Posted on July 8, 2022May 12, 2025 by Dale Phillips Meet the Maker: Guy Rabut Meet the Maker: Guy Rabut by Tim Olsen Originally published in American Lutherie #32, 1992 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Three, 2004 On a recent trip to New York, I had the good fortune to visit Guy Rabut in his uptown Manhattan apartment above a small grocery store. We sat in his tiny shop, which was piled high with cardboard boxes in anticipation of Guy’s imminent move into a freshly renovated space in Carnegie Hall. He made the move in October, and now shares this classy address with two violin dealers, Charles Rudig and Fred Oster, and Michael Yeats, a bow maker. Artifacts of wide-ranging artistic sensitivities surrounded us, including Northwest coastal Indian carvings which Guy made during a summer seminar with renowned artist Bill Reed; his intriguing logo in which the proper curves of a violin appear in a cubist jumble; a glass case holding a few of his beautiful finished fiddles; and a pine mock-up of a banjo he plans to build someday. Guy Rabut is one of the Guild’s most faithful members. The May ’74 issue of the GAL Newsletter listed him as a new member, and he hasn’t missed a day since. He is also a member of the American Federation of Violin and Bow Makers. 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 July 8, 2022May 20, 2025 by Dale Phillips Our Great Spherical Friend, Part Three Our Great Spherical Friend, Part Three by Frederick C. Lyman, Jr. Originally published in American Lutherie #9, 1987 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume One, 2000 See also, Our Great Spherical Friend, Part One by Frederick C. Lyman, Jr. Our Great Spherical Friend, Part Two by Frederick C. Lyman, Jr. Improving the Plywood Bass by Frederick C. Lyman, Jr. Our great spherical friend, the Earth’s atmosphere, is the medium through which sound waves are transmitted from the source to whatever auditor may be present. The relative frequency of the waves, in the audible spectrum, is influenced by the physical characteristics of the sound source, for example, its size. A low-pitched sound may be most efficiently propagated by a relatively large surface area that can exert relatively small forces (per unit of area) onto a wide atmospheric front, which offers the correct amount of resistance to this kind of push. As the sounds go up in pitch, the source becomes smaller, faster-moving, and more forceful per unit of area. But there must always be some area of atmospheric contact. The physical energy that is put into a stringed musical instrument, whether by finger, plectrum, bow, or whatever, is not at that stage in the form that is needed to agitate the atmosphere in the desired musical way. It has to be converted to this form (or forms) by the intervening action and reaction of the instrument. For example, the stretching and releasing of a string by the act of plucking, does not in itself accomplish much in the way of compressions and rarefactions in the surrounding air. Feeble sounds may be detected by listening very closely to the event; but for us to have musically useful sounds, more vibrating surface area must contact the atmosphere. In our sophisticated violin-type instruments, the energy undergoes a rather complex series of conversions. 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 July 1, 2022May 9, 2025 by Dale Phillips An Experimental Tenor Violin An Experimental Tenor Violin by Frederick C. Lyman, Jr. Originally published in American Lutherie #18, 1989 Building a musical instrument always involves making decisions. Even if the instrument is a familiar model that has been built many times before, the actual pieces of wood are unique, and require unique treatment. Obtaining predictable results, even such as might appear to be instances of mere routine uniformity, usually requires a surprising degree of conscious, intelligent control. In respect to quality of sound, the more an instrument is produced by an invariable automated process, the more variable and inconsistent may be the result. That is because we are dealing with subtle differences which add up. The more intelligence that can be applied to the many decisions that have to be made, the better the cumulative result can be. Of course, wrong decisions can also be made. This can happen easily when the project being undertaken is one-of-a-kind, where the lessons of past mistakes cannot be applied to the problems. 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 July 1, 2022May 19, 2025 by Dale Phillips It Worked for Me: Violin Bow Hair Storage It Worked for Me: Violin Bow Hair Storage by Al Stancel Originally published in American Lutherie #25, 1991 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Three, 2004 Storage of violin bow hair might be a problem for some. Here is how we solve it at Casa Del Sol Violins. We make a wire horseshoe, insert it into the big end of the bundle of hair, tie it with dental floss, lightly superglue the hair ends, bend the wire back as shown in the drawing. Hang the bundle from the ceiling with a plastic bow tube slipped over it as a dust protector. The tube can be slid up and over the bundle for cutting individual hanks. The hair never gets dirty or tangled. 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 April 7, 2022May 13, 2025 by Dale Phillips Violin Setups, Part One Violin Setups, Part One by Michael Darnton from his 1990 GAL Convention lecture Originally published in American Lutherie #35, 1993 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Three, 2004 See also, Violin Setups, Part Two by Michael Darnton Setups represent one of the most important aspects of violin work. They are the most changeable part of a violin and can make the difference between a customer liking or hating a violin. People who do setups for a living in large shops do a lot of them — countless numbers of bridges, pegs, posts, and nuts. If you’re making one or two or twenty instruments a year you’re not going to be doing many setups. For the people who do those things everyday, it’s a very specialized art and they have very rigorous standards. With that in mind I’m going to try to communicate to you some of those standards, along with some actual “how-to” hints. Tools A bench hook (Photo 1) is simply a piece of wood that has a strip nailed to the bottom on one end and a strip nailed to the top on the other end. It hooks over the front edge of the bench and gives a stop to work against. On the under side of my bench hook I’ve glued a piece of sandpaper (Photo 2). If a tiny, thin piece of wood needs to be planed thinner, I flip over the bench hook and use the sandpaper as a traction area. 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.
