Posted on April 3, 2026April 3, 2026 by Dale Phillips Meet the Maker: James Condino Meet the Maker: James Condino by Roger Alan Skipper Originally published in American Lutherie #105, 2011 James Condino has lived and traveled in forty-three countries in his forty-four years. The instruments of this extreme outdoor adventurer have accompanied him to highest mountain peaks and through raging rivers. He’s an author with a pair of books in the works, one concerning the mandolin, and the other on the double bass. He’s also a lutherie teacher, previously at the college level, and now one-on-one in his shop. He’s landed, for the moment, in Asheville, North Carolina, where he builds mandolins and double basses, and specializes in repairs on vintage guitars and the plywood basses he digs out of the Appalachian hills and hollows that surround him. James, teaching is interwoven with your building. Let’s start with the school of lutherie mentioned on your website. Beginning when I was nineteen, I spent almost six years in the Air Force; I got out just after Desert Storm. Then I went to school at Oregon State University. It’s an old-school land-grant institution, and still had a nice public-access woodshop. When I built a flattop steel string guitar there in 1995, they approached me about teaching a lutherie class. I was busy with field expeditions just then, so I didn’t have the time. The following winter, though, I taught a very popular ten-week course in solidbody electric guitars. That morphed into a three-academic-quarter, nine-month class in building acoustic steel string guitars. I taught there for four years, and I learned as much as the students during that time. That experience also allowed me to home in on what I wanted to teach and how to approach it. 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 March 25, 2026March 25, 2026 by Dale Phillips Meet the Maker: George Gruhn Meet the Maker: George Gruhn by Roger Alan Skipper Originally published in American Lutherie #107, 2011 Growing up in Pittsburgh in the ’50s, at age twelve George Gruhn seemed destined for a life centered in zoology. So many animals, in fact — ’possums, snakes, turtles, frogs, and fish — filled the basement of his parents’ home that a Pittsburgh newspaper sent a reporter to interview him. His college education began with a premed major but quickly shifted to ethology (animal behavior, in the psychology department). A department chair nervous about venomous pit vipers left George with twenty-five to thirty cottonmouth moccasins in his apartment, rather than in the psychology building. Also in George’s apartment at that time were the beginnings of a vintage guitar collection. He’d scoured classified ads, pawnshops, and music stores for the instruments few others yet sought, but couldn’t find enough in the Chicago area to satisfy his hunger. On a vacation break in 1965 he visited Nashville, expecting to find shops overflowing with old instruments, but found virtually nothing of interest. Ready to leave in disappointment, he heard of collector Mike Longworth (later to write Martin Guitars: A History) in Chattanooga, four hours away. 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 March 3, 2026March 3, 2026 by Dale Phillips Meet the Maker: Ralph Novak Meet the Maker: Ralph Novak by John Calkin Originally published in American Lutherie #70, 2002 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie, Volume Six, 2013 There aren’t a lot of questions in this interview. Ralph’s mind is organized. I made the appointment to interview him during the 2001 GAL Convention, and when the appointed time rolled around his story poured out almost as if he were reading it — an interviewer’s dream. I’ll bet he’s always been that way. We should all be so lucky. The interview was later updated to late April 2002. How were you introduced to music and lutherie? I started with piano lessons in the third grade, and started playing guitar when I was fourteen. By the time I was fifteen I began modifying and customizing my guitars. My dad was helpful in that. He didn’t know anything about instruments, but he was an excellent woodworker, and even when I was a child he made his shop available to me. He’d show me his projects, maybe let me sand something, and answer any questions I came up with about the shop and the work. The shop was never locked up. I’d go down there and do stuff. 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 March 3, 2026March 3, 2026 by Dale Phillips Meet the Maker: Wade Lowe Meet the Maker: Wade Lowe by Kent Everett Originally published in American Lutherie #118, 2014 Yahoo! Today I am going to the center of the known universe. You will find it on a leafy, quiet street in Decatur, Georgia. Wade Lowe, the purveyor of The Atelier awaits, sporting a big smile as always. Your shop always reminds me of the “find the hidden picture” game we used to play as kids. When you stop and look, all kinds of magical things emerge from the background. It has taken me only forty-six years and eleven months to get my shop in such beautiful shape! (laughs) What happened to start you along this life as a craftsman? How far back can we go? We lived in Hartwell, South Carolina, across the street from a lumber mill. When I was five years old, a big black man who worked there took a favor to me. He would nail scraps of lumber together to make cars and trucks and airplanes, and that fascinated me to no end. When I was about six, I somehow got hold of a pocket knife, and my folks let me keep it. My big brother Charlie and I would spit on the curb stone and sharpen my knife in the spit. I carved little race cars out of the insides of corn stalks, where the pith is soft, almost like balsa. Daddy set me up with a little workshop space in our garage, and I would always ask for tools and stuff at Christmas. 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 March 3, 2026March 3, 2026 by Dale Phillips Meet the Maker: Abel Garcia López Meet the Maker: Abel Garcia López by Federico Sheppard Originally published in American Lutherie #119, 2014 Dusk has fallen in this little corner of Mexico. Our car covers narrow mountain roads, and when we reach higher elevations, the road is covered with hail. “Is this snow?” I ask. “No Señor, this is frozen rain. It falls silently here. These are magic mountains.” A few miles later, sandbags and a checkpoint appear out of the mist. Plain men in plain working clothes handle well-worked machine guns and sawed-off shotguns, lit by dim yellow lamps. “Abel, what is this? Is there a drug problem here?” He laughs softly in his gentle way. “I can see where you might think that. But the problem here is not drugs, but protecting our trees. This village is one of the most indigenous in our country, and the local people have come together to protect their forests. The pine trees here produce a most wonderful resin, and it has been collected here for hundreds of years to produce paints and other things. The people a few villages away have many carpinteros (carpenters) and they have killed all of their forests and run out of wood. So the local people are protecting their future. This program has now become a model for local villages who wish to protect themselves from crime, robbery, and drugs.” 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.
