Posted on August 23, 2019May 23, 2025 by Dale Phillips Intonation in the Real World Intonation in the Real World by Mike Doolin from his 2006 GAL Convention lecture previously published in American Lutherie #92, 2007 Getting guitars to play in tune has been a major topic of interest for many years, both for guitar players and guitar makers, and it has been a major source of frustration as well. During our current “Golden Age of Lutherie” the bar has been raised for standards of craft, playability, and tonal quality, as players have become more sophisticated in their expectations and builders have become better educated and more demanding of their own work. Expectations for accurate intonation have come along with all that: it’s no longer acceptable for a guitar to only play in tune for the first five frets, or in a few keys. Modern players are using the whole neck, exploring extended harmonies, and playing in ensembles with other instruments. They are looking for instruments that play in tune with themselves and with the rest of the musical world. It turns out that guitar intonation is a huge can of worms, because it is really two topics: ▶ What does it mean to be “in tune?” ▶ How do I make a guitar do that? 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 28, 2025 by Dale Phillips Guitar Swap! Guitar Swap! guitars and text by John Calkin and Steve Kinnaird previously published in American Lutherie #81, 2005 John Calkin: When I suggested to Texas luthier Steve Kinnaird that we build each other a guitar I had no specific agenda in mind. Though I spend my work weeks building acoustic guitar bodies for Huss & Dalton, I feel it’s important to build an occasional complete instrument just to keep in practice. Company policy prevented me from building flattops for sale but not from building for trade or gift. And frankly, I had enough nice guitars sitting around the house that I didn’t feel like building another for myself. Trading guitars with Steve sounded like fun. We were already good friends who trusted each other, and we knew each other’s work well enough to know that we were on equal footing as luthiers. Most of the fun for me was in not telling Steve what I wanted or expected in my guitar. He, too, decided that surprise would be the most delicious element of the swap. 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 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 9, 2025 by Dale Phillips Questions: Glued Vs Floating Bridge Questions: Glued Vs Floating Bridge by R.M. Mottola Originally published in American Lutherie #74, 2003 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Seven, 2015 Greg Pacetti of Fairbanks, Alaska asks: Why is it that most all flattop guitars have a glued-on bridge rather than a floating variety, as in the archtop guitar. I know that historically many have been produced this way, but the standard is still towards the fixed, glued-on bridge. I build a particular model in this configuration with good results. R.M. Mottola of Newtonville, Massachusetts answers: The short answer, to borrow a phrase from Fiddler on the Roof, is tradition. We like, or at least we have become accustomed to, the tone of instruments with glued-on bridges. The long answer (at least my long answer) is, well, longer, and much more speculative. 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.
