Posted on October 9, 2025October 9, 2025 by Dale Phillips Meet the Dealer: Armin Kelly Meet the Dealer: Armin Kelly by Cyndy Burton Originally published in American Lutherie #80, 2004 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Seven, 2015 I see your ads for Guitars International everywhere. Can you tell me how you got started dealing in classical guitars? I made a very serious mistake! (laughs) From the time I was fifteen until I was thirty, I studied classical guitar very intensively with several very musical teachers. But at some point I realized I had to decide whether this was what I wanted to continue doing the rest of my life or not. I felt that I’d hit my peak as a player, and I wanted to explore other things. So I stopped playing — not an easy thing to do — and eventually sold my guitars. Playing classical guitar had been an all-consuming endeavor for me, and I couldn’t do it part time and remain happy. Instead, I returned to school and studied English literature and literary criticism at Columbia University and teacher methodology at Harvard University. Later I taught English for several years, both at university and high-school levels. 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 15, 2025July 15, 2025 by Dale Phillips Meet the Maker: Duane Heilman Meet the Maker: Duane Heilman by John Calkin Originally published in American Lutherie #71, 2002 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Six, 2013 Duane Heilman is a quirky luthier. Though he serves his community in the apple-growing country of eastern Washington doing typical repair work in a normal fashion, his creative bent might run off in any direction when he turns his mind to instrument creation. His Spam instruments have been a hit at several GAL Convention auctions. The Spamdolin is a mandolin that uses a Spam can as a body and resonator. The Spamavarius is a violin made in a similar fashion. They are funny, weird, and fully playable instruments that entice fans of the bizarre into the auction room several times a day to sample them. They always sell for surprising amounts of money. I first talked to Duane across the cafeteria lunch table the first day of the 2001 GAL Convention, and after hearing his tale of successfully marketing ukes on eBay, I knew I’d have to get him to repeat it for my tape deck. So here’s Duane, the first luthier I know to leap willingly into the 21st century. 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 3, 2025June 20, 2025 by Dale Phillips Resurrecting the Family Banjo Resurrecting the Family Banjo by John Calkin Originally published in American Lutherie #84, 2005 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Seven, 2015 Though the title says banjo, this could as easily be about any stringed instrument. We’ve all seen them, the family “heirloom” that some relative has decided deserves to be played again, perhaps because they think it will be cheaper than buying a comparable new one, but more likely for some sentimental reason. The number of such beaters you actually get to work on may vary with your locality. Sentimentality didn’t count for much in New Jersey, and I had a collection of junky guitars that had been abandoned once the concerned relative learned what the cost of resurrection would be. Virginians, on the other hand, seem to put more stock in sentimentality and I’ve had the chance to rebuild several instruments that probably weren’t worth the fee I charged. Though this is about restoring an instrument to playability, please understand that we’re not talking about restoration as a vintage specialist would understand it. That sort of restoration often requires specialized knowledge and may demand a lot of research as well as the exchange of hefty sums of cash. It’s not much fun, either, unless you suffer a certain type of personality. In fact, some of what you and your customer may decide to do may interfere with future restoration, so it pays to have some idea of what’s collectable and what’s not. 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 April 23, 2025June 20, 2025 by Dale Phillips A Luthier’s Choices A Luthier’s Choices by Kenny Hill from his 2004 GAL Convention lecture Originally published in American Lutherie #87, 2006 Guitar building, for me, began as a way of understanding the instrument more completely. Maybe it’s like raising your own food in order to understand where food comes from. I attended the 1977 GAL Convention and brought my fifth guitar to display. In those days I thought that I could probably invent the guitar and just discover it, all new, all fresh, all mine. It took many years for me to start over — to just start over from the beginning and to learn what our predecessors have done, and to learn the variety of different ways there are to produce a good instrument. The pursuit of anything is a series of decisions that come at forks in the road. It’s not just about how you do something, it’s about where it takes you. And it’s about what it does to your life and how it channels you into participating in your own life and the lives of the people around you. 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.
