Posted on January 13, 2025May 14, 2025 by Dale Phillips Castles in Spain Castles in Spain Making a Classical Guitar with José Romanillos by Stephen Frith Originally published in American Lutherie #72, 2002 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Six, 2013 José and Liam Romanillos, with the help of Gerhard Oldiges, Tobias Braun, and Big Pep Milos, have shared their methods and ideas openly at a two-week guitar making master class each of the past two summers. I was lucky to be able to attend both sessions, held in the monastery of the Hermanos Maristas in Sigüenza, a medieval town in Spanish Castile. I couldn’t write down all that is available for the student at Sigüenza, but I will try to describe particularly the top-arching system. I used it in my own workshop for a year, then went back to find a few more pieces of the puzzle. Imagine a flat top of European spruce about 2.5MM thick cut exactly with the long-grain fibers, and exactly quartered all across. This guitar top is cut so that it fits within the ribs, and is then adjusted to the flexibility required. The edges of the lower bout are thinned further again to a flexibility all of which reflects the description of the work of Torres in José’s book Antonio de Torres Guitar Maker — His Life & Work. 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 June 30, 2024May 6, 2025 by Dale Phillips Radiation from Lower Guitar Modes Radiation from Lower Guitar Modes by Graham Caldersmith Originally published in American Lutherie #2, 1985 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie, Volume One, 2000 Since 1982 when I attended the Estes Park GAL Convention, and subsequently wrote about “Dissolving the Mysteries”1 (of guitar behavior — perhaps a presumptuous title), as a distant but faithful member of GAL, I have followed the developing discussions in the Quarterly about guitar top and back vibrations, how they are excited by the plucked strings and how they generate sound. At our January 1985 Australian Association of Musical Instrument Makers Convention (featuring strong GAL membership) the geometry of the lower vibrational modes of guitars and their appearance in the guitar frequency response records was keenly debated by practicing guitar makers, amply demonstrating luthiers’ adoption of scientific knowledge as part of their working repertoires. Tom Rossing’s contributions to GALQ2, 3 the thoughtful articles by Paul Wyszkowski4, 5, 6, 7 and the monumental “Kasha Guitar Soundboard”8 by Gila Eban, together with some detailed correspondence to me from Gila on her development of the Kasha soundboard all indicate the integration of guitar physics into guitar evolution. I think such unification of science, art, technology (and good ol’ workbench cunning) is healthy and fosters excellence. 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. Members also receive 3 annual issues of American Lutherie and get discounts on products. For details, visit the membership page. MEMBERS: login for access or contact us to setup your account.
Posted on June 30, 2024May 14, 2025 by Dale Phillips Meet the Maker: Mervyn Davis Meet the Maker: Mervyn Davis by Rodney Stedall Originally published in American Luthier #90, 2007 I first met Mervyn in 1998 at his old farm shed workshop in the countryside just outside Pretoria. I had just started my first instrument and had a need to ask questions of someone with experience in building stringed instruments. I found Mervyn to be a deep thinker, very knowledgeable, and willing to share with me the answers to my questions. Mervyn’s knowledge and insight into stringed instruments stems from many years of self-inspired building and innovation. Most South African luthiers like myself can claim to have gone through the Mervyn Davis school at some stage of their building career. The interview below serves to prove Mervyn’s willingness to share his years of experience freely with others. Mervyn, you have thirty-plus years of stringed instrument building experience. Can you tell us what instruments you have made? Guitars, violins, lutes, electrics, archtops, and mandolins of every description. But there are hundreds that I will regretfully never get around to making. My curiosity is still drawing me deeper into the endless well of questions and answers that experimentation offers and which, I am sure, is exactly what got all of us luthiers into the craft to begin with. 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. Members also receive 3 annual issues of American Lutherie and get discounts on products. For details, visit the membership page. MEMBERS: login for access or contact us to setup your account.
Posted on June 22, 2020May 22, 2025 by Dale Phillips Brazilian Guitar Makers Brazilian Guitarmakers by Roberto Gomes Originally published in American Lutherie #33, 1993 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Three, 2004 The guitar has been the main musical instrument in Brazil since it was brought by the Portuguese colonizers centuries ago. In those times, Baroque guitars were the most common string instruments. They had five courses of gut or wire strings. Since then it hasn’t changed much, as we can see in the “Brazilian viola” which is used for a kind of Brazilian country music called musica sertaneja (countryside music). The shape of the soundbox of this viola today resembles more a small classic guitar. Unfortunately there are very few records of those times, making it difficult to make a better study of those guitars and their makers. It’s known that most of the instruments were made in Portugal, Italy, and France. The first decade of this century brought three immigrant families from Italy: the Gianninis, the DiGiorgios, and the DelVecchios. These families were luthiers in their country of origin and later they founded the main Brazilian guitar factories which became the backbone of Brazilian-made guitars for nearly eighty years. They made mostly classic guitars and some violins, along with Brazilian violas. They also made mandolins, first with vaulted backs like lutes and later with flat backs, which are used to play choro music. 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 5, 2010May 23, 2025 by Dale Phillips Review: Guitar Voicing Class with Ervin Somogyi Review: Guitar Voicing Class with Ervin Somogyi Reviewed by Joe Herrick Originally published in American Lutherie #95, 2008 I’m a hobby builder making two or three guitars a year. I learned to make guitars six years ago by taking a two-week, one-on-one course with an experienced luthier. I went on to make seven more guitars exactly the way I was taught, just following the numbers for top thickness, brace height, brace profile, and so on. I didn’t want to make changes, only to have the guitars not be as good as I knew they would be if I just followed the “recipe.” They sounded good, but I was missing out on how much better they could be. I learned the mechanics of how to build a guitar from my first teacher. Ervin Somogyi’s class taught me the why and encouraged me to grow. Ervin gives you a starting point, and then the knowledge and the challenge to move beyond that starting point with your soundboards. Ervin is a fun, patient, and exceptional teacher, passionate about guitars and life. He enjoys being challenged and everything is fair game for further discussion. He does not come across as a know-it-all with canned responses for each question. He would often ask what we thought and then built on that with his own knowledge and experience. And he was not above saying, “I don’t know.” The class has a 4" binder of handouts. Ervin follows a syllabus that builds methodically from the ground up, but we tweaked the syllabus as we went along to delve into areas that we, as a class, wanted to pursue. 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.
