Posted on August 23, 2019March 7, 2024 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, 2019March 7, 2024 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, 2019March 7, 2024 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 14, 2010March 7, 2024 by Dale Phillips Review: Building an Acoustic Guitar by Dan Erlewine and Todd Sams Review: Building an Acoustic Guitar by Dan Erlewine and Todd Sams Reviewed by John Calkin Originally published in American Lutherie #84, 2005 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Seven, 2015 Building an Acoustic Guitar Dan Erlewine and Todd Sams Stewart-MacDonald, VHS, 71 minutes, 2002 www.stew-mac.com The title of this video is a bit misleading. It’s about building an acoustic guitar from a Stew-Mac kit, and if you are a first-time scratch builder with no kit experience, it will leave you in the dark in so many ways that you will be helpless. The kit comes complete with bent and contoured sides, joined plates, shaped braces, a 90% (or more) shaped neck, a slotted and radiused fingerboard, and a top routed for rosette rings. No mention is made of how to complete any of the pre-performed tasks, and that’s a lot of stuff to leave out. If they had only added the word kit to the end of the title, I wouldn’t have a complaint in the world about this video. You can’t knock people for not doing what they didn’t set out to do. The focus of this tape is on building a satisfying kit guitar with the fewest specialized tools and the least confusion. A portable drill and a laminate trimmer are just about the only power tools used. A few cam clamps and a bunch of large spool clamps are the only hand tools used that aren’t likely to be found in any home tool kit. A few shop tips are included — trade secrets, as Dan Erlewine would call them — but other than that, there is no extraneous information included. If you don’t need to know it, it isn’t there. It’s not a matter of holding back information, but a matter of preventing a clutter of information from causing confusion. I enjoy trivia, but this isn’t the place for 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 14, 2010March 7, 2024 by Dale Phillips Review: Build a Steel String Guitar with Robert O’Brien by Robert O’Brien Review: Build a Steel String Guitar with Robert O’Brien by Robert O’Brien Reviewed by John Calkin Originally published in American Lutherie #84, 2005 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Seven, 2015 Build a Steel String Guitar with Robert O’Brien Robert O’Brien Apprentice Publishing, DVD, 2005 www.obrienguitars.com or LMI This DVD will henceforth be included with LMI steel string guitar kits. Because I have some criticisms of it, I’d like to make a couple things clear at the start. I’ve built and reviewed kits from several companies, and I believe that for the first-time builder they are the way to go. I’m especially fond of kits that include joined plates, installed rosettes, bent sides, and a slotted fretboard. A shaped neck is also OK, but an adventurous first-timer can deal with shaping a neck. My point is that no matter how accomplished an individual is as a woodworker, it can’t be accepted that lutherie is a natural next step. It’s just too different. A good kit can smooth the stormy seas that arise when one faces the creation of their first guitar. I’m a believer. I’m also a believer in video instruction. It pains me to say so, but I believe that books have had their day. Live interactive instruction is best. Video/film is next. Books are a distant third. If you suspect that a terminal failure of the power grid will resurrect the importance of books, I surrender to your paranoia (you are obviously a fan of Lucifer’s Hammer by Niven and Pournelle). Barring a natural catastrophe of global scale, electronic instruction is here to stay and I salute 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.
