Posted on October 9, 2025October 9, 2025 by Dale Phillips Meet the Maker: George Wunderlich Meet the Maker: George Wunderlich by Nathan Stinnette Originally published in American Lutherie #73, 2003 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Seven, 2015 How did you start building minstrel banjos? I was a Civil War reenactor, and I was introduced to the work of a gentleman by the name of Joe Ayers, who’s done a lot of recordings of minstrel banjo music. I’d never heard it before, and I decided right then and there that I could play that kind of banjo music. I’d grown up in Missouri where most everything is bluegrass, and I knew I did not have the coordination for three-finger playing. But this was something I could do. It was a little more melodic, a little more interesting to me. I bought an 1880s-period banjo from a company called The Music Folk in St. Louis. It was the oldest banjo they had on the wall, so I thought, that must be Civil War. When I couldn’t get the right sound out of it, I called Joe on the phone and said, “What am I doing wrong?” He explained to me in very basic terms that my banjo was wrong. It needed to be fretless, it needed to be gut strung, it needed to have a deeper pot. With his direction, I built a banjo. This was in 1992. 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 9, 2025October 9, 2025 by Dale Phillips Meet the Maker: Pierre-Yves Fuchs Meet the Maker: Pierre-Yves Fuchs by Jonathon Peterson Originally published in American Lutherie #83, 2005 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Seven, 2015 I attended the 2004 Violin Society of America Convention and competition in Portland, Oregon, at the invitation of Paul Schuback, who was hosting the event. He offered to arrange interviews with internationally recognized experts Charles Beare (see p. 312) and Bernard Millant, who were there to lecture and judge the competition. However, as both men were very busy with their appointed duties, and everyone seemed to want a piece of their time, I had a lot of time to talk with participants, listen to lectures, peruse the commercial exhibit hall, and generally hang around. The commercial exhibition hall was filled with displays of instruments, tools, bows, wood, and accessories. Many of the displays were amazingly elaborate, which made the table of Swiss bow maker Pierre-Yves Fuchs stand out to me. Here was a casually dressed guy sitting behind a few bows on a black cloth, and that was about it. He didn’t seem to be getting much action, so I stopped to chat. I had to leave before the winners were announced, so I was pleased and impressed to find out that Pierre had won gold medals in all four bow categories —violin, viola, cello, and bass — and he received the honorary designation hors concours (out of competition) from the VSA. He received another gold medal in a competition in Paris two weeks later. 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 July 15, 2025July 15, 2025 by Dale Phillips The Heretic’s Guide to Alternative Lutherie Woods The Heretic’s Guide to Alternative Lutherie Woods by John Calkin Originally published in American Lutherie #67, 2001 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Six, 2013 Why do we even need alternative wood species for musical instruments? That’s a perfectly valid question, and the answer is that we don’t. Rosewood, mahogany, and maple have served us well for centuries, we know what to expect of them, and our customers have already come to accept them as trustworthy and will pay for them. So why look further? First of all (and speaking from a steel string guitar perspective), let’s discard the notion that some species of wood make good instruments and that others don’t. The concept of tonewood is a hoax. Of the few things we can do to a guitar and still call it a guitar, changing the wood it is made of will have the least impact upon the quality of the sound it produces. The tonal difference between a mahogany guitar and a rosewood guitar is exactly the same as the difference between two mahogany guitars or two rosewood guitars. Can you tell what a guitar is made of while listening to an unfamiliar recording? No one I know claims they can. No one at the blind listening sessions I’ve attended could reliably distinguish between mahogany and rosewood guitars, or maple and koa guitars for that matter. 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. Members also receive 3 annual issues of American Lutherie and get discounts on products. For details, visit the membership page. MEMBERS: login for access or contact us to setup your account.
Posted on June 3, 2025August 1, 2025 by Dale Phillips Meet the Maker: Ted Davis Meet the Maker: Ted Davis by James Condino Originally published in American Lutherie #96, 2008 I was introduced to Ted Davis over twenty years ago. We never talked. We never shared a trade show booth. We never had a musical transaction. Ted was one of those early folks who was so on top of it that he was writing GAL articles and making blueprints of famous instruments. When I was honing my craft in my teens and early twenties I was studying all of the instrument-making articles and drawings I could find. Ted Davis. That name kept popping up. Twenty years later I found myself sitting in Lynn Dudenbostel’s shop, talking away, and he drops, “Ted Davis lives just down the way a bit. You know, Ted Davis from the GAL,” as though there could be none other. After a minute I realize... that Ted Davis? The Ted Davis? Lynn chimed back in, “And he still sells a bit of red spruce. You should go visit him.” 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 3, 2025June 20, 2025 by Dale Phillips Plywood Plywood Some Observations and a Report on the Use of Laminated Wood in Lutherie by R.M. Mottola Originally published in American Lutherie #73, 2003 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Seven, 2015 Considering that most stringed instruments are made in factories by large companies, and that the instruments at the low-priced end of these companies’ product lines are sold in great quantity, and that these low-priced instruments are frequently constructed of laminated wood (i.e., plywood), it is not at all unreasonable to assume that most of the instruments made are probably constructed from plywood. Further, as plywood is a physically robust material, it may be reasonable to conclude that the majority of the stringed instruments extant are made of plywood. For some reason, plywood is associated only with cheap instruments, although there are some exceptions. A cursory review of the lutherie literature reveals not too much in the way of scientific experimentation that would change that association, but it does provide a number of interesting anecdotes and observations that may indicate that plywood could be a far more useful material for high-end instruments than generally thought. The very first issue of The Guild of American Luthiers Newsletter (Vol. 1 #1) contains a letter by R.E. Bruné describing the construction of classical guitar ribs made of rosewood/maple laminate, a construction which the author claims to increase volume. In his review of a harp kit in American Lutherie #69 (Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Six), John Calkin compared the tone of two dissimilar harps, one with a solid top and the other with one of plywood, and found the plywood one to sound “bolder and a bit louder.” An interesting observation can be found in the bible of flattop guitar making, Cumpiano and Natelson’s Guitarmaking: Tradition and Technology. They opine that lateral stiffness of a guitar top will greatly influence the tonal response of the instrument and state that superior lateral stiffness will allow the top to be worked thinner, thus reducing mass. Now, they’re not talking about plywood here per se. A top made of, say, three-ply spruce with the center ply oriented at 90° to the outside plies should be stiffer across the grain than a solid top of similar thickness. Kevin B. Reilly described small-bodied guitars he made using birch ply for the tops and backs in AL#61 (BRBAL6), and found these instruments to have considerable volume and sustain. 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.
