Posted on July 15, 2026July 15, 2026 by Dale Phillips The $75 Guitar Challenge The $75 Guitar Challenge by Doug Hunt and Mark French Originally published in American Lutherie #142, 2021 Mark: A couple years ago, I was walking around a big home store and started to wonder whether it would be possible to build a guitar only from things I could buy there. Obviously, they didn’t sell tuners, fretwire, or truss rods. However, I thought it might be possible if one had those three things. I decided that, given those parts, it might be possible to make a guitar with $75 to spend at the home store. Thinking it might be an interesting challenge, I suggested the idea to Doug Hunt. Doug and I have been guitar-making friends for years, having met as part of a project aiming to teach technical subjects to high school students through guitar making. (Check it out at guitarbuilding.org.) He was interested, though not looking for one more thing to do at the time. A while later, he suggested that a better idea would be to start with a budget of $75 that could be spent anywhere (he’s a big fan of eBay, as it happens). As long as the money could be spent anywhere, he thought that it might be possible to do the whole instrument for $75. Over some months of occasionally revisiting the idea, we did a little negotiating and settled on the following rules: 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 14, 2026July 14, 2026 by Dale Phillips Side Bender and Body Mold Cut from One Sheet of Plywood Side Bender and Body Mold Cut from One Sheet of Plywood by Terence Warbey Originally published in American Lutherie #142, 2021 After reading Mark French’s article about his time in the shop of Charles Fox (“A Guitar Is Born: Attending Charles Fox’s Hands-On Guitar Making Course,” AL#136 and Mark’s series, “The Charles Fox Guitar-Building Method,” beginning in AL#139), one idea kept coming back into my mind: “a library of bending forms.” Wouldn’t that be delightful, to have the forms stacked like books rather than my jumble of assembled forms, precariously balanced upon each other on a shelf, collecting dust? I was able to make such a bending form and a matching body mold from a single piece of 24˝×48˝×18MM Baltic-birch plywood, cut into four pieces 12˝×24˝. The bending form uses three upright pieces. They are notched to receive two, also notched, cross pieces. These cross pieces are cut from the spare fourth piece and have a small horizontal piece attached to the bottom of them to easily clamp the assembly down to my Workmate. 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 6, 2026July 6, 2026 by Dale Phillips Fretboard/Top Plate Geometry of the Flattop Guitar Fretboard/Top Plate Geometry of the Flattop Guitar by R.M. Mottola¸ Originally published in American Lutherie #111, 2012 The geometric relationship between the fretboard of the flattop guitar and the top of that instrument is an interesting one, if for no other reason than that a number of the critical dimensions of the instrument such as action and bridge height are affected by it. The geometry of these components is also the source of many technical questions from luthiers attempting to make design departures from conventional instruments, and from those who are simply curious about how all this fits together. This article will discuss the topic using basic examples from conventional instruments. The math will be presented for readers who want to make use of it in their design efforts. Diagrams and textual descriptions are also included, and wherever possible I’ve attempted to discuss the practical ramifications of some typical approaches to this aspect of guitar design. This latter part is generally limited to the basic mechanics of how the parts of the instrument fit together. Although it could be fruitful to widen the scope here to include discussion of general mechanics and acoustics of the instrument, I am not dwelling much in these areas. There is enough to cover just discussing the geometry and assembly considerations. To begin, I’d like to introduce some basic concepts and terminology. Some of these concepts are both generally understood and are described using standard terminology. Terms like bridge height, action, and neck angle are familiar, but let me quickly define each of these as they are used in this article. Bridge height is the nominal height of the bridge from the top of the guitar to the top of the saddle at the instrument’s centerline. Neck angle is the angle between the nominal plane of the top and that of the surface of the neck shaft that contacts the underside of the fingerboard. A positive neck angle means the neck is angled toward the back of the body. Action is the height of the strings above the fret crowns. More specifically (as used here), it is the height of the nominal string-bottom plane over the nominal fret-crown plane. 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 June 29, 2026June 29, 2026 by Dale Phillips Review: Michael Bashkin Fretting Course from ObrienGuitars.com Review: Michael Bashkin Fretting Course from ObrienGuitars.com by John Calkin Originally published in American Lutherie #144, 2021 Fretting Course with Michael Bashkin Video download ObrienGuitars.com, $134 Twenty-seven lessons, 4:21:49 run time Viewing Michael Bashkin’s video fretting course strongly reminded me that lutherie is a thinking person’s profession. No matter how we learn an operation, and even if we work in the darkest isolation, the work slowly begins to evolve in technique, first in our minds and then on the bench. The goals of lutherie — to produce and maintain the most playable, best sounding instruments — never change, but the ways we get there change all the time. It is difficult to imagine that a luthier might so slavishly follow a teacher that his methods never develop beyond his initial instruction. Michael Bashkin is certainly one of those thinking men, and this course is not a generic description of applying frets to a guitar neck that we’ve all been exposed to those over the years. It is an in-depth method of discovering problems in a guitar neck/fretboard and solving them in such a way that the frets are perfect once they are installed, no final fret dressing required — just polish and play. 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 June 11, 2026June 16, 2026 by Dale Phillips Experiments in Audio Spectroscopy Experiments in Audio Spectroscopy by John C. Moore Originally published in American Lutherie #80, 2004 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Seven, 2015 R.M. Mottola’s interesting article in American Lutherie #70 (Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Six) described the use of audio spectroscopy, with a simple home setup, for the analysis of bass guitars. I had read about a spectrum comparison of a Martin D-28 with a Kaman AA 14-4 in An Introduction to Scientific Guitar Design by Donald Brosnac, and have always been intrigued with the idea of capturing in an objective way the “quality” of the sound of different acoustic guitars. Also, my experience has been that seeing colors of nature is enhanced by having tried to paint them, and tasting beer is enhanced by having brewed some. I felt that analyzing sounds from a guitar would heighten the senses here as well. When I read the Brosnac book, written in 1978, the equipment utilized for the guitar comparison sounded exotic and expensive, and certainly beyond the capability of the casual hobbyist. In Mottola’s article, it was clear that the technology of the PC had brought the potential for such experiments within reach. In fact, I already had hardware that could get me started: a digital camcorder that I could extract wave files from and a Sony Vaio laptop. So I decided to have a go at some audio trials. 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.
