Posted on July 10, 2026July 13, 2026 by Dale Phillips Finding Waldo Finding Waldo The First Family of American f-Hole Mandolins, Mandolas, and Mandocellos by Paul Ruppa Originally published in American Lutherie #117, 2014 In 1973, I bought a Vega cylinder-back, two-point mandocello for $175. The seller was luthier David Colburn who ran the Vintage Fret Shop in Holderness, New Hampshire. A few years later, I started living with an unyielding interest in finding out about the history of mandocellos. It was not until I began reading through the Library of Congress’ microfilm reproduction of their The Cadenza magazine collection (1894–1924) that I thought I might have uncovered some answers. Yes, it was there that I found Waldo. The American tenor mandola and mandocello were first developed by employees of the Barrows Music Company in Saginaw, Michigan. The instruments were marketed under the Barrows’ brand, “Waldo.” No one knows when they were given the names tenor mandola and mandocello, who named them, or exactly when the first Waldo tenor mandola and mandocello were built. 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 7, 2026July 7, 2026 by Dale Phillips First Build: A Lumberyard Ukulele First Build: A Lumberyard Ukulele by Steve Dickerson Originally published in American Lutherie #143, 2021 When you’re building your first instrument, there aren’t many options. You can buy a kit, join a class (if you can find one), or build from scratch. Kit building can be enjoyable, as well as educational, but (to me, at least) it doesn’t produce the same satisfaction and sense of accomplishment that comes from starting with nothing but the raw materials. My first instrument, many years ago, was scratch-built, but with a twist: I bought a tenor ukulele kit from StewMac, complete with plans and a how-to DVD. I watched the DVD, studied the plans and manual, but set the kit aside. I then bought materials from Home Depot and made a uke, using the kit’s plans and instructions. I still have my “Lumberyard Ukulele” (Photo 1), and it’s a good reminder of some of the things I did wrong. 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 A Field Guide to Mandolins A Field Guide to Mandolins by Graham McDonald Originally published in American Lutherie #132, 2017 The aim of this article is to give you a broad overview of the diverse world of mandolins, and to some extent, what can go wrong with them. I will not spend a huge amount of time discussing Gibson and Gibson-style mandolins. They are the industry standard for mandolins in America, and there has been a lot written about them with lots of other information readily accessible out there on the web, some of which might even be correct. This will be more about other sorts of mandolins that a customer might bring to you. Instruments called mandolins (or in Italian, mandolino) appeared in Italy in the middle of the 17th century (Photo 1). They were small, in fact tiny, lutes. This photo of Italian builder Carlo Ceconni with one of his mandolins gives you a sense of just how little they were (Photo 2). These mandolins are very lightly built, with the soundboards a little over 1MM thick and string tension of around 3KG per string. Scale lengths were 11.5˝–13.5˝ (29CM–35CM), which was likely to have been determined by the pitch standard of where the builder lived. It came down to how high the gut top string could be tuned in any particular climate. They were tuned in fourths with four, five, or six double courses of gut strings. The 6-course tuning, low to high, was g b e´ a´ d˝ g˝. These are the instruments for which Vivaldi wrote his mandolin music, and I am told that the mandolin parts in those concertos falls much more naturally under the left hand with the tuning intervals mostly in fourths rather than fifths. 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 23, 2026June 23, 2026 by Dale Phillips Soundboard Construction of Vinaccia Mandolins Around 1900 Soundboard Construction of Vinaccia Mandolins Around 1900 by Alfred Woll Originally published in American Lutherie #143, 2021 It is presumed that the Neapolitan mandolin was developed mainly by the Vinaccia family toward the middle of the 18th century. At that time, the instrument was strung with low tension gut and metal strings. Two high braces, one above and one below the soundhole, were strong enough to stabilize the soundboard which had, in addition, a distinct cant and a slight transverse arch. The cant and arch were important features of the soundboard to withstand the pressure exerted by the strings on the bridge. The very early Neapolitan mandolins had been rather small. The width of the soundboard was approximately 165mm at the cant. But in the following decades the size of the soundboards as well as the bodies increased. Another famous Neapolitan mandolin maker, Giovanni Battista Fabricatore, built mandolins with larger bowls. In 1793 he added a third brace between the bridge and the second brace. He also strengthened the soundboard with a longitudinal spruce reinforcement running along the center joint from the third brace over the cant to the tail block, and began using a fingerboard plate, which is a transverse spruce reinforcement on the underside of the soundboard in the area of the wooden frets. These four innovations — larger body, third brace, center reinforcement, and fingerboard plate — are used in Italian lutherie to this day. However, his improvement received little attention at the time, due to rapidly declining interest in the Neapolitan mandolin after 1800. 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 15, 2026April 20, 2026 by Dale Phillips Building the Tanbour Building the Tanbour by Nasser Shirazi Originally published in American Lutherie #120, 2014 About a thousand years ago, the great Persian philosopher Abu Nasr Farabi (873ad–950ad) dedicated a large portion of his major work on music Al Mosighi Kabeer (Great Music) to the tanbour. In this day and age, instruments similar to the tanbour are still played in different countries of the Middle East. I have based this article on an instrument that belongs to my friend Amir Nojan, a master setar player. It was made in Kurdistan, west of Iran, where the tanbour is very popular. The plan presented here is based on measurements of this instrument, whose builder is Ostad Assadollah Gahvareh, known to be one of the best in this part of the world. The sound chamber (kaseh) is most often made of a solid piece of wood. In recent times, some builders use ribs like those used to make an oud to build the sound chamber, but what we see in this article is the traditional way and it works well. I wrote more about the solid-wood method in my article on constructing the tar in AL#10. Also, I wrote about making a sound chamber of ribs in my book about constructing the setar. Both of these are also long-necked plucked Persian instruments and they share many structural features. 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.
