Posted on January 19, 2010September 15, 2025 by Dale Phillips Product Review: Stew-Mac Shaped Braces Product Review: Stew-Mac Shaped Dreadnought Braces Reviewed by John Calkin Originally published in American Lutherie #79, 2004 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Seven, 2015 Stewart-MacDonald kindly sent along a set of their shaped dreadnought braces for evaluation. This set up such an internal philosophical debate that I'd like to put off the brace examination for a minute. Just how much of an instrument can we job out and still call it our own? Two decades ago, when I was green and full of attitude, the answer was simple — none of it! Beginning luthiers often harbor a purist attitude that can leave them dreaming of harvesting their own trees, processing their own lumber, and drawing upon nothing from outside their shop but machine heads and strings. Those of us who have actually engaged in such activities have usually found them very satisfying but demanding the answer to another question: Do we want to be luthiers or lumberjacks? In other words, reality can bite us in the butt pretty early in the game. There is so much involved in building an instrument that calling for help in the form of commercial parts might be excused or even expected. Will a commercial truss rod degrade the quality of an instrument? No. Will a commercial bridge or pickguard devalue our work? I don't think so. OK, so how about a commercial set of braces? Suddenly it feels like we're heading into a different sort of territory. 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 19, 2010September 10, 2025 by Dale Phillips Product Review: Fossil Ivory Bridge Pins Product Review: Fossil Ivory Bridge Pins by Harry Fleishman Originally published in American Lutherie #74, 2003 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Seven, 2015 Fossil-Ivory Bridge Pins A beautiful guitar sounds better than a merely nice looking one. An expertly appointed guitar sounds better than an adequately detailed guitar. An expert setup sounds better than one that is merely competent. Why? Because our eye prepares our ear. Our sense of detail tells us whether the guitar was finished with passion or with efficiency. Our hands tell us if the guitar will respond to the range of music we need to express. Not only do these assessments affect our ear and the sound we expect to hear, they affect our desire to purchase a guitar. Virtually all guitarists make decisions about a guitar before they even pick it up. If a guitarist is looking for a new guitar and has a wall of them to choose from, he or she may be drawn unconsciously towards the attractive guitar. Clearly attractive is a relative term and people’s ideas of attractive vary. This is not a cynical point, however. We are interested in selling our guitars so that we may continue to build and learn and grow as luthiers. Even at the moment a client opens the case of their custom-made guitar for the first time upon receiving it after their long wait, they will be more positively disposed and prepared for good tone if their guitar looks and feels good. Of course, none of this matters if the guitar cannot deliver the goods. However, unless the client is expecting folk art, they will appreciate the extra details that separate the custom-built, handmade guitar from even its high-end store-bought counterpart. These details extend from the finishing touches on the fingerboard all the way down to the choice of bridge pins. 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 19, 2010September 10, 2025 by Dale Phillips Product Reviews: Slotted-Head Tuners Product Reviews: Slotted-Head Tuners by Todd Rose Originally published in American Lutherie #79, 2004 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Seven, 2015 Slotted-Head Tuners This is for those of you who share my passion for the other kind of steel string guitar head, the slotted head. Whether it be a case of carrying on the classic designs of past instruments (as with parlor guitars, resonator guitars, and Selmer/Maccaferri-style guitars, to name a few) or breaking new ground with contemporary designs, a slotted head on a steel string guitar is a compelling stylistic element. To my eye, a slotted head has striking lines and elegant features: The plane of its face is unbroken by protruding tuning posts; the slots lend a lightness and transparency to its bearing. Recent years have seen a resurgence of interest in parlor guitars, including some beautiful contemporary interpretations of this traditional form, as well as other styles of guitars with slotted heads. We may well see a growing lust for this style of head on the guitars of the future. While designing my own nontraditional guitars with slotted heads, I found, as have many guitar makers, that the selection of tuning machines appeared woefully limited compared to the many styles available in the solid-head type. Determined to exhaust the possibilities, however, I ferreted out a few models of which I suspect many are unaware, and also found that there are sometimes more knob and finish options in the manufacturers’ own catalogs than what’s regularly available from suppliers. Furthermore, at least one manufacturer has a new line of slot-head tuners in the works, and others may be able to offer more choices if guitar makers ask for them — more on that later. 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 19, 2010September 9, 2025 by Dale Phillips Product Reviews: Frets.com CD Product Reviews: Frets.com CD by Fred Carlson Originally published in American Lutherie #62, 2000 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Six, 2013 Frets.com CD I don’t know how many clones luthier/repairman Frank Ford (Gryphon Stringed Instruments, Palo Alto, California) has made of himself, but we in the lutherie world can be thankful that they all devote vast amounts of time to furthering the luthing cause. At least, it sure seems like there’s got to be more than one of him, considering all the stuff he’s got going. I ran into Frank recently at one of the bimonthly meetings of NCAL (the Northern California Association of Luthiers) where he updated attendees on his latest and ongoing ventures. These included a couple of things that fit into the product category and seemed worthy of mention here. I’ve been intending to figure out a way to justify a more detailed mention of Franks’ amazing lutherie web page, www.frets.com, in one of these columns. I’ve made note of frets.com in the past, but I hadn’t yet figured out how to put a product spin on it. After all, although it is undeniably the product of an enormous amount of work and dedication, a website is essentially bits of digital information on a computer somewhere, freely accessed by anyone with a computer and an Internet connection. This is pretty different stuff than router jigs and fret files. It’s more like a book, only you don’t obtain a hard copy of it. (Unless you do an awful lot of downloading to your computer printer!) 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 19, 2010September 9, 2025 by Dale Phillips Product Reviews: Tusq Martin-Style Bridge Pins Product Reviews: Tusq Martin-Style Bridge Pins by Fred Carlson Originally published in American Lutherie #70, 2002 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Six, 2013 Graph Tech Tusq Far away at the ends of the earth is a beautiful country called Plasticland, filled with marvelous plastic trees and flowers and peopled with a rugged but gentle folk, some of whom bear striking resemblance to those little plastic Cowboys and Indians many of us grew up with. Here plastic dinosaurs roam rolling hills verdant with AstroTurf, mingling merrily with plastic cows, chickens, and deer. Lots of wondrous items in everyday use in our modern culture are the products of this little-known country, including that which I review for you here today. Sustainable Plasticulture. I’d heard of the material called Tusq before; it’s used for guitar saddles and nuts, and sold by acompany called Graph Tech. But it never occurred to me until Iundertook the extensive research necessary for this review (readers have come to expect this level of expertise in my columns) just where Tusq comes from. Turns out the Graph Tech people have connections with a sustainable plasticulture program in Plasticland, with profits benefiting indigenous Plasticlanders. Using traditional skills passed down through generations, workers harvest the tusks of the plastic elephant that has inhabited their forests since plastic began. The tuskless elephants are confined in giant breakfast cereal boxes until the tusks regenerate, at which time they are reintroduced to the wild. In my travels researching this article, I photographed the actual harvesting process so that our readers can observe this phenomenal event. I also observed numerous other wondrous things on that trip, which I haven’t made up yet, and so I move on to... 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.
