Posted on October 10, 2025October 10, 2025 by Dale Phillips Hearing Voices: A Recipe for Voicing the Steel String Guitar Hearing Voices: A Recipe for Voicing the Steel String Guitar by John Greven from his 2011 GAL Convention workshop Originally published in American Lutherie #114, 2013 Let’s discuss a vocabulary for tone. These are the words I use when I talk to my customers. Power. We’re talking about headroom, the ability to get louder when you play harder. Responsiveness. I want a top that will respond easily to a light touch, but it will also sustain under a heavy one. The finished guitar will have a full voice played lightly or heavily or anywhere in between. A lot of guitars require a heavy touch; as playing pressure diminishes, the voice gets thin and loses its full substance. Projection. How far away can you hear it? I want the guitar to throw its voice as far as possible. When I was at Gruhn’s, a 1937 D-28 came in, all original. The top was the thinnest we’d seen on a herringbone, about .090", but it was really stiff. The sound of that guitar was painful, but you could hear it for miles. For a bluegrasser trying to play lead over six banjos, that’s the guitar. 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 October 10, 2025October 10, 2025 by Dale Phillips A Summary of John Greven’s Voicing Method A Summary of John Greven’s Voicing Method by Mike Doolin Originally published in American Lutherie #114, 2013 John Greven has been building guitars for fifty years, and has single-handedly built over 2200 guitars in that time. Doing the math, that means he averages close to a guitar a week. Given that kind of efficiency, it’s not surprising that his methods for controlling the sound of his guitars are simple and direct. He’s distilled the huge number of variables down to the handful that he believes are most important, and has evolved testing methods that take only seconds and require no measurement tools. While John is a trained scientist, and does speak of the scientific aspects of guitars and wood, he’s quick to point out that his methods are not scientific, but intuitive and experiential. This is a major problem in documenting his methods: in a sense, you have to be John Greven to fully understand them. They rely on John’s vast experience in building thousands of guitars, and playing those guitars and thousands of guitars by other builders, and on his “photographic” memory for sound, and the database of sounds that his experience and memory have created in his head. Moreover, sound is not accurately describable in words, and tactile sense is not accurately quantifiable. 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 October 10, 2025October 10, 2025 by Dale Phillips Production Techniques for the Custom Luthier Production Techniques for the Custom Luthier by Charles Fox from his 2011 GAL Convention workshop Originally published in American Lutherie #110, 2012 Tim Olsen: It’s my pleasure to introduce Charles Fox, America’s lutherie teacher number one. Charles, didn’t you used to teach in yurts? (laughter) There weren’t many lutherie teachers in America during the early ’70s. Charles has a lot of credits, but to me, the credit that beats all others is that this is the guy who taught Fred Carlson. That means a lot to me. So please welcome Charles Fox. (applause) Charles Fox: Yes, I am proud of Fred. In fact, I’m proud of so many people who have been through my classes. How many here have spent time with me? Wow, look at that. You’ve gotten so old. (laughter) I arrived late yesterday, and John Greven was just finishing his talk. I went up in the back and looked down, and all I saw was bald and gray. (laughter) We’ve got to do something to get more young people into the field. The way guitar making is evolving suggests a glorious future, but if a new group of people doesn’t come along to take it over, it might have just been a moment in history. Today I’m going to discuss and demonstrate some practical approaches to being more prolific luthiers. Many processes that make guitar making relatively easy, efficient, accurate, and consistent in a production situation can be adapted to the needs of the creative custom builder. Having been in both worlds, I can tell you that there’s a lot you can do to become more efficient without compromising quality. 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 October 10, 2025October 10, 2025 by Dale Phillips Rethinking the Semihollow Electric Guitar Rethinking the Semihollow Electric Guitar by Stephen Marchione from his 2011 GAL Convention workshop Originally published in American Lutherie #119, 2014 I have worked with jazz guitarist Mark Whitfield since 1998. I made him a 16" archtop guitar in 2000 and he has recorded six albums of his own with that guitar. In 2001, he started touring with Chris Botti, the Grammy-winning trumpet player who came from Sting’s band. Mark is a very busy player. In 2006, I went to see him playing with Chris Botti and a symphony orchestra at Jones Hall in Houston. Mark said, “Oh, I gotta show you a couple things on the guitar.” He was wearing through the binding with his right arm. A lot of the binding was worn away, and the sweat was going under the lacquer, although most of the lacquer was still intact. 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 October 10, 2025October 10, 2025 by Dale Phillips Workshop Evolution Workshop Evolution by Kent Everett from his 2011 GAL Convention lecture Originally published in American Lutherie #108, 2011 Evolution doesn’t necessarily mean that you get better and better. It can mean that you evolve to fit the situation you find yourself in, such as changes in the market or your living conditions. One basic way to set up a workshop is to have a master work bench in the middle of the room and the power tools around the edges. It’s basically a circular idea. This is very common in Spain and I think most of our small garage workshops are set up this way. In a bigger workshop, you might want to set it up so the wood goes in one end, it goes through the various operations, and it comes out the other end as a guitar. This is a more linear plan. For five years prior to getting into the first shop I’m going to show you, I went everywhere trying to find a job as a guitar builder. I built my first guitar in Victoria, BC in a little workshop right down the street from Larrivée. I walked into his place one day and I was blown away. He had eleven employees and I could not believe it. I wanted to be part of that. I stayed in Victoria for a year trying to get on with Jean, but that was around 1980 and the acoustic guitar market was dying and he was shrinking his shop. I built four guitars in a cabinet shop while I was in Victoria. I would bring them to Jean and he would encourage me and I’d go back and do it over again. 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.
