Posted on April 21, 2023May 29, 2025 by Dale Phillips Letter: Hurdy-Gurdy Letter: Hurdy-Gurdy by Wilfried Ulrich Originally published in American Lutherie #68, 2001 Dear Guild, Imagine a special magazine where famous and other pretty good hurdy-gurdy builders inform others to build better hurdy-gurdies. What would you think about a guy who got a parcel with a lot of scrap that makes you laugh when looking at the parts, but which are supposed to have the potential to become a guitar? But what the heck is a guitar? When he finished that monster, it had a beautiful big soundhole where you can hide your socks and underwear when traveling, and he showed it to his wife. “Look baby, that’s what they call a guitar! It makes noise when you scratch over the strings!” “Hah! Good one! What an awful long neck — you can wave that thing like a tennis racket. Why that strange corpus-form like an ‘8’? It cost eight bucks, eh?” Imagine! 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 October 31, 2022May 16, 2025 by Dale Phillips Building the Prima Gusli Building the Prima Gusli by James H. Flynn Originally published in American Lutherie #27, 1991 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Three, 2004 The Gusli is a very old Russian folk musical instrument. Most probably, it dates back to the 11th century. The gusli is a Russian version of the ancient dulcimer or psaltry. Also in the same family, although different, are the Finnish kantele and the Hungarian cymbalom. Over time, the gusli has changed to accommodate a wide range of musical situations. Today, with especial thanks to the great V.V. Andreev (American Lutherie #17, see Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Two, p. 180), one must be specific in describing the gusli because of the many styles. The largest of the guslis, both in physical size and musical range is the piano gusli which is shown in Fig. 1. This instrument stands on four legs (which are detachable to facilitate moving) and has a musical range of five octaves. The keyboard, which is one octave wide, is manipulated with the fingers of the left hand while the right hand works over the exposed strings with a plectrum. Activating the keyboard lifts the dampers on certain strings in all octaves. 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 July 1, 2022May 14, 2025 by Dale Phillips Meet the Maker: Do Viet Dung Meet the Maker: Do Viet Dung by Andy DePaule Originally published in American Lutherie #74, 2003 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Seven, 2015 Christmas eve, 1965. I arrived in Saigon, age eighteen years plus one week. I had joined the Army on my seventeenth birthday after dreaming of it for two years. I felt lucky when the Vietnam War started to get serious, because it was my chance to be a hero. But the rule was that you had to be eighteen years old to go. OK, I was the classic stupid kid. I ended up doing two tours of duty in Vietnam, by my own choice. I don’t know why, but I loved that place from the first day. That has never changed for me. I did become disenchanted with what we were doing there. These were the “light at the end of the tunnel” days, and those of us on the ground were already starting to realize that this was the first war we would not win. But even when things were rough, there was no other place I wanted to be. 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 July 1, 2022May 9, 2025 by Dale Phillips An Experimental Tenor Violin An Experimental Tenor Violin by Frederick C. Lyman, Jr. Originally published in American Lutherie #18, 1989 Building a musical instrument always involves making decisions. Even if the instrument is a familiar model that has been built many times before, the actual pieces of wood are unique, and require unique treatment. Obtaining predictable results, even such as might appear to be instances of mere routine uniformity, usually requires a surprising degree of conscious, intelligent control. In respect to quality of sound, the more an instrument is produced by an invariable automated process, the more variable and inconsistent may be the result. That is because we are dealing with subtle differences which add up. The more intelligence that can be applied to the many decisions that have to be made, the better the cumulative result can be. Of course, wrong decisions can also be made. This can happen easily when the project being undertaken is one-of-a-kind, where the lessons of past mistakes cannot be applied to the problems. 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 July 1, 2022May 23, 2025 by Dale Phillips Questions: Fingerboard of Orpharion Questions: Fingerboard of Orpharion by Chris Goodwin Originally published in American Lutherie #93, 2008 Wayne S. from the Internet asks: Can someone tell me what the idea behind the layout of the fingerboard of the orpharion is? Chris Goodwin from the Internet responds: The explanation lies in the limitations of metallurgy in the Renaissance. The basic problem of lute family instruments is that you are looking for strings which are all the same length to make a musical sound with open tunings ranging over two octaves. If you have a reasonably fine bass string that makes a good musical note and provides reasonable intonation when fretted, then the top string has to be very thin and under very high tension to sound two octaves higher. They couldn’t make wires strong enough in those days. Orpharion, copy after Francis Palmer, made by Peter Forrester. Photo by Peter Forrester. The sloping frets partially resolve this problem by making the bass strings longer than the treble. The treble string could be shorter, and so didn’t have to be at such high tension to sound at a high note, and the bass strings didn’t have to be fat and chunky (and produce a dull unmusical thud, instead of a clear note) because they were longer. This is explained very well by Ian Harwood in an (English) Lute Society booklet on the Helmingham bandora. Purchase the booklet from the Lute Society: Lutesoc@aol.com.
