Posted on December 11, 2024September 4, 2025 by Dale Phillips An Important Message From the GAL Staff Important News about the Future of the GAL The original staff members (Tim, Deb and Bon) are retiring in 2026, so 2025 is our last year publishing our print journal, American Lutherie. Please read the Message from the GAL Staff and Frequently Asked Questions below for information about the Guild’s future. Make a donation to our Legacy Fund! The GAL Staff and their years of service, from left: Steve McElrath (14), Kurt Kendall (31), Bon Henderson (52), Dale Phillips (38), Tim Olsen (52), and Deb Olsen (52). Photo by Isaac Olsen. A Message from the GAL Staff Originally published in American Lutherie #153, 2024 The Guild’s staff and Board of Directors have recently made some decisions about the future of the Guild’s activities. Tim, Deb, and Bon (the Guild’s original staff) have been working for the Guild for over fifty years, and are hoping to retire from their decades of nonstop publishing. In light of this and other factors (including financial), we’ve decided that next year will be our last year of publishing our journal, American Lutherie. The full staff will continue working in 2025. Our print publishing schedule for the 2025 issues of American Lutherie will be the same as this year (Spring, Summer, and Fall/Winter), and we’ll continue to add lots of great content from our earlier issues to our Articles Online. Then in 2026, we’ll transition to an all-online “Legacy” mode, so members can continue to access our online content. The rest of our longtime staff (Dale, Kurt, and Steve) will still be here to sell our books, plans, and back issues, and to continue adding more content to our Articles Online. We’ll continue in this mode as long as it’s financially viable. We’re hopeful that members will rally for our final year of paper publishing in 2025. Renewing your membership now for 2025 will help us tremendously. (And if you’ve already renewed, we thank you!) We hope that members will stick with us as we go into our Legacy phase. We will likely need to do some fundraising to cover the costs of continuing our efforts to keep what we’ve published available online to members. We’ll keep you posted on how you can help with that. Of course, tax-deductible donations are always welcome anytime: See https://luth.org/membership/donate/. So the Guild is not “going out of business,” we’ll just be moving to a new mode of sharing. We’re proud of everything that we and our members have been able to accomplish in the last fifty years. The Guild has stayed true to our core values of generous and humble information sharing that has become the standard for the lutherie community. We’ve played a major role in the progress and excellence achieved in the handcrafted instrument field since the early 1970s. We thank you for your continuing support as we transition from paper publishing to digital sharing. Please renew today and don’t miss out on our historic final issues of American Lutherie! The Guild is great, The Guild is good, The Guild is great and good! Frequently Asked Questions about the Future of the GAL Here are some answers to our FAQ about the Guild’s future. Will American Lutherie still be published, but just digitally instead of in print? Our experiment in crowd-sourced publishing has been a dazzling success, and now we are bringing it to a useful and honorable conclusion. We will no longer publish new issues of American Lutherie in any format. With our Editor retiring and the changes in how people get information, our timing is right. We’re looking at ways for volunteer authors to publish directly to the website. We won’t be able to duplicate the editing and preparation that has been a hallmark of our high-quality content, but we’re considering ways that new material could be peer-reviewed. Anyone who would like to participate in a peer-review process is welcome to contact us. Will the Guild keep going? Yes, the Guild will continue to serve the lutherie community as we transition into our Legacy phase. We will offer Legacy memberships with much-lower dues. This will give members access to our rapidly expanding library of Articles Online, plus member discounts on our plans, books, and back issues. We hope that members will stick with the Guild through this important change, but we expect that without AL, our revenue will shrink considerably. We hope that Legacy memberships and donations will help us fill the gap. What’s the future of the Articles Online? The Articles Online portion of the Guild’s website has grown to over 900 articles from our out-of-print journals in an easy-to-read format that members can access by logging in. We’re adding many more at a faster rate this year. And we’ve just recently added a new search feature that makes it easy to find any posted article by topic or author. The Guild has published about 4,000 articles over the last 53 years, so there’s lots for us to work with, but it’s a big job. With your support, we can continue to grow this online resource. What about the GAL books and back issues? The non-retiring office staff will continue to fulfil sales of our existing books and back issues, while they last. Nothing will be reprinted, so once any issue or book is gone, it’s gone. Here’s an easy way to help out the Good Ol’ Guild in this crucial moment: Buy our books and back issues now! Go ahead, treat yo’self! And encourage others to buy them as well. As we proceed into our legacy phase, that revenue stream will help keep our remaining staff on board to serve you. Will the GAL Instrument Plans continue to be available? Yes — as long as the office is operating, the staff will be able to supply all of our instrument plans. We won’t run out of them since we print our plans here in the office. As one letter above said, it’s a treasure trove that is available nowhere else. What about GAL Conventions? There will be no more GAL Conventions. We thank the many people who made them possible: presenters, exhibitors, performers, attendees, and staff (including our retired coordinator, Todd Brotherton). If you were lucky or smart enough to attend one, you know what a unique experience it was. But listen up, young folks: The future is yours. Follow the lead of your pioneering luthier forebears and start a local, regional, national, or international gathering of your own! How can we preserve this treasure of lutherie knowledge and inspiration generated by our volunteer authors over the Guild’s fifty-plus-year history? We’ll be able to implement our plans as outlined above as long as we have sufficient funds, so Legacy membership and donations will be crucial. We are ready to accept donations for our new Legacy Fund via our website, mailed checks, or other transfers. The Guild is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit educational organization, so all donations are tax deductible in the USA. Older members may be in a position to make significant donations that give tax benefits. Members over 70 1/2 years of age can donate from their IRA by making a qualified charitable distribution (QCD); or consider donating to us through your donor-advised fund. We’re also set up to receive donations of appreciated stocks that can give the donor tax advantages. (For any of these scenarios, contact your tax or financial pro for details.) The Guild’s legacy is unique and wonderful. It was built from scratch across a half century by thousands of members and hundreds of authors embracing the simple and powerful idea that “The Right Way is a myth. Everyone has something to tell and something to learn.” Let our final act of sharing be to pass it on to current luthiers and those yet unborn as a robust, convenient, and timeless online resource. The Guild is Great! The Guild is Good! The Guild is Great and Good! With warmest regards, The GAL Staff
Posted on June 6, 2024May 28, 2025 by Dale Phillips Letter: NMM Opens Gudelsky Gallery Letter: NMM Opens Gudelsky Gallery by The National Music Museum Originally published in American Lutherie #82, 2005 GAL members — The National Music Museum on the campus of The University of South Dakota in Vermillion, South Dakota, will celebrate the 500th birthday of Andrea Amati, in whose workshop in Cremona, Italy, the form of the instruments of the violin family as we know them today first crystallized, by hosting an international conference — The Secrets, Lives, and Violins of the Great Cremona Makers 1505–1744, Friday–Monday, July 1–4, 2005. The program brings together individuals who have been at the forefront of archival research in Cremona, amidst some of the earliest, best preserved, and historically most important instruments known to survive. Presenters include Carlo Chiesa, John Dilworth, Andrew Dipper, Roger Hargrave, and Duane Rosengard. The event is being coordinated by Claire Givens (Minneapolis), a NMM Trustee. Major underwriting is being provided by four prominent American violin dealers: Chris Reuning (Boston), Jim Warren (Chicago), Bob Bein and Geoffrey Fushi (Chicago), and David Kerr (Portland). Registration forms and housing information are available on the NMM website. 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 June 1, 2021May 21, 2025 by Dale Phillips Trends: 1985 Lute Society Seminar Trends: 1985 Lute Society Seminar by Lawrence D. Brown Originally published in American Lutherie #3, 1985 The 1985 Lute Society Seminar in Oakland, Michigan, June 16-22, was attended by 50 students, 5 professional luthiers, 7 faculty, and 3 guest speakers. The students included serious amateurs, professional and semi-professional players, and rank beginners. They came from as far away as Japan, Europe, Canada, and England, providing a fascinating cross-section of players and instruments from around the world. Since many of those attending brought two or sometimes three instruments, a great many instrument makers were also represented. For me, as a full-time builder of lutes and other early instruments, it represented an unparalleled opportunity to examine the quality of instruments currently being made by a great variety of makers, and to identify any trends in playing techniques (which can greatly effect the mechanics of a musical instrument). 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 May 21, 2020May 19, 2025 by Dale Phillips The American Luthier: A New Era The American Luthier: A New Era by J.R. Beall Originally published in Guild of American Luthiers Newsletter Volume 1 #1, 1973 Guitars of all kinds are currently enjoying an unprecedented popularity in this country and, indeed, throughout the world. People of every sort are playing or enjoying the performance of guitar music and even the ivied halls of American’s most prestigious conservatories are echoing at last with the sounds of the guitar. The upshot of this welcome boom in popularity and attendant dignification of the guitar as a legitimate instrument is that classic guitars of very fine quality are in high demand and very short supply. Although quite good instruments are available at very reasonable prices, really excellent ones are frequently unavailable at any price. Many advanced students, teachers, and budding concert artists would like to own outstanding instruments but are unable to find them. The guitar, unfortunately, does not have the long, rich history of the violin and artists, therefore, are unable to find antique instruments of high quality. As a result, one must conclude at last that the really top quality concert instruments are yet to be made. This, then, brings me to the point of my writing which is that when guitars of outstanding quality are finally made more available, they will come, for the most part, from small shops in the United States. 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 March 13, 2020May 23, 2025 by Dale Phillips Sustainability: An Issue Confronting Luthiers Sustainability: An Issue Confronting Luthiers by John Curtis from his 1992 GAL Convention lecture Originally published in American Lutherie #33, 1993 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Three, 2004 All around us we see people whose livelihoods are undergoing change. For some the change is minor; for others it is cataclysmic. How would you like to be a furrier or a slide-rule manufacturer? While most people can conceive of life without a mink coat, these same people have trouble conceiving of a world without musical instruments. What can we do to keep building instruments that sound great and keep our customers happy? Let’s look at where we are and where we want to be a few generations down the line. A few items in our favor are: ▶ People would have low tolerance in a world without music. It would be hard to celebrate, to dance, sing the blues, or create a common ground among people. ▶ We are learning to manage our forests sustainably. ▶ There are other woods that would probably make very good instruments until we can ensure the survival and healthy propagation of species which have come to be preferred over the ages, even though this ensured survival will probably not happen in our lifetimes. ▶ Support for woodworkers who “source” their raw materials more responsibly is growing among consumers. ▶ Methods of verifying claims of sustainably-produced woods is starting to reward producers and users. ▶ Changes in the trade have begun to be seen as opportunities and not obstacles. ▶ There are organizations ready to help luthiers make adjustments: crafts organizations, schools of design, the media, galleries, forest-products laboratories, even CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species). 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.
