Posted on March 3, 2026March 3, 2026 by Dale Phillips Meet the Maker: Wade Lowe Meet the Maker: Wade Lowe by Kent Everett Originally published in American Lutherie #118, 2014 Yahoo! Today I am going to the center of the known universe. You will find it on a leafy, quiet street in Decatur, Georgia. Wade Lowe, the purveyor of The Atelier awaits, sporting a big smile as always. Your shop always reminds me of the “find the hidden picture” game we used to play as kids. When you stop and look, all kinds of magical things emerge from the background. It has taken me only forty-six years and eleven months to get my shop in such beautiful shape! (laughs) What happened to start you along this life as a craftsman? How far back can we go? We lived in Hartwell, South Carolina, across the street from a lumber mill. When I was five years old, a big black man who worked there took a favor to me. He would nail scraps of lumber together to make cars and trucks and airplanes, and that fascinated me to no end. When I was about six, I somehow got hold of a pocket knife, and my folks let me keep it. My big brother Charlie and I would spit on the curb stone and sharpen my knife in the spit. I carved little race cars out of the insides of corn stalks, where the pith is soft, almost like balsa. Daddy set me up with a little workshop space in our garage, and I would always ask for tools and stuff at Christmas. Become A Member to Continue Reading This Article This article is part of the Articles Online featured on our website for Guild members. To view this and other web articles, join the Guild of American Luthiers. For details, visit the membership page. MEMBERS: login for access or contact us to setup your account.
Posted on March 3, 2026March 3, 2026 by Dale Phillips Meet the Maker: Abel Garcia López Meet the Maker: Abel Garcia López by Federico Sheppard Originally published in American Lutherie #119, 2014 Dusk has fallen in this little corner of Mexico. Our car covers narrow mountain roads, and when we reach higher elevations, the road is covered with hail. “Is this snow?” I ask. “No Señor, this is frozen rain. It falls silently here. These are magic mountains.” A few miles later, sandbags and a checkpoint appear out of the mist. Plain men in plain working clothes handle well-worked machine guns and sawed-off shotguns, lit by dim yellow lamps. “Abel, what is this? Is there a drug problem here?” He laughs softly in his gentle way. “I can see where you might think that. But the problem here is not drugs, but protecting our trees. This village is one of the most indigenous in our country, and the local people have come together to protect their forests. The pine trees here produce a most wonderful resin, and it has been collected here for hundreds of years to produce paints and other things. The people a few villages away have many carpinteros (carpenters) and they have killed all of their forests and run out of wood. So the local people are protecting their future. This program has now become a model for local villages who wish to protect themselves from crime, robbery, and drugs.” Become A Member to Continue Reading This Article This article is part of the Articles Online featured on our website for Guild members. To view this and other web articles, join the Guild of American Luthiers. For details, visit the membership page. MEMBERS: login for access or contact us to setup your account.
Posted on March 3, 2026March 3, 2026 by Dale Phillips Selecting Guitar Wood Based on Material Properties, Part One Selecting Guitar Wood Based on Material Properties, Part One by Trevor Gore Originally published in American Lutherie #118, 2014 see also, Selecting Guitar Wood Based on Material Properties, Part Two by Trevor Gore In 1993, Bob Benedetto built an archtop guitar from construction-grade knotty pine with a back of weather-checked maple. In 1995, Bob Taylor used top wood cut from a 2×4 (“pine, fir, or hemlock”) and back wood from an oak pallet salvaged from a dumpster to build a guitar. Roger Bucknall (Fylde Guitars) routinely uses top wood of Oregon pine from distillery washback vessels and back and side wood salvaged from oak whisky casks for his “single malt” guitars. C.F. Martin & Company builds guitars with backs and sides made from high-pressure laminates with composite fretboards, materials of a type more commonly found surfacing kitchen workbenches. On its website, Martin claims that its wood-topped HPL guitars have the “sound of a highly collectible Martin,” presumably invoking comparisons to red spruce/rosewood instruments. The claims made by these makers for the sound of such instruments make the point that building a good guitar depends more on the skill of the luthier than on the quality of the materials that are used. In 1862, the great Antonio de Torres proved his point by building a guitar with papier-mâché back and sides so, as one legend goes, to demonstrate the primacy of the soundboard in guitar construction. I, too, have built a guitar using reclaimed wood from a building renovation. It had a five-piece radiata pine top and meranti back and sides. It sounds better than the majority of guitars that you can buy in a main-street store. Become A Member to Continue Reading This Article This article is part of the Articles Online featured on our website for Guild members. To view this and other web articles, join the Guild of American Luthiers. For details, visit the membership page. MEMBERS: login for access or contact us to setup your account.
Posted on March 3, 2026March 3, 2026 by Dale Phillips Selecting Guitar Wood Based on Material Properties, Part Two Selecting Guitar Wood Based on Material Properties, Part Two by Trevor Gore Originally published in American Lutherie #119, 2014 see also, Selecting Guitar Wood Based on Material Properties, Part One by Trevor Gore Braces in a guitar serve two main purposes: to limit the soundboard’s deflection due to the bending moment applied by the static string loads, and to control how the soundboard subdivides into separate vibrating areas. How the second matter is handled is arbitrary, depending on the acoustical preferences of the builder, but the first matter is nonnegotiable if the instrument is to survive the applied string loads. So our concern here is principally with the first matter. Spruce has been the wood of choice for guitar braces for over a hundred years and a relatively simple analysis will demonstrate why this is the case. To illustrate the point, a possible alternative wood, in this case western red cedar, has been chosen for comparative purposes. The significant material properties are tabulated below (Table 1), these values being for specific samples that I tested. Become A Member to Continue Reading This Article This article is part of the Articles Online featured on our website for Guild members. To view this and other web articles, join the Guild of American Luthiers. For details, visit the membership page. MEMBERS: login for access or contact us to setup your account.
Posted on February 23, 2026February 23, 2026 by Dale Phillips Meet the Maker: David Cohen Meet the Maker: David Cohen by Roger Alan Skipper Originally published in American Lutherie #99, 2009 DR. Dave Cohen, of Cohen Musical Instruments, crafts guitars, mandolins, mandolas, octaves, and mandocellos in Richmond, Virginia. During a sabbatical from the chemistry classroom, Dave seized the opportunity to study the mandolin’s vibrational properties with Dr. Thomas Rossing at Northern Illinois University. From this and other studies he has produced a number of lectures and publications to complement his instruments. Dave, your website mentions a “lifelong interest in science, woodworking, and stringed instruments.” What kinds of woodworking did you do prior to lutherie? My grandfather was a carpenter, and my dad was a civil engineer. Dad knew I’d value something I made more than something I bought, so as a kid, I was always making things with my dad, using my grandfather’s tools. Between the early ’70s and the mid-’90s, I built furniture, mostly casework, that was strongly influenced by James Krenov and Sam Maloof. They still influence my stringed-instrument design. Lutherie is woodworking. Lutherie, though, integrates my background in science and mathematics, and music. I love that part of it. If lutherie were simply reproducing the instruments of the past, I doubt that I would have made more than a few instruments. Become A Member to Continue Reading This Article This article is part of the Articles Online featured on our website for Guild members. To view this and other web articles, join the Guild of American Luthiers. For details, visit the membership page. MEMBERS: login for access or contact us to setup your account.
