach fulfillment it must be passed into the hands of a second artist, the player. Lance McCollum was a builder of great guitars. Some of the players of his instruments include Roger Hodgson of Supertramp, Martin Barre of Jethro Tull, Winfield Champion Todd Hallawell, and Grammy winners Mark Mancina and Doug Smith. In his career Lance built approximately 250 guitars. Lance first visited my shop about fifteen years ago. With him he had his first two guitars. As is true with most of our early efforts, they were somewhat crude examples of what was to come. However, the maker’s talent was unmistakable. Some people build guitars to try to recreate the past. Others, like Lance, try to expand the boundaries and push the limits of what has been done in the past while still keeping the traditional look and feel of a great guitar. Photo by Kayleigh McCollum. Lance’s specialty was in the creation of guitars that had “piano-like” tone. He was also well known for his more unusual pieces such as baritone, harp, and double-neck guitars. His “interwoven” rosettes were simple yet elegant and became his trademark. Lance could always be counted on if you needed a source for something, be it great guitar wood or a great restaurant. Lance was a “people person,” a fact that was never more evident than at a benefit concert a month after he passed away. It showed in the level of talent that came to pay tribute, and in the people who came to watch. Like all of us, his days were numbered. But like those of us who choose this profession, his work will live on and only get better with age.
Posted on January 11, 2010February 7, 2024 by Dale Phillips Letter: New Violin Family Octet Letter: New Violin Family Octet by Robert J. Spear, Editor, New Violin Family Association Newsletter Originally published in American Lutherie #81, 2005 Dear GAL — The concept of making seven or eight instruments in a balanced consort was described by Michael Praetorius in Syntagma Musicum in 1619, but it never developed enough musically to compete with the 17th-century advancement of the violin. That changed in the 20th century when a combination of acoustical research and master violin making created the Violin Octet of today. In 1957, composer Henry Brant was searching for a luthier adventurous enough to implement his idea “to create seven instruments, one at each half octave, that would produce violin-quality sound over the entire written range of music.” He approached Carleen Hutchins with his proposal at a time when she already had been working for a decade on the relation of violin air and wood resonances with Prof. Frederick A. Saunders of Harvard, who had pioneered violin research in the USA. It took Carleen only thirty minutes to agree to Henry’s idea, but it took her another ten years to finish the first Octet! 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 January 11, 2010March 7, 2024 by Dale Phillips Kit Review: The Riverboat Banjo from Musicmaker’s Kits Kit Review: The Riverboat Banjo from Musicmaker's Kits Reviewed by John Calkin Originally published in American Lutherie #62, 2000 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Six, 2013 The Riverboat Banjo from Musicmaker’s Kits www.harpkit.com Kit-built instruments have garnered an unfair reputation for poor quality, as though the mere gathering of components into a kit was a guarantee of mediocrity. Bad kits do exist, and the fact that most kits are generally assembled by unskilled hands certainly doesn’t let them put their best face forward. Yet many in the trade got their first taste of lutherie from a kit, myself included. There are many whose level of skill is so untested that beginning lutherie with a kit makes good sense. Others haven’t the tools necessary to begin an instrument project from scratch. And believe it or not, some very talented luthiers are happy to avoid the expense and bother of collecting and housing a bevy of stationary tools, and find that jobbing out some of the rough labor to a kit maker makes good sense without adulterating the satisfaction they find in the finished work. Of course, a kit can be anything from a stack of rough lumber to an instrument in the white that requires nothing more than sanding and finishing. At American Lutherie we’ve decided that kits have enough merit to warrant some investigation, and the only way to do it is to build some instruments. Life could be a lot worse for a journalist. 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.
