Posted on January 15, 2026January 15, 2026 by Dale Phillips Chalk-fitting Guitar Braces Chalk-fitting Guitar Braces by Stephen Marchione from his 2017 GAL Convention workshop Originally published in American Lutherie #140, 2020 First, have a plan. Know what you’re making. It seems like an obvious thing, but sometimes people start a guitar without a good idea of what the brace layout will be. When I design a new model, I’ll often get a piece of aluminum flashing and lay out a bracing template. If you’re building an historical model, you can transfer the blueprint to a template of aluminum or plexiglas. This gives you a clear idea of what your braces are supposed to be doing, and it lets you be sure that the braces end up where they were designed to go. Photo 1 is a closeup of one of my bracing templates. I use the little holes to make pencil marks on the soundboard. On a classical guitar, a lot of builders push the big harmonic bars down into the solera, or dished workboard. But that can cause distortion of the top. Even on a Spanish guitar, I take the time to chalk-fit the brace. That gives a better structure with less stress. I highly recommend it. 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 January 15, 2026January 15, 2026 by Dale Phillips Evolving the Dished Workboard Evolving the Dished Workboard by John Calkin Originally published in American Lutherie #65, 2001 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie, Volume Six, 2013 For my money, the dished workboard is one of the most important lutherie inventions ever, making it possible for even rookies to build guitars that are precisely and tightly put together. I’d like to suggest ways to make them more useful. First, though, let’s make it clear what the heck we’re talking about. Guitars were initially built with flat tops. Classical guitars (and not a few steel strings) were built on a flat workboard that more resembled a tabletop than a piece of movable gear, since it was the size of the entire instrument, neck included. The construction method using the Spanish foot required this size, since the neck became a structural part of the body. Mechanical joints such as the dovetail or bolts freed the luthier to build the body and neck as separate units, and the workboard was reduced to a laminated rectangle the size of the body, and was often dispensed with altogether when the body was built inside a mold. In 1975 David Russell Young published The Steel String Guitar, the first guitar construction book recommending domed tops. Young, however, made no mention of the dished workboard, but used more primitive methods to achieve the domed top. It wasn’t until the late ’80s that the spherically domed guitar top began to catch on. (Forgive me if I simply call them SDTs.) The easiest way to build SDTs was on top of a spherically dished workboard, which came on the market about that time. (Let’s not call them SDWs; I’ll explain why in a bit.) The merits of SDTs are not at all obvious to musicians, nor are all luthiers convinced that they are the way to go, but an important thing happened here. Guitar backs have always been arched, and fitting an arched back to a set of bent sides equipped with lining and end blocks has always been one of the bugaboos of lutherie. It’s not easy to do in a professional manner. But with one simple step, it became possible to fit perfectly arched braces to a perfectly arched back, and then to fit the entire assembly to perfectly shaped ribs. 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 January 13, 2025May 14, 2025 by Dale Phillips Is “Guitar Design” an Oxymoron? Is “Guitar Design” an Oxymoron? by Steve Klein from his 2001 GAL Convention lecture Originally published in American Lutherie #76, 2003 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Seven, 2015 Webster’s defines “oxymoron” as “a figure of speech in which opposites or contradictory ideas or terms are combined, e.g., sweet sorrow” and my personal favorite, “thunderous silence.” The second definition of “design” is “being able to make original plans.” When Todd Brotherton called to ask if I would speak here today, he mentioned that I’ve been doing my design thing for near on thirty years. And almost in the same breath, he called my ideas new and innovative. What’s wrong with this picture? Palm pilots are new. Downloading MP3s is new. Viagra is new. My ideas are no longer new. So why are the things that I’m trying to do still thought of as new? Or we might ask, why is the musical world so slow to change, when everything else in our culture seems to be on the fast track? Why might it take so long for acoustic guitars to evolve? This begs some questions, such as: 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 14, 2025 by Dale Phillips The Guitar as a Structure and Some Practical Information on Bracing The Guitar as a Structure and Some Practical Information on Bracing by James Blilie Originally published in American Lutherie #100, 2009 Why does the neck of the guitar break at the nut when dropped off the stage? Why does the bridge sometimes pull off a guitar? Why does the neck of a guitar sometimes need to be reset? Why does a really thick guitar top give less bass response than a top of more typical thickness (a thinner top)? These are questions that are — primarily — structural. I have seen many ideas on the structure of guitars in print that are simply wrong. I am a structural engineer and have been working in the civil engineering, aviation, and medical device industries for twenty-five years. My engineering work has been, in essence, ensuring that structures are strong (or stiff) enough. I am also a guitar maker since 1998 (I’m building my fifty-ninth guitar) and a fingerstyle guitar player. I have found that my engineering experience has helped my guitar building in many ways. This is my $0.02 worth as an experienced structural engineer. 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 6, 2024May 27, 2025 by Dale Phillips Letter to the Editor: Domino Guitar Article in AL#85 Letter to the Editor: Domino Guitar Article in AL#85 by Scott van Linge Originally published in American Lutherie #88, 2006 Hi Tim, I read with interest the article on resurrecting the ’30s Regal Le Domino guitar in AL#85. On p. 48, the second picture from the top shows the body with the back removed and the remaining two lower bout back braces still in place. What caught my eye is that they were — (drum roll) — parabolic both lengthwise and possibly in cross section, although that aspect is hard to discern. Similarly, the remaining upper transverse brace on the top is also parabolic, lengthwise. While rounded, it is not parabolic in cross section. The replacement back braces, are instead, fashioned after the heavy ones used by Martin in the ’50s, and appear noticeably taller than the original parabolic ones. From my viewpoint, they inevitably will dampen the back, preventing it from having the reinforcing capability that the original parabolic braces would have afforded. In addition to using parabolic braces on the back, Martin used some on the top, specifically the short side braces and the arms of the X brace, during their “golden era” — a fact that most luthiers and companies who copy what Martin did then (including Martin, now) seem to have missed. In fact, I have only revoiced one guitar (a Collings) that had side braces perfectly parabolic and balanced to the forces on them, so that I did not have to reshape them to bring out the highs. Apparently in lutherie, as in politics, certain lessons from the past are sometimes lost or deemed unimportant. ◆
