Posted on January 11, 2010May 28, 2025 by Dale Phillips Review: Shoptalk 5 by Todd Sams, Don MacRostie, Dan Erlewine Review: Shoptalk 5 by Todd Sams, Don MacRostie, Dan Erlewine Reviewed by John Calkin Originally published in American Lutherie #59, 1999 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Five, 2008 Video: Shoptalk 5 Todd Sams, Don MacRostie, Dan Erlewine Stewart-MacDonald At the ’99 Merlefest in North Carolina I had the good fortune to find myself manning a booth next to Stew-Mac. It was a pleasure to meet Todd Sams and get to know Jay Hostetler better. It was also astonishing to hear so many self-proclaimed luthiers confess that they had never heard of Stewart-MacDonald. Where do these luthiers buy their tools? My guess is that they aren’t buying them at all, that what they can’t find at Ace Hardware or cobble together in the shop they are doing without; that they don’t even know about the tools that could make their work better and their lives easier. 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 January 11, 2010May 27, 2025 by Dale Phillips Review: Acoustics of Wood by Voichita Buchur Review: Acoustics of Wood by Voichita Buchur reviewed by Nicholas Von Robison Originally published in American Lutherie #57, 1999 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Five, 2008 Acoustics of Wood Voichita Buchur CRC Press, 1995 ISBN 0849348013 Voichita Buchur’s book Acoustics of Wood is a synthesis of over fifty years of work by the scientific community into the physics of how this complex material responds to vibrational wave stimuli. With almost 800 references into the literature and about ten years from inception to its being published in 1995, it is a tremendous resource for the luthier’s understanding of his/her main material. I don’t get the feel from the text that the author is a maker herself, even though she is a member of the Catgut Acoustical Society. The book is heavily weighted towards violin family instruments, but this doesn’t make the book any less valuable to guitar makers. After a short, well written, general discussion on the anatomical structure of wood (macro, micro, and molecular), a brief outline is presented dividing the book into three major sections. Part One explores the physical phenomena associated with the effects of acoustic waves in forests (windbreaks to attenuate noise) and architectural acoustics (concert halls, office buildings, restaurants) with wood being used as a construction material and insulator in conjunction with other nonwood materials. A survey of six European concert halls and their geometrical, acoustical, and construction data is pretty interesting. 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 January 11, 2010May 28, 2025 by Dale Phillips Review: Ring the Banjar! The Banjo in America from Folklore to Factory, by Robert Lloyd Web Review: Ring the Banjar! The Banjo in America from Folklore to Factory by Robert Lloyd Web Reviewed by Woody Vernice Originally published in American Lutherie #58, 1999 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Five, 2008 Ring the Banjar! The Banjo in America from Folklore to Factory Robert Lloyd Webb The MIT Museum, 1984 ISBN 0917027019 In 1984 the MIT Museum sponsored an exhibition of banjos that focused on the companies that existed in and around Boston. This book is a catalog of the instruments exhibited, and the essays sort of explain why such a prestigious organization spent so much energy on such a humble instrument. Contemporary luthiers think that they are leading the way for the factories. Webb maintains the reverse, that individual builders were basically hackers who kept the instrument alive until the large factories brought it to its zenith. The banjo began life as a stick and a gourd. It evolved rapidly into a recognizable configuration and the Victorian banjo craze that followed the Civil War made it a hot-ticket item, bringing a rush to make better and fancier models. Venues changed from parlors to large burlesque halls, and louder and gaudier banjos filled the need. The jazz age and the banjo were both put to death by the Great Depression, and Webb credits Pete Seeger and Earl Scruggs as the men who resurrected the latter. It’s a thumbnail sketch, but a good one. 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 January 11, 2010May 29, 2025 by Dale Phillips Letter: Sloane Bass Tuners Letter: Sloane Bass Tuners by Fredrick C. Lyman, Jr. Originally printed in American Lutherie #66, 2001 Dear Tim and Deb: Sorry to learn of the passing of Irving Sloane. I met him at a convention in Pennsylvania. He was displaying his precision guitar machines and I remarked that there was nothing comparable for the bass viol. He asked if there would really be a market for such. I said there really were no good bass machines and all bass players were agreed about that. I have been so out of touch that I have not seen his bass machines, but it appears that they are the new standard of the industry. I drew pictures of strange imaginary instruments for years before I got Irving’s book and found it was really possible to build something. It’s great that you have been reaching a young audience that has the possibility of developing their work over a sufficient time to solve the problems. In retrospect I should have done many things differently. I did build a lot of the instruments that I was interested in, but it was not a really sustainable enterprise and I found myself too old and feeble to go on. In January I discovered that I had the same disease as Irving Sloane. I had drastic surgery and it seems to have been a success, but my overall vitality is not great.
Posted on January 11, 2010May 30, 2025 by Dale Phillips Kit Review: The Riverboat Banjo from Musicmaker’s Kits Kit Review: The Riverboat Banjo from Musicmaker's Kits Reviewed by John Calkin Originally published in American Lutherie #62, 2000 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Six, 2013 The Riverboat Banjo from Musicmaker’s Kits www.harpkit.com Kit-built instruments have garnered an unfair reputation for poor quality, as though the mere gathering of components into a kit was a guarantee of mediocrity. Bad kits do exist, and the fact that most kits are generally assembled by unskilled hands certainly doesn’t let them put their best face forward. Yet many in the trade got their first taste of lutherie from a kit, myself included. There are many whose level of skill is so untested that beginning lutherie with a kit makes good sense. Others haven’t the tools necessary to begin an instrument project from scratch. And believe it or not, some very talented luthiers are happy to avoid the expense and bother of collecting and housing a bevy of stationary tools, and find that jobbing out some of the rough labor to a kit maker makes good sense without adulterating the satisfaction they find in the finished work. Of course, a kit can be anything from a stack of rough lumber to an instrument in the white that requires nothing more than sanding and finishing. At American Lutherie we’ve decided that kits have enough merit to warrant some investigation, and the only way to do it is to build some instruments. Life could be a lot worse for a journalist. 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.
