Posted on September 25, 2026September 25, 2026 by Dale Phillips A Guitar Is Born: Attending Charles Fox’s Guitar Making Course A Guitar Is Born: Attending Charles Fox’s Hands-On Guitar Making Course by Mark French Originally published in American Lutherie #136, 2019 See also, The Charles Fox Guitar-Building Method, Part One by Mark French The Charles Fox Guitar-Building Method, Part Two by Mark French The Charles Fox Guitar-Building Method, Part Three by Mark French The Charles Fox Guitar-Building Method, Part Four by Mark French The Charles Fox Guitar-Building Method, Part Five by Mark French The Charles Fox Guitar-Building Method, Part Six by Mark French Charles Fox started making guitars when I was four. Recently, at age fifty-four, I found myself a student in his acoustic guitar making class at the American School of Lutherie. I’ve been building guitars for a while, but am mostly self-taught, with no formal training before now. I eventually came to realize that I was stuck. I was building using skills I mostly acquired the hard way or from videos and books. My guitars were adequate, but to get better I needed to spend time building with an accomplished luthier. I talked with Charles to determine the class schedule and content which would fit my needs, and signed up for the two-week acoustic guitar class. 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 September 25, 2026September 25, 2026 by Dale Phillips The Charles Fox Guitar-Building Method, Part Two The Charles Fox Guitar-Building Method, Part Two by Mark French Originally published in American Lutherie #140, 2020 See also, A Guitar Is Born: Attending Charles Fox’s Hands-On Guitar Making Course by Mark French The Charles Fox Guitar-Building Method, Part One by Mark French The Charles Fox Guitar-Building Method, Part Three by Mark French The Charles Fox Guitar-Building Method, Part Four by Mark French The Charles Fox Guitar-Building Method, Part Five by Mark French The Charles Fox Guitar-Building Method, Part Six by Mark French There are four major subassemblies in Charles’ guitar design. The separately completed rim, soundboard, and back are assembled to create the body, to which the completed neck is then fitted and attached. Given that the design process has highlighted and resolved all their relationships, they can each be considered individually, and created either serially, in any sequence, or simultaneously. Starting the Neck At first glance, Charles’ neck follows a fairly standard design, but it incorporates features that make it work better. One characteristic of Charles’ instruments is that many features and dimensions are shared across different body shapes (“Production Techniques for the Custom Luthier,” AL#110). One of these is the neck. Since most of Charles’ instruments share the same 25.5˝ scale, they can use the same 12-fret or 14-fret necks. The only visible difference is their heel depths, as shown in Photo 1. Even then, there are only two different depths. 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 August 7, 2026August 7, 2026 by Dale Phillips “Restomodding” Wall-Hanger Guitars “Restomodding” Wall-Hanger Guitars by Roger Häggström Originally published in American Lutherie #144, 2021 Cheap guitars were made in great numbers all over the world at the beginning of the last century. In Sweden, the driving force behind a burgeoning interest in guitars was the independent church movement. The prevailing sentiment was that every able-bodied parishioner should be able to play three chords on a guitar at prayer meetings and fundraisers (Photo 1). Many of these instruments still exist, mostly in unplayable condition. I have found ways to restore these wonderful old guitars and make them play and sound better than ever. I love the bass-balanced sound of old-style ladder bracing in a small steel-strung parlor guitar. The complex sounds keep me wanting to play another chord. Modern X bracing gives more bass but also less varied tone, in my opinion. 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 July 31, 2026July 31, 2026 by Dale Phillips Effects of Grain Orientation on Brace Deflection Effects of Grain Orientation on Brace Deflection by Greg Nelson with Benjamin Nelson Originally published in American Lutherie #127, 2016 I have always taken it on faith that perfectly quartersawn wood had to be superior to diagonal- or plain-cut wood when it comes to bracing. I never felt the need to question this common wisdom until when reading The Responsive Guitar, I discovered that Ervin Somogyi had done a test that created doubt about how accurate this assumption might be. He invited further testing, and that is what inspired me to spend some time and material to check things out. I come to lutherie work without any formal scientific training. This sort of testing demands a scientific method, so I invited my son, Dr. Benjamin Nelson, to participate. His field of expertise is astronomy (mostly extrasolar planets), but having grown up in our house, he is not unfamiliar with wooden instrument construction. 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 July 22, 2026July 22, 2026 by Dale Phillips An Inexpensive Resophonic Guitar An Inexpensive Resophonic Guitar by Lee Herron Originally published in American Lutherie #132, 2017 I’ve become fascinated with slide guitars. My son-in-law is a great pedal-steel player, and we were talking several years ago about the Weissenborns. So I made a baritone version for him and one for myself. I’ve since made a resophonic guitar, slightly modifying plans from Beard Guitars and purchasing his cone, spider bridge, cover, tailpiece, and so on. All of these slide instruments turned out well with great traditional tone. When my granddaughter visited recently, she asked what my favorite song was, and we went to YouTube and pulled up the Paul Simon song The Boxer featuring Jerry Douglas on Dobro. Clearly I’m hooked on the sound. My two Weissenborns and the resophonic each had perhaps $300 worth of material over and above the cost of typical flattops I’ve made, and just about all of it in commercial/official resonator parts. As you’ll see, a few YouTube videos pointed me towards some creative scrounging and innovative thinking that let me reduce the $300 ticket to less than $20 for resonator parts and plywood. 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.
