Posted on September 10, 2026September 10, 2026 by Dale Phillips Eight Concerns of Highly Successful Guitar Makers Eight Concerns of Highly Successful Guitar Makers by R.E. Bruné from his 2001 GAL Convention lecture Originally published in American Lutherie #79, 2004 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Seven, 2015 Many of you know a little of my history, but I’ll say a bit more so you’ll understand where I’m coming from and why I will espouse some of the radical ideas that you may hear today. I began playing guitar in the early 1960s when I was just a teenager. I taught myself flamenco, then moved to Mexico City in 1968 and lived there for two years. I played in flamenco troupes for a number of dancers and singers including Roberto de Ronda, Lola Golan, and La Poli. Later I worked with other singers like Pepe Culata and Agujetas (Manuel de los Santos). So I began my career by struggling to make a living as a musician. My attitude toward the instrument was from the standpoint of a player. 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 August 14, 2026August 14, 2026 by Dale Phillips An Optical Sensor For Detecting String Motion An Optical Sensor For Detecting String Motion by Mark French Originally published in American Lutherie #106, 2011 For luthiers who want to make accurate dynamic measurements on their instruments, it is a challenge to achieve precision for a cost that stays below the pain threshold. Commercial test equipment is readily available, but the prices can be breathtakingly high. There is always eBay, but the selection isn’t always there and the condition of the equipment can be a little sketchy. That leaves the option of making test equipment for yourself. Since the average luthier is constantly making nifty jigs and fixtures, it makes sense to offer a very inexpensive DIY option. I needed a pickup for some projects that require measuring the first twenty or thirty harmonic frequencies of a vibrating string. I’m worried that the pickup response at high frequencies might drop off. All pickups have a window over which they are sensitive, and that window needs to be very short in order to observe the really high harmonics. Single-coil pickups have a shorter window than humbuckers. This makes them more sensitive to higher frequencies and is at least part of the reason that they can sound “brighter.” Also, the presence of a strong magnetic field from a coil pickup might affect the motion of the string. In order to affect the string as little as possible, I wanted to make an optical sensor. 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 June 29, 2026June 29, 2026 by Dale Phillips A Field Guide to Mandolins A Field Guide to Mandolins by Graham McDonald Originally published in American Lutherie #132, 2017 The aim of this article is to give you a broad overview of the diverse world of mandolins, and to some extent, what can go wrong with them. I will not spend a huge amount of time discussing Gibson and Gibson-style mandolins. They are the industry standard for mandolins in America, and there has been a lot written about them with lots of other information readily accessible out there on the web, some of which might even be correct. This will be more about other sorts of mandolins that a customer might bring to you. Instruments called mandolins (or in Italian, mandolino) appeared in Italy in the middle of the 17th century (Photo 1). They were small, in fact tiny, lutes. This photo of Italian builder Carlo Ceconni with one of his mandolins gives you a sense of just how little they were (Photo 2). These mandolins are very lightly built, with the soundboards a little over 1MM thick and string tension of around 3KG per string. Scale lengths were 11.5˝–13.5˝ (29CM–35CM), which was likely to have been determined by the pitch standard of where the builder lived. It came down to how high the gut top string could be tuned in any particular climate. They were tuned in fourths with four, five, or six double courses of gut strings. The 6-course tuning, low to high, was g b e´ a´ d˝ g˝. These are the instruments for which Vivaldi wrote his mandolin music, and I am told that the mandolin parts in those concertos falls much more naturally under the left hand with the tuning intervals mostly in fourths rather than fifths. 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 April 24, 2026April 24, 2026 by Dale Phillips It Worked for Me: String Dampening It Worked for Me: String Dampening by Mark French Originally published in American Lutherie #109, 2012 I noticed that Michael Cone uses a piece of foam to damp the strings on the guitar for testing (AL#102, p. 8). This is pretty much universal. If you don’t damp the strings, the body response is swamped by the string response. I’ve been testing guitars since the early ’90s and have spent way too much time cutting pieces of foam to put under strings. A little while ago, I thought to use disposable foam earplugs. They are cheap, universally available, and designed for high damping. Better still, they are just the right size to stuff between guitar strings. I have had the best luck with the yellow foam ear plugs made by EAR, but the cheap generic ones work well enough. You don’t even have to throw the earplugs away when you are done. ◆
Posted on April 23, 2026April 23, 2026 by Dale Phillips It Worked for Me: Secure Classical Guitar Strings It Worked for Me: Secure Classical Guitar Strings by Michael Grossman Originally published in American Lutherie #109, 2012 There has to be a better way to secure your classical guitar strings, but nylon strings with ball ends are not commonly available. I’ve seen 6-, 12-, and 18-hole tieblocks, strings with beads or sticks tied on the ends. It occurred to me that with a single set of holes, vertically elongated, you can pass the strings through the hole, through a bead, and then back into the same hole. As the string is tightened, the bead is snugged against the tieblock (a small recess for it to settle into helps), trapping the short end of the string inside the hole. No unsightly ends sticking out, no knots, no strings wrapped around the block or around themselves. Photo by Michael Grossman. Two small caveats: make the tieblock (if that’s still the appropriate term) out of ebony or something equally strong, and enlarge the holes vertically, not horizontally. My first attempt, in bloodwood, ripped apart along the line of the holes. ◆
