Posted on January 19, 2026February 23, 2026 by Dale Phillips Calculating Fret Intervals with Spreadsheet Software Calculating Fret Intervals with Spreadsheet Software by Wayne Kelly Originally published in American Lutherie #43, 1994 Luthiers who own or have access to a personal computer will find spreadsheet software useful in calculating fret intervals. Spreadsheet software is commonly used for accounting, budgeting, and presentation of tabular data. It is invaluable for testing “what if” scenarios because a change made to one cell of a spreadsheet will cause a “ripple effect,” automatically changing values in other cells dependent on that cell. This feature of spreadsheet software makes it possible to calculate fret intervals for a given scale length instantly. Change the scale length value and “presto,” another set of fret intervals is automatically and instantly calculated and displayed. Results can be printed if desired. Within a few minutes one could create a book of fret interval tables for dozens of different scale lengths. I created a spreadsheet to calculate fret intervals using the “fret factors” found in a popular textbook on guitar building (Cumpiano, William R. and Natelson, Jonathan D., Guitarmaking: Tradition and Technology, Rosewood Press, Maine, 1987, p. 268). With fret factors, each fret’s distance from the nut is determined by simply multiplying the fret’s factor by the chosen scale length. My spreadsheet allows one to enter a given scale length, expressed in decimal inches, and it then calculates and displays the distance from the nut to each of 21 frets, as shown in the accompanying figure. The fret intervals are displayed in three columns expressed in centimeters, decimal inches, and sixty-fourths of an inch, respectively. 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 16, 2026January 16, 2026 by Dale Phillips Making Kerfed Lining: A Huss & Dalton Shop Story Making Kerfed Lining: A Huss & Dalton Shop Story by John Calkin Originally published in American Lutherie #72, 2002 and Red Book of American Lutherie, Volume Six, 2013 The focus of all my early lutherie work was to stay cheap. Prepping locally obtained alternative wood was time consuming, but back-and-side sets of cherry, birch, and walnut cost almost nothing in cash. This was a time when Indian rosewood sets cost in the mid-$20s, and I never bought any. I did allow myself the one-time luxury of a fine set of koa for $45, but otherwise I stayed away from the tonewood market. Being so destitute, there was no way I was going to pay for commercial lining. I forget the price of lining in 1980, but a guitar’s worth cost more than my wood sets, so I made my own. Not that it was a work of art. Nor did I care much that my lining was pretty rough. I had scant prospects of selling my instruments, and I wasn’t worried about impressing myself with the interior of my instruments. This had to change as the market opened up and the expectations of guitarists grew accordingly, but initially all my lining had to do was hold the plates to the sides and leave enough material to support the binding and purfling. My early lining left plenty of material. 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 Getting Good Inlay Results with Inexpensive CNC Routers Getting Good Inlay Results with Inexpensive CNC Routers by Jon Sevy Originally published in American Lutherie #144, 2021 Prices for basic CNC routers have dropped dramatically, to the point where small machines in the “3018” class cost only about $250. The name comes from the workable cutting area of 30CM×18CM, which is too small for cutting many of the parts of a guitar (neck, body outline, and so on), but perfect for creating inlays for the peghead and fretboard. The router can be used to cut out both the inlays (in shell, wood, and other materials) and the pockets into which they will be glued. If you have done this by hand, you’ll know just how exacting and time consuming this work is. I use a jeweler’s saw and bird’s-mouth platform to cut the delicate inlays from mother-of-pearl and abalone, and a Dremel with a selection of fine bits to cut out the pockets, using a high-magnification headpiece so I can cut precisely to the lines. It’s tedious work, especially for the repetitive fretboard inlays, so I was interested to try a CNC router as a way to offload this task. There are many resources available for getting started with one of these routers, including tutorials and software packages for developing designs and controlling the router. The routers are widely available on Amazon; I purchased a SainSmart Genmitsu 3018 Pro model based on the reviews (Photo 1). Some assembly is required, but it was relatively straightforward to get it up and running. Most routers come with software that can be used to control the machine, but it’s often proprietary and may be somewhat limited in functionality. However, the machines generally use a standard open-source firmware called GRBL, which makes it easy to use other software packages to control the router. Though the software supplied with the Genmitsu router is adequate, it’s Windows-based software and I run Linux on my laptop, so I chose to use the open-source bCNC package instead of the Genmitsu software. But all of these software packages support the two essential operations for router control, which are manual positioning and execution of G-code to automatically drive the router. G-code is a simple text-based language to specify the position of the cutting bit. 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 Partial Refrets Partial Refrets by John Calkin Originally published in American Lutherie #90, 2007 Partial refrets are a somewhat different matter than a full refret. Full refrets are often done for reasons other than worn frets, such as a compression refret to take excess relief out of a neck with a nonoperative or nonadjustable truss rod, or to allow a fretboard hump at the body joint to be dressed out. Partial refrets are usually performed on an instrument that has been played exclusively on the first few frets. Those frets have been grooved by the strings to the point where the strings buzz on the seldom-used frets. Most of the time I like to replace a couple of the unmarred frets as well just to play it safe. Occasionally a fret in the middle of the fretboard gets damaged and must be replaced. The procedure for this is similar to a partial refret for worn frets. There are other reasons to perform a partial refret, such as installing taller frets by the nut to make a slightly back-bowed neck playable, but these considerations are not covered here. I used to dislike partial refrets and tried to talk the customer into a full refret. This insured that the same fretwire covered the entire fretboard and also put more money in my pocket. After a slight mental adjustment and some practice at partial refrets I have come to look forward to them. The money involved is less, but partial refrets are normally far less complicated than a full refret and take a predictable amount of time. 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 Electric Bass Design Consideration Electric Bass Design Consideration by Veronica Merryfield, David Minnieweather, and moderator/organizer Harry Fleishman from their 2008 GAL Convention panel discussion Originally published in American Lutherie #99, 2009 Harry Fleishman: We’re going to talk basses. Veronica Merryfield is here to talk about the transition from acoustic to electric upright. David Minnieweather is going to talk about bass design from a player’s standpoint, and I’m going talk about thinking in terms of design and making materials choices. So without further ado — do you want further ado? — here is Veronica. Veronica Merryfield: This is my twenty-fifth year of making instruments. I was doing analog synths in my early teens and I needed a bass for the sound I was after. I bought a cheap bass and it was rubbish. Right then, Ned Steinberger brought out this beautifully designed bass but I just couldn’t afford one, so I started building. I made a bass and played it for fifteen years, despite all its problems. Now I use it to show students that their stuff’s really not all that bad. 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.
