Posted on January 12, 2010May 30, 2025 by Dale Phillips Review: Taylor on Guitars: New Neck Designs by Bob Taylor, Taylor Guitars Review: Taylor on Guitars: New Neck Designs by Bob Taylor, Taylor Guitars Reviewed by Woody Vernice Originally published in American Lutherie #62, 2000 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Six, 2013 Video: Taylor on Guitars: New Neck Designs Bob Taylor, Taylor Guitars www.taylorguitars.com I’ve been thinking about this video for a month, and last night Bob Taylor was in my dream. Taylor, myself, and about thirty nondescript luthiers were thrown in the clink overnight on trumped-up charges, shipped out of town on a freight train, then delivered home on a battered bus. I arrived home with my pack frame, but everything in it had been scattered along the tracks and highways of our odyssey. Bob was good company, but with his close shave, razor-cut hair, and classy overcoat, he clearly wasn’t one of the boys. Taylor (the real man) is always friendly — even jocular — when accosted at lutherie conventions. The Bob on this video is more like the guy in my dream. Not aloof, but quiet and understated. He wants to sell us on his new guitar neck but not too strongly, for he’s aware that a heavy hand might raise the hackles of a tradition-locked audience. Taylor (the company), once the iconoclastic upstart, is now a major player in the guitar world with 700+ dealers, and they don’t want their pioneering spirit to rock their empire. Stacks of companies have gone under by producing fine products that the public wasn’t ready for, and Taylor certainly doesn’t want to find themselves on the top of that heap. 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. Review: Taylor on Guitars: New Neck Designs by Bob Taylor, Taylor Guitars Reviewed by Woody Vernice Originally published in American Lutherie #62, 2000 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Six, 2013 Video: Taylor on Guitars: New Neck Designs Bob Taylor, Taylor Guitars www.taylorguitars.com I’ve been thinking about this video for a month, and last night Bob Taylor was in my dream. Taylor, myself, and about thirty nondescript luthiers were thrown in the clink overnight on trumped-up charges, shipped out of town on a freight train, then delivered home on a battered bus. I arrived home with my pack frame, but everything in it had been scattered along the tracks and highways of our odyssey. Bob was good company, but with his close shave, razor-cut hair, and classy overcoat, he clearly wasn’t one of the boys. Taylor (the real man) is always friendly — even jocular — when accosted at lutherie conventions. The Bob on this video is more like the guy in my dream. Not aloof, but quiet and understated. He wants to sell us on his new guitar neck but not too strongly, for he’s aware that a heavy hand might raise the hackles of a tradition-locked audience. Taylor (the company), once the iconoclastic upstart, is now a major player in the guitar world with 700+ dealers, and they don’t want their pioneering spirit to rock their empire. Stacks of companies have gone under by producing fine products that the public wasn’t ready for, and Taylor certainly doesn’t want to find themselves on the top of that heap. In short, Taylor’s new neck is rigid from the end of the headstock to the upper end of the fingerboard. It attaches to the body only with bolts, and the heel and the fingerboard extension fit into pockets of such tight tolerance that they are essentially invisible. From the outside the guitars look like the Taylors of old. In the pockets is a mated pair of tapered shims, and the neck can be reset by removing the bolts, changing the shims, and reassembling, a process that’s done on screen in less than five minutes. It’s sort of a wildly sophisticated version of the Fender Micro-Tilt neck. The headstock is also finger jointed to the neck, and Bob uses a press to demonstrate that the breaking point of the joint is at least as strong as that of a one-piece neck. There are other new features, but you should get the video to check them out. The tape is carefully crafted to convince even the guitar idiot that the new neck is a real step forward, not just a gimmick. Paper models and dissected guitars abound as examples of old and new technology. Bob’s explanations are crystal clear. The video opens with a disjointed and rapid factory tour, and later there’s footage of a robo-luthier milling a body to accept the new neck system. A parking lot shot of Bob setting a guitar on fire with his giant magnifying lens would have livened things up, but on the whole this video is watchable and informative. I’ve been a fan of Bob and his guitars since they hit the scene. I’m certainly willing to concede that the new neck is a step forward. Not that neck sets are that big a deal. The typical well-made guitar may go decades before distortions in the body make the action unplayable. Spending $200–$400 every ten years to keep a valuable old friend serviceable isn’t such a burden. Putting a shim under the fingerboard extension during a reset will keep the neck playable even on a cutaway guitar. This is a normal part of life for vintage-instrument enthusiasts and anyone else who keeps an instrument long enough for it to show some age. For decades to come repairmen are likely to make a good living from resets. The fact that your Taylor dealer can now keep your ax in fine playing form (and perhaps for free) as the years go by, and keep the joinery looking factory-new, will likely take some time to gain as a sales pitch. But there’s a philosophical side to this that I can’t ignore. Taylor was already a frontrunner in high-tech guitar making, but according to their website they had to install equipment capable of higher precision in order to implement their new neck technology as invisibly as they wished. Forget the issue of patent infringement — a guitar factory has finally gone where hand builders probably can’t afford to follow. The impact may be years in the future, but if demand for technically refined instruments snowballs, the definition of a well-made guitar may change in a way that puts the lone luthier in jeopardy. But I suspect that the CNC revolution has just begun, and its impact on our industry probably can’t be guessed at from our vantage point. Alone among the crafts, the more a handmade guitar looks like a factory product, the more successful it is deemed. Traditional concepts and cosmetic perfection are market priorities, regardless of what most musicians maintain, and guitars are seldom made as a personal statement of creation. Where is our James Krenov? Krenov founded a school of furniture making that eschewed trick joinery, shiny finishes, and overstated decoration in favor of an elegant simplicity of design, surfaces that displayed tool marks (especially his beloved hand planes) as the sign of a human creation, and oil or wax finishes that let the wood feel like wood. Not that Krenov’s ideas would transfer directly to the guitar. But enough craftsmen were so enamored of Krenov’s ideas that they bucked major trends in furniture design until their market presence couldn’t be ignored. Orville Gibson briefly provided such an influence before he sold out to a corporate entity, and we certainly have contemporary builders who are founts of inspiration, but by and large guitar makers still strive for factory perfection at the expense of personal statement. For the last decade or so the factories have followed the lead supplied by the little guys and the one-off builders. Now we have a sign that the factories may lead where the rest of us can’t follow. The factories will always furnish the world with 99% of its guitars. In the future the “one-percenters” may need a new ethic to explain their presence. I hope to see the day when handmade guitars are so distinctive that they need no logos to identify their makers. ◆
Posted on January 11, 2010May 14, 2025 by Dale Phillips In Memoriam: Mario Maccaferri In Memoriam: Mario Maccaferri Passed on April 16, 1993 by John Monteleone Originally published in American Lutherie #35, 1993 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Three, 2004 My first contact with Mario Maccafferri was fourteen years ago, the result of looking up Mastro Industries in the Yellow Pages. I already knew by then that he was the creator of the wonderful guitars made by Selmer of Paris which were made famous by Django Reinhardt. His plant on Webster Avenue in the Bronx, a city block in size, was a shrine to a self-made man. The exterior of the building had the look of a factory built in the forties and dedicated to serious manufacturing. There were several large silos behind the factory which once held the many different colors of plastic pellets used in injection molding machines. The factory had many rooms and seemed to ramble on and on. Once inside, I walked into a room which once had forty huge molding machines running, each one the size of a locomotive. At this time there was only one of these machines in operation and it appeared to be the last gasp at the end of a long and successful, not to mention prosperous, era; The Golden Era of Plastics. I am referring to a special time of invention and pioneering, a time when Mario was a major contributor to the field of injection molding plastic. He proudly showed me the complete Mastro line of marbleized plastic wall tiles, clothes pins, toys, mosaics, clothes hangers, acoustic ceiling tiles and musical instruments. Mario was the holder of over fifty U.S. patents for these items and the processes by which to manufacture them. Among his many inventions, he was very proud of his plastic ukulele. I discovered a warehouse room filled with several thousand guitars still sealed in their original cartons since 1954. There were many other rooms that were filled with all sorts of machinery and assembly lines. And there was the reed section. I was at that time unaware of the French American Reed Co. and its history. On the walls of Mario’s office were many personalized photos of all of the great saxophone and clarinet artists of the day. In the early years, the big band years, Mario ghost-manufactured reeds for every one of the other reed companies. It was there at one of the reed machines that I met Mario’s wife, Maria. She was a hard working woman of grace and beauty. And she was ready to revive the reed business that had gone by the wayside in the ’50s when the plastics plant was in full swing. But now, the plant was winding down all operations and Mario was retired and getting ready to take a rest. I visited Mario quite often back then in the early ’80s. I would take the day off and jump in the car. After several visits he asked me if I could make him a guitar. He handed me a blueprint of his classical cutaway model. I was at the same time both surprised and eager to accept the challenge. While I was making this guitar for him, Mastro was getting ready to hold an auction. This was in November 1981. It was a sad time for him and Maria. Their whole life was on the block and before them, disappearing piece by piece. This was yet another transitional time in Mario’s life and I was there to watch it happen. Mario Maccaferri, left, with John Monteleone, 1985. Photo courtesy of John Monteleone. After I completed his new guitar I brought it to him. Upon seeing it his eyes lit up. And then I began to witness the intensity and devotion that he had when he was back in Italy, young and in his prime. Right away he wanted to make a change to the guitar to make it respond easier, to “wake it up,” as he would say. Without hesitation we went into the shop where he had retained some of his benches and tools from the auction hammer and I cut off the back. Time was of the essence so I was compelled to use a bayonet saw. I was sick about having to do this because I had used some of my best Brazilian rosewood for the back and sides. But there was no time to waste and it had to come off quick. And quick it did, ZIP! All of the fan bars were cut out and he made new fan set and glued them in and secured them with masking tape. We came back after lunch and made a new three-piece back and had it glued on with the tape. Masking tape was all that we had. We didn’t have any clamps on hand, since I hadn’t planned on operating so speedily on a guitar that I just delivered. Mario had it strung up the next morning and called me to tell me that it made a good improvement. We had a lot of laughs about it later on. Well, that was the way it was with Mario, and I couldn’t have been happier because it soon got the juices flowing for the next project. I learned an invaluable lesson from him that it was more important to follow your instincts than to stand on pride alone. After a little prodding, I convinced Mario to make some wood guitars again based on his original designs. It was decided that we would make six classical and six jazz guitars. He had some forms for the back and side laminating but we didn’t have any veneers to work with. So we piled into the big green Cadillac and hot-footed it over to Constantine’s where we picked out enough Indian rosewood and poplar for the whole project. The next day I brought up some tools and clamps and we got right into it. The level of excitement was tremendous for me. I was about to learn first hand from the master himself how to make a Maccafferri guitar. And I could tell that Mario was feeling like a kid again and it helped him, I think, to get his mind off the retirement thing. Maria was happy to see him get involved in something constructive. Mario and Maria always went to work together every day since they first met back in 1936. He regularly wore a suit and tie to work. And right up to 1993 it was no different. I will never forget the great times that we had. Lunch time was usually a time to relax in Mario’s office while Maria would prepare a simple continental lunch for the three of us. There was always a guitar handy and Mario would play. His talents extended beyond the workbench as well. Not many people were aware of what a great guitar player he was. His style was very classical, romantic, melodic, and confident. His technique was impressive, to say the least. It was such an honor to not only make guitars alongside one of the greatest figures in the guitar world, but to be serenaded by him too. I cherished those lunches with just the three of us. After coffee, desert, and guitar talk, we were off to the shop again to see if the glue was dry yet. He carried one of those little metal aspirin boxes in his pocket that jangled with his every step. Inside the box were his heart pills that he must have been taking for the last forty years. He also loved hard candy and always had one for each of us after lunch. It was Mario’s wish to go into the guitar business and he offered me his cooperation, his plant, and his name. I faced an extremely difficult decision. Was I going to make Maccafferri guitars, or Monteleone mandolins and guitars? I decided to follow my own destiny, but not without utilizing my experience with Mario. His designs were a big influence on the Hot Club and Django models that I went on to produce later. Although I went on my own I remained in close contact with Mario and continued my visits to the Bronx. All of those people who knew Mario were constantly amazed by his level of energy and great stamina. Once we had finished making the twelve guitars, I showed Mario my first violin that I had just completed. His reaction was to show me his secret stash of four sets of violin wood that he had brought with him when he escaped from Europe in 1939 just before the Germans invaded France. His face lit up once again and we were suddenly in the violin business. This renewed interest in the violin instantly sparked an old challenge in Mario. He had always wanted to make a plastic violin that would posses all of the finest attributes of a fine old Cremonese instrument. With this in mind, he drew a set of prints for the molds and went to work without hesitation. He was by then only 88 years old. He debuted the first plastic violin at Carnegie Hall on March 8, 1990. Mario continued to pour all of his concentrated efforts into further developing the plastic violin until his dying day. He was disturbed by the fact that he could no longer play the guitar. His age was beginning to catch up to him after the move of the plant to Mount Vernon. He didn’t let it get him down. He would always call and say to me, “Can I come and work for you?” I would take it as a compliment and then think to myself, “If only we had met fifty years ago!” And then I’d imagine, “What if?” I had always thought of Mario going on forever. No one expected it to end so quickly. Time has its own way of doing things and it finally caught up with Mario Maccafferri on April 16, 1993. At his funeral, from the choir loft, a solo violin (the same one that was played at Carnegie Hall) touched our hearts with some of the pieces of music that he loved to play on the guitar. It was a befitting farewell and tribute to a friend who gave all he could to anyone who was willing to listen. I often think of Mario as I go about my work. It’s like he’s there working with me sometimes. It was the greatest privilege of my life to have known and worked with him. It was an experience that I will never forget. Mario leaves behind his beautiful and loving family. He was very close to them, especially his Maria. We all adored him. And we shall all miss him.
Posted on January 10, 2010May 14, 2025 by Dale Phillips In Memoriam: Taku Sakashta In Memoriam: Taku Sakashta December 11, 1966 – February 11, 2010 by Tom Ribbecke Originally published in American Lutherie #101, 2010 Besides making world-class guitars, Taku Sakashta was part of our local community of artists. In the blink of an eye he is gone, at the hands of a brutal career criminal. Nothing prepared us for the loss of our friend like this. It can really test one’s faith. He is survived by his wife Kazuko. As she worked with Taku, she now is bereft of an income as well as a husband. Taku came to America and achieved the respect and admiration of his peers. As my former apprentice Isao Abe said about the Japanese culture, “The highest nail is hammered down first.” But here, Taku was an unstoppable lutherie force. He developed his own aesthetic and created extraordinary designs. As Rick Turner pointed out, Taku achieved his dream. Losing him is not easy. When an artist of his stature dies, so do the many guitars he certainly would have left to the world had he lived. Taku would come to visit without warning. I would turn around and he would be standing in my shop in his apron, usually with one of his students or an assistant in tow. I used to tell him he looked like my grandfather Hideo (who later became Henry) and he would laugh. He would round up the Japanese apprentices from Ervin’s and my shop, and take them camping, or out for beers. He was really caring for this group of men, and was always there for them. Photo by Jonathon Peterson. So there we sat in the front row at Taku’s memorial service at the request of his family: Larry Robinson, Steve Klein, Ervin Somogyi, Rick Turner, and myself, with our 200 years of collective instrument making experience. I was honored to be in the company of these outstanding people, who all share the same love of the art and the craft of lutherie. My apprentices call us the “old Gs” of guitar making. It felt like we were burying one of our children. The family did not want the media there. It was a small and lovely service, half in English and half in Japanese, honoring his life. Tuck and Patty performed, and we were treated to slides of Taku as a wild young man and as a little boy. This was the story of his life outside of guitars. Taku was a remarkable, brilliant, unstoppable, unflagging force for lutherie. But I will always remember him as a better person.
Posted on January 10, 2010May 19, 2025 by Dale Phillips Letter: Use Any Wood You Like Letter: Use Any Wood You Like by John Calkin Originally published in American Lutherie #25, 1991 Dear Tim, In 1981 I bought a new Alvarez-Yari 6-string, with laminated rosewood back and solid spruce top. Lots of guitars sound as good, but hardly any sound better. Lots of guitars are as playable, but very few play nicer. I’ve worked on or played dozens of high end, exquisitely made guitars and a bunch of vintage pieces, and not one has ever blown me away. Early in my career I helped do sound at a local folk benefit. Lots of fine talent turned out, sporting a number of classy guitars. But a low-end mahogany Yamaha blew them all away, no contest. 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 10, 2010May 23, 2025 by Dale Phillips Letter: Don’t Replace Bridge Plate Letter: Don't Replace Bridge Plate by John Higgins Originally published in American Lutherie #41, 1995 Greetings to All- As usual, the last issue of the quarterly was filled with loads of good stuff, with useful information available in all the articles. However, I must take exception to the premise of Bryan Galloup’s reason for replacing the bridgeplate on the 1962 D-28. He states he replaced it because “the balls on the string ends have worn all the way through (the plate) and into the top.” Had the top “bellied up” behind the bridge or sunk toward the soundhole, I would say such a repair would be warranted. Since only the ball ends are involved, I feel the better option is to install a piece of quartersawn maple, cut 0.100" thick by 5/8"×2 3/4", onto the existing plate with some yellow glue. When redrilled and slotted, it seats the ball ends properly, as well as pulling the winding back into the pin hole and off the saddle. The small amount of wood added doesn’t seem to affect the tone adversely, but helps due to the windings being off the saddle. Martin recommends this method when only ball-end wear is a factor, and I’ve found it to be very effective. 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.
