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.
