Posted on January 16, 2026January 17, 2026 by Dale Phillips Harvey Thomas and the Infernal Music Machine Harvey Thomas and the Infernal Music Machine by Tim Olsen Originally published in American Lutherie #11, 1987 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie, Volume 1, 2000 Remember what the term “Japanese guitar” used to mean, back when beatniks roamed the earth and Elvis was still kinda nasty? The Beatles hadn’t landed and I was in the third grade when my big brother Jim brought home a brand new Japanese guitar. Loosely modeled after a classic, it was already caving in from the load of its steel strings. You don’t see them like this anymore, man. Painted-on binding, decal rosette, door skin luan plywood, basswood (or worse) neck, nice sharp ends on those rough brass frets. I was totally fascinated! But the word fascination found new meaning a year later when my even bigger brother Dick came home from college with what might as well have been the Messiah Strad. It was a very plain, small bodied New York era Epiphone archtop with a badly repaired crack running the full length of the soundboard, and he had bought it cheap in a pawn shop. The hand of mortal man never created such perfection. This was a gift from the angels! Oh, the lovely dissonances that it spoke as I whanged it with a juice glass slide! When Dick was begged, he would strum “Who Put the Overalls in Mrs. Murphy’s Chowder.” 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 Meet the Maker: Graham McDonald Meet the Maker: Graham McDonald by John Calkin Originally published in American Lutherie #97, 2009 Graham McDonald has made significant contributions to American Lutherie over the years and has attended several GAL conventions, quite a long trek for an Australian. He’s written two books, The Bouzouki Book and The Mandolin Project, and has presented convention workshops to support both of them. I had the good fortune to have my convention display table next to Graham’s one year. He’s a reserved individual with perhaps the driest sense of humor on the planet. As we are both quiet guys, we shared little conversation, so I welcomed this opportunity to get to know him better. As a longtime Aussophile I couldn’t help starting out with questions about his homeland. In what part of Australia do you live? We live in Canberra, the national capital. It is a city of around 300,000 in the mountains about 200 miles southwest of Sydney and built specifically as the national capital. Life is lots slower than in the big cities and the climate is just about perfect for lutherie. Unless it is actually raining, the humidity is around 40% every afternoon. We don’t get much more than a frost on winter mornings with most winter temperatures in the 50°s (Fahrenheit). An oil column heater in the workshop keeps it warm enough most of the time. Summer is hotter with maximums up around 100°F, but again with low humidity. It can get down to 20% humidity on a hot summer’s afternoon, but a workshop humidity meter and an online weather station means that it isn’t real hard to know when it’s gluing 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 Meet the Maker: John Calkin Meet the Maker: John Calkin by Lamar Scomp Originally published in American Lutherie #99, 2009 John Calkin lives in my neighborhood. He’s trying to teach me to build guitars. We talk about lots of things, but we always start with guitars. Finally he says to me, “Lamar, why don’t we talk into a tape machine about me, and if it’s any good, I’ll type it up and send it in.” Well shoot, with a confidence boost like that, who could say no? So here’s the talkin’ — if’n he liked it. Where was you born, and how come you’re here in Virginia? Don’t jump in time so fast, Lamar. You’ll get the hang of this as we go. I was born in New Jersey. It was a good place to be a boy when I was one. Now it’s not a good place for anyone, and that’s why I’m in Virginia. 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 October 10, 2025October 10, 2025 by Dale Phillips Hearing Voices: A Recipe for Voicing the Steel String Guitar Hearing Voices: A Recipe for Voicing the Steel String Guitar by John Greven from his 2011 GAL Convention workshop Originally published in American Lutherie #114, 2013 Let’s discuss a vocabulary for tone. These are the words I use when I talk to my customers. Power. We’re talking about headroom, the ability to get louder when you play harder. Responsiveness. I want a top that will respond easily to a light touch, but it will also sustain under a heavy one. The finished guitar will have a full voice played lightly or heavily or anywhere in between. A lot of guitars require a heavy touch; as playing pressure diminishes, the voice gets thin and loses its full substance. Projection. How far away can you hear it? I want the guitar to throw its voice as far as possible. When I was at Gruhn’s, a 1937 D-28 came in, all original. The top was the thinnest we’d seen on a herringbone, about .090", but it was really stiff. The sound of that guitar was painful, but you could hear it for miles. For a bluegrasser trying to play lead over six banjos, that’s the guitar. 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 October 10, 2025October 10, 2025 by Dale Phillips A Summary of John Greven’s Voicing Method A Summary of John Greven’s Voicing Method by Mike Doolin Originally published in American Lutherie #114, 2013 John Greven has been building guitars for fifty years, and has single-handedly built over 2200 guitars in that time. Doing the math, that means he averages close to a guitar a week. Given that kind of efficiency, it’s not surprising that his methods for controlling the sound of his guitars are simple and direct. He’s distilled the huge number of variables down to the handful that he believes are most important, and has evolved testing methods that take only seconds and require no measurement tools. While John is a trained scientist, and does speak of the scientific aspects of guitars and wood, he’s quick to point out that his methods are not scientific, but intuitive and experiential. This is a major problem in documenting his methods: in a sense, you have to be John Greven to fully understand them. They rely on John’s vast experience in building thousands of guitars, and playing those guitars and thousands of guitars by other builders, and on his “photographic” memory for sound, and the database of sounds that his experience and memory have created in his head. Moreover, sound is not accurately describable in words, and tactile sense is not accurately quantifiable. 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.
