Posted on August 11, 2021May 28, 2025 by Dale Phillips Apprenticeships: Potentially a Great Opportunity for Mentors and Apprentices Alike Apprenticeships: Potentially a Great Opportunity for Mentors and Apprentices Alike by Bill Beadie Originally published in American Lutherie #84, 2005 If you're reading this article, chances are good that you know more than I do about building guitars. The way I figure it, my experience adds up to approximately thirty-six weeks of full-time work, which has produced exactly two guitars, a few repairs, and includes some parts making and assembly work. While I can’t expect to teach you new tricks for neck sets or better ways to apply finish, I’m confident that I can explain why apprenticeships can be a great opportunity for both mentors and apprentices. Allow me to sidetrack for a moment and tell you about John Greven. In the thirty-six-week time frame that I needed to build two guitars and perform a few other guitar-related tasks, John typically builds about thirty-six guitars. And do you know what’s really depressing? I’m pretty sure that every one of them sounds better than either of mine. 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, 2020May 12, 2025 by Dale Phillips Meet the Maker: Bart Reiter Meet the Maker: Bart Reiter by Paul Hostetter previously published in American Lutherie #34, 1993 and Big Red Book of American, Volume Three, 2004 As a card-carrying guitar nut, guitar player, and luthier, I’ve always felt a bit like a turncoat because of my jaundiced view that our current vibrant lutherie world is somewhat top heavy with guitar nuts. It’s one reason I like the GAL so much: there are all these wild cards who have a very nonflattop agenda. I love it! But it seems that every time I go to a Guild convention someone I really want to meet doesn’t show up for some reason. It happened again last summer, though I knew I’d find dozens of other surprises amongst the corn fields and bomb threats ‘way over there in Vermillion. Among them were two of the very top figures in the world of banjo, Bart Reiter and Ron Chacey. Dan Erlewine issued me a blank cassette and commanded: “Go forth and interview!” Dutifully, and happily, I did. I’d always wanted to meet these guys anyway. Here’s the first one I talked to. 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 21, 2019May 23, 2025 by Dale Phillips Fabio’s Excellent Nicaraguan Adventure Fabio’s Excellent Nicaraguan Adventure by Mike Moger previously published in American Lutherie #93, 2008 Fabio Ragghianti walked into the open-air market on a hot day in Jalapa, Nicaragua, to buy some fruit. He had been in town for three days, and the food he was used to eating was back in his home town of Pietrasanta, in Tuscany. A boy looking about sixteen or seventeen helped him pick out some oranges and apples, and quickly asked him in Spanish, “How much does it cost to learn how to build a guitar?” Our classical guitar building class had started nine days earlier, in February 2007. My son, Abram, was with me, and together, the three of us were to teach five eager students the finer points of building good guitars. Men and boys, and a few ladies, had stopped by the open shop every day to see us work. A local TV reporter (the only one in town) interviewed us about what we were doing, and people asked how much it would cost to buy a good guitar. Guitars had been largely absent since Nicaragua had fought the Contra-Sandinista war. The town of Jalapa, Nicaragua is located in the northern mountains, just south of Honduras. It was hit hard in the war when the Contras stationed themselves in Honduras. Jalapa stood between them and the Nicaraguan capital, Managua. 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 20, 2019May 26, 2025 by Dale Phillips A Tale of Two Schools A Tale of Two Schools by Fred Carlson previously published in American Lutherie #53, 1998 In 1975 I was a skinny nineteen-year-old with a small beard and a big passion for making wooden musical instruments, living in a commune in northern Vermont. That fall, I had an extraordinary experience. It was one of those experiences that we are blessed with once or twice in our lives if we’re lucky. I had the opportunity to spend six weeks studying guitar building at a small school devoted to that art, run by a man named Charles Fox. Nearly twenty years later, in the spring of 1995, I found myself on the other side of the continent in Santa Cruz, California, my beard shaved off, still building guitars, and still using those few simple, elegant techniques I’d learned twenty years earlier. I’d long ago lost touch with Charles Fox, but in a very real way he was with me. For many years I had a tattered old blue notebook, my guitar-building bible of notes taken during those six weeks spent with Charles and five other young, crazy, would-be guitar builders. I had referred to those notes time and time again. I’m sure I had parts of them memorized. During my big move west in 1989, the notebook was misplaced, and I have yet to find it. Although I lost an old friend with the passing of that worn volume, I discovered that I had learned its lessons. I could build guitars without it! 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, 2010May 19, 2025 by Dale Phillips Review: L’ELAN Review: L’ELAN Reviewed by Francis Kosheleff Originally published in American Lutherie #20, 1989 L’ELAN Ecole de Lutherie Artistique du Noroit Inc 226, rue Christophe-Colomb est Quebec, Quebec G1K 3S7 CANADA L’ELAN is a twenty page magazine published in French by the Ecole de Lutherie Artistique du Noroit, hence the E.L.A.N. which also means flight or momentum. It is a free publication sent out by the lutherie school of Quebec which is financially supported by the Ministere des Affaires Culturelles, a Canadian government agency. Of L’ELAN #2 (Spring ’89) the cover is color, a striking photo of part of a violin. There is a three page essay on the tonic of craft and craftsmen and their role in our times, followed by a three page informative article on the care and main tenance of keyboard instruments with drawings. There are also interviews, or visits with three luthiers: violin maker, Andre Gadoury; harp maker, Alain Beaudoin; xylophone-marimba — vibraphone maker, Denis Grenier; all with black and white photos. 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.
