Posted on January 6, 2010March 11, 2024 by Dale Phillips Review: Guitars and Mandolins in America Featuring the Larsons’ Creations by Robert Carl Hartman Review: Guitars and Mandolins in America Featuring the Larsons’ Creations by Robert Carl Hartman Reviewed by John Bromka Originally published in American Lutherie #2, 1985 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume One, 2000 Guitars and Mandolins in America Featuring the Larsons’ Creations Robert Carl Hartman Maurer & Co., 1984 $39.95 from amazon.com (1999) Every fine luthier of creative and abundant output should be so lucky as to have a memory book devoted to preserving his art and times. Robert Carl Hartman has done a thorough job of this for his grandfather Carl Larson and Carl’s brother August, who together maintained a lutherie business from the 1880s to 1944. A great portion of the Larsons’ output was built to order to receive the manufacturers’ and distributors’ labels of Maurer, Prairie State, Dyer, and Stahl. If you are not yet familiar with the Larson brothers or their instruments (am I too far east of Midwest?), you’re in for a treat. The Larsons built beautiful and highly original instruments, and a large sample of designs are given here among the book’s 150 photographs and drawings. Included are mandolins, mandolas, mandocello and bass, flattop and archtop guitars, acoustic bass guitar, and harp mandolins and guitars. A chart of measurements is given with each instrument. Reprints of the guitar patents give very thorough drawings, descriptions, theory, and reasoning behind such innovations as laminated braces, further developed X bracing, through-the-body truss rods, and building under tension. Testimonials from Stefan Grossman, George Gruhn, and Johnny Cash, and a humorous reminiscence from Les Paul give further incentive to look into the Larsons’ designs. 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 6, 2010March 11, 2024 by Dale Phillips Review: Constructing the Mountain Dulcimer by Dean Kimball Review: Constructing the Mountain Dulcimer by Dean Kimball Reviewed by Peter M. Estes Originally published in American Lutherie #1, 1985 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume One, 2000 Constructing the Mountain Dulcimer Dean Kimball David McKay Company, Inc., 1975 $14 from Luthiers Mercantile International (1999) This last Christmas my wife Lynn asked me to help her build a mountain dulcimer for an old friend of ours. I had bought and read Constructing the Mountain Dulcimer when it was first published, but this was the first opportunity I had to use it. The pictures and diagrams in this book are so well done that I ended up skimming the text, reading in detail only when I needed clarification. We used his “Standard Dulcimer” pattern. Lynn did all the measuring and laid out the lines for cutting. I built a simpler version of his elaborate production assembly fixture to hold the sides in position during assembly. We used some dust-covered bargain mahogany guitar sets for the back, sides, and top (the backs from the guitar sets made excellent stock for recipe boxes for gifts). I did not attempt his rotary planer method for thinning stock. 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 5, 2010March 11, 2024 by Dale Phillips Review: The Guitar in America, Victorian Era to Jazz Age by Jeffrey J. Noonan Review: The Guitar in America, Victorian Era to Jazz Age by Jeffrey J. Noonan Reviewed by Don Overstreet Originally published in American Lutherie #96, 2008 The Guitar in America, Victorian Era to Jazz Age Jeffrey J. Noonan ISBN (hardcover): 139781934110188 University Press of Mississippi, 2008, $50 In the year 2008, say “BMG” and some will think of the mail-order catalog of recordings. In the year 1908, say “BMG” and many in the musical community in America would immediately think of the Banjo, Mandolin, and Guitar movement. Jeffrey Noonan’s recent publication, (an expansion of a doctoral dissertation and echoing its academic origin), gives us a clear portrait of the life and times of a true social phenomenon that began in the last half of the 19th century and continued into the 1920s, when changing times and tastes caused it to fade away. We can be thankful to Mr. Noonan for adding this book to the list of efforts published in recent years by writers such as Philip Gura and James Bollman, whose studies of the banjo and the life and times of C.F. Martin, Sr. have become standard references, not only for their overviews of the instruments themselves but also for illuminating the social environment in which the music became so popular. The important figures of the era are identified and given biographies while we learn about the amazing process of the creation and marketing of the instruments. 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 5, 2010March 11, 2024 by Dale Phillips Review: With Strings Attached: The Art and Beauty of Vintage Guitars by Jonathan Kellerman Review: With Strings Attached: The Art and Beauty of Vintage Guitars by Jonathan Kellerman Reviewed by Walter Carter Originally published in American Lutherie #101, 2010 With Strings Attached: The Art and Beauty of Vintage Guitars by Jonathan Kellerman ISBN: 978-0345499783 Ballantine Books 2008 Best-selling novelist Jonathan Kellerman is also well-known for his guitar collection, particularly his affinity for the acoustic Hawaiian guitars of Knutsen and Weissenborn. Photos of those guitars make up a significant portion of With Strings Attached, but there are plenty of other unanticipated highlights among the book’s 344 pages. We’ve all seen books filled with fine guitars from impressive collections. The photos of Kellerman’s guitars by Jonathan Exley are exquisite, and the book certainly lives up to its subtitle, The Art and Beauty of Vintage Guitars, on the strength of photos alone. But what sets this book apart are — just as you would expect from a novelist — the stories. Much of this reviewer’s work was done for him in the introductions by Andy Summers (guitarist with The Police) and Kellerman’s son Jesse (also a novelist) and Kellerman himself. Summers tells of a visit to the studio that houses the collection. “Jon began telling me about them,” Summers writes. “For every guitar, he had a great story.... Each guitar in Jon’s collection seemed to have a true and unique character, which — to me, anyway — is the mark of a great 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 January 5, 2010March 11, 2024 by Dale Phillips Review: Building the Kamanché by Nasser Shirazi Review: Building the Kamanché by Nasser Shirazi Reviewed by Barbara Goldowsky Previously published in American Lutherie #92, 2007 Building the Kamanché by Nasser Shirazi Includes full-scale plan Available from Nasser Shirazi P.O. Box 4793, Walnut Creek, CA 94596 $30, including shipping and handling The kamanché is a traditional Persian stringed instrument, widely played in classical Iranian music ensembles in Iran and other Middle Eastern countries, which is thought to be one of the ancestors of the violin. It appears often in historical paintings and has been described in literature by travelers to Iran and other Middle Eastern countries as early as 1418AD, but it dates back as far as 1500 to 2000 years. The word “kamanché” means “small bow” in Farsi. The general shape has remained the same throughout its history, but changes have been made in construction techniques and materials. Steel strings similar to violin strings replaced silk strings, and, in the past century, the number of strings was increased from three to four. Approximately 35" in length overall, the kamanché is a spike fiddle, held upright as the player sits on the floor and braces the instrument on his calf or the floor. The instrument is slightly rotated by the player, who uses a variable-tension horsehair bow. The kamanché has a round hardwood neck; a soundbox made either from a gourd, coconut shell, or from wood that has been carved or bent; a worked metal spike on the bottom; and pegs carved from walnut, maple, or sometimes ebony. The soundbox, fingerboard, pegs, and crown may be decorated with bone, shell, exotic woods or semiprecious stones. Makers interested in building a kamanche will have to find the somewhat unusual materials needed to cover the opening of the soundbox — for instance baby lamb skin (commonly used in Iran), fish skin, or pericardium (the membrane around a cow’s heart). If the above are not available, you may substitute deer skin. 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.
