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 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.
Posted on January 13, 2025May 14, 2025 by Dale Phillips Meet the Makers: Sue and Ray Mooers of Dusty Strings Meet the Makers: Sue and Ray Mooers of Dusty Strings by Jonathon Peterson Originally published in American Lutherie #77, 2004 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Seven, 2015 Over the past two decades, Ray and Sue Mooers’ company, Dusty Strings, has become a major player in the folk-music scene in the Pacific Northwest and beyond. Their urban-basement store in Seattle has become a regional hub, not only supplying musical tools to beginner and expert alike, but serving as a meeting place for musicians; a place for folk-music aficionados to get information about concerts, festivals, and regional events. Their enthusiasm is infectious, and their expertise, inventory, and reputation has grown over the years. They have probably built and sold more hammered dulcimers than anyone, anywhere, and they have recently moved their folk-harp and hammered dulcimer production into a new, thoroughly modern facility not far from their retail store. I spent an afternoon talking with them and walking through the plant, and was massively impressed not only by the scale and sophistication of what they are doing, but by the two of them. They are warm, welcoming, and down to earth, and they have wonderfully clear and direct attitudes toward their lives and their business. After all these years they are still in love, and despite big changes in the scale of their enterprise and the incumbent responsibilities, they still seem to be having fun. 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 30, 2024May 14, 2025 by Dale Phillips Mechanical Compliance for Soundboard Optimization Mechanical Compliance for Soundboard Optimization by David Hurd from his 2006 GAL Convention workshop Originally published in American Lutherie #90, 2007 People say, “You’ve got to make fifty or a hundred guitars before you get it right.” That makes me crazy. I feel that if you can do the carpentry of putting an instrument together and have idea of what it should look like, you can get 80% or 90% of the way there in terms of top optimization with a mechanical compliance approach. I build many sizes of guitars and ukuleles using different top woods. I have developed an easy method of testing the compliance of a top, that is, how far it flexes under a given force, with a simple fixture. Being able to measure and compare the compliance values has proved to be a very useful thing in optimizing these soundboards for the best sound and stability when I graduate the edges of the tops and carve the braces. After building and measuring many instruments, I have developed a mathematical model that does a very good job of estimating what the target compliance measurements should be for a given instrument size and string tension. I have integrated the model into a spreadsheet which you can use by plugging in just a few simple measurements. 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.
