Posted on August 5, 2026August 5, 2026 by Dale Phillips Review: Advanced Ukulele Building with Jay Lichty Review: Advanced Ukulele Building with Jay Lichty by John Calkin Originally published in American Lutherie #142, 2021 Advanced Ukulele Building with Jay Lichty Robert O’Brien Video instruction Download from Obrienguitars.com, $277 I have loved books all my life, but when I began having worrisome visions of my house tipping toward the side containing my library I decided to make a change. As I began to shed books, it became easier to do. Most of my lutherie books disappeared via eBay and I have not missed them. Early on I became a fan of video instruction. But videotape was not especially convenient when it came to finding specific information. DVDs were a huge step forward, but then came the automatic download. YouTube provided a world of free instruction, but too often it was unsatisfying and of doubtful veracity. Nothing beats expert instruction that is professionally recorded and expertly edited. It doesn’t come cheap, but I have never minded investing in quality education. 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 23, 2026July 23, 2026 by Dale Phillips Review: Electric Guitar Building with Mike Snider (video download) Review: Electric Guitar Building with Mike Snider (video download) by John Calkin Originally published in American Lutherie #143, 2021 Electric Guitar Building Mike Snider and Robert O’Brien obrienguitars.com Video download, $237. Running time 14:38:25 Any beginner who has decided to start his building career with electric guitars simply because they are easier to make than acoustics has not thought their decision through very carefully. In the most simplified version of the electric guitar, they may be correct, but at the full-blown, detailed, professional level there are just as many considerations to approach as an acoustic instrument. This video set of 161 lessons teaches the construction of a Telecaster-style guitar with a bolt-on neck and a Les Paul-style guitar with a set-in neck and the full Gibson treatment. 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 Review: Michael Bashkin Fretting Course from ObrienGuitars.com Review: Michael Bashkin Fretting Course from ObrienGuitars.com by John Calkin Originally published in American Lutherie #144, 2021 Fretting Course with Michael Bashkin Video download ObrienGuitars.com, $134 Twenty-seven lessons, 4:21:49 run time Viewing Michael Bashkin’s video fretting course strongly reminded me that lutherie is a thinking person’s profession. No matter how we learn an operation, and even if we work in the darkest isolation, the work slowly begins to evolve in technique, first in our minds and then on the bench. The goals of lutherie — to produce and maintain the most playable, best sounding instruments — never change, but the ways we get there change all the time. It is difficult to imagine that a luthier might so slavishly follow a teacher that his methods never develop beyond his initial instruction. Michael Bashkin is certainly one of those thinking men, and this course is not a generic description of applying frets to a guitar neck that we’ve all been exposed to those over the years. It is an in-depth method of discovering problems in a guitar neck/fretboard and solving them in such a way that the frets are perfect once they are installed, no final fret dressing required — just polish and play. 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 24, 2026June 24, 2026 by Dale Phillips Meet the Maker: Robert Anderson Meet the Maker: Robert Anderson by John Calkin Originally published in American Lutherie #144, 2021 Robert Anderson took the long road to banjo building, just as so many of us have approached lutherie. The instrument first came to his attention during a TV appearance by Eddie Peabody, but the desire to play came from Earl Scruggs via the movie Bonnie and Clyde. “My first banjo was a tenor because I didn’t know any better.” That’s a mistake many beginners have made. Once set on the right path, he acquired a cheap 5-string banjo just before starting college at Kent State in Ohio. As luck would have it, as he moved into his dorm room he heard bluegrass-style banjo being played in the room next door. His dorm neighbor, Ken Serger, became his first banjo instructor. 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 16, 2026June 16, 2026 by Dale Phillips Two-Step Cutaway Bending Two-Step Cutaway Bending by John Calkin Originally published in American Lutherie #78, 2004 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Seven, 2015 Bending a venetian cutaway with a particularly tight horn presents a challenge. At Huss & Dalton we tried several times to alter our Fox side bender to reliably create tight cutaways, but with very little success. The add-on bending unit usually seen on benders worked well for blunt cutaways, but when the radii got small, the bender crapped out. OK, this admittedly depended on the type of wood involved. Indian rosewood is so accommodating that we often got away with completing the whole job on the Fox bender. Mahogany wasn’t quite as obliging but is cheap enough that an occasional broken side is no reason for tears. Koa was the driving force behind our search for a better system. It was frequently requested by the discriminating fingerstylists who seem to be the guitarists who want cutaway guitars in fancy varieties of wood. Killer sets of koa are also very expensive and become more so every time they are ordered. Other curly woods are just as hard to bend, but a broken piece of fancy walnut (just to pick a species) isn’t the heartbreaker that shattered koa is. The H&D model MJC was our particular bugaboo. Other builders use tighter cutaways, but the MJC was plenty tight enough to drive Jeff (Huss) and Mark (Dalton) close to distraction. There were frequent war councils among shop members about how to conquer the problem, but most of the ideas and all the tool making fell to Mark. The problem wasn’t bending the horn itself. The spring-steel slats of the bending sandwich supported the wood as it went around the horn enough to prevent breakage. It was the inside bend of the cutaway that caused all the problems. The slats simply couldn’t be pulled tight enough during bending to support the wood. There’s no need to elaborate on the failures. Eventually a bending machine was made dedicated to the MJC (Photo 1). Various methods of bending the wood around the cutaway shoe were tried to no avail. The solution turned out to be bending the wood in two stages. 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.
