Posted on January 19, 2010September 11, 2025 by Dale Phillips Questions: Choosing Top Wood Questions: Choosing Top Wood by John Calkin Originally published in American Lutherie #84, 2005 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Seven, 2015 Jerry Tekell of Italy, Texas asks: As a person somewhat new to instrument building I’d like to ask: Why do most builders use spruce or pine for guitar and mandolin tops? Why not maple, for example? I’d love to use maple on the top as well as the back of my mandolins, but I wonder how it would sound. John Calkin, GAL Contributing Editor, responds: Softwoods (conifers) are traditional for instrument tops, which also makes them what customers expect to see. Don’t neglect the importance of this. There are real-world reasons, though, as well. A wood needs to be strong enough to withstand the forces of string tension and compression (if you are talking about an archtop mandolin) and also light enough to be set in motion effectively by string vibration. Quartersawn softwoods seem to fit the bill better than the wood from deciduous trees. I tend to think of softwoods as fluffy, since they have a lot of air trapped in their structures. Hardwoods like hard maple are more like a metal (in my mind, not in reality) since they are very dense. 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 19, 2010September 9, 2025 by Dale Phillips Review: Shoptalk 6 Review: Shoptalk 6 Reviewed by John Calkin Originally published in American Lutherie #73, 2003 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Seven, 2015 Shoptalk 6 Stewart-MacDonald Video, 90 minutes, 2002 www.stewmac.com I look forward to each new edition of the Shoptalk videos. They show off the new Stew-Mac tools in the best soft-sell manner by simply demonstrating how they work in a real guitar shop; and on top of that there is always plenty of good randomly gathered information that has nothing to do with selling stuff. The camera work has become excellent, Stew-Mac has developed a fine team of on-camera luthiers, and the cost of the videos is always too low to pass up. You couldn’t beat that combination with a stick. Dan Erlewine leads off with an exhibition of nifty new tools. The BridgeSaver is a set of small hand tools used to repair worn bridge plates and to restore the bridge-pin area of guitar tops. Removing a shot bridge plate has become a last-ditch effort that is frowned upon by vintage folks who wish to maintain instrument originality as much as possible, and by luthiers because it is time consuming and sometimes dangerous to the guitar top. The BridgeSaver removes wood around wallowed-out or misplaced bridge-plate material and/or top material and cuts a mating disk of new wood (not included) to precisely mate with the newly formed hole. The exact procedure is better seen than described. The catalog pictures are good enough to give you the idea, but the video ought to light you up if you’ve done any old-style bridge-plate work in the past. 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 14, 2010May 28, 2025 by Dale Phillips Review: The Bouzouki Book, by Graham McDonald Review: The Bouzouki Book by Graham McDonald Reviewed by John Calkin Originally published in American Lutherie #80, 2004 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Seven, 2015 The Bouzouki Book Graham McDonald ISBN 0-646-43602-3 Graham McDonald Stringed Instruments, 117 pp., 2004 Totally new instruments don’t appear very often. When they do the results can be pretty exciting, both musically and socially, though it’s not easy to establish a pattern to the events. When the 5-string banjo was born in America in the early-to-mid 19th century it took a couple decades for many of the details to become standardized, after which the popularity of the banjo began to grow rapidly. Small builders furnished most of the early instruments, but as the banjo boom spread, larger factories became the important players. Banjo production mirrored the industrialization of the country at large. However, it takes a lot of money to drive an industry, and as the 20th century demand for banjos began to wane, the big companies backed off and there was once again room for the small builder. 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 January 14, 2010May 28, 2025 by Dale Phillips Review: Build Your Own Lap Steel Guitar by Martin Koch Review: Build Your Own Lap Steel Guitar by Martin Koch Reviewed by John Calkin Originally published in American Lutherie #83, 2005 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Seven, 2015 Build Your Own Lap Steel Guitar Martin Koch ISBN: 3-901314-09-1 118 pp., 2004 Build Your Own Lap Steel Guitar Martin Koch CD-ROM, 75 minutes www.stewmac.com Martin Koch (www.BuildYourGuitar.com) devolves the process of lap-steel creation to make it accessible to the most unsophisticated readers. At the same time he hints at the small added details that make construction more difficult but add a touch of elegance to an otherwise Plain Jane instrument. Two lap-steel designs are illustrated in this book/CD set. The first is literally a plank with lines for frets, a thick maple board just wider than the untapered fretboard. The nut end is scooped out to create a headstock. The nut itself is a length of aluminum angle stock. The “frets” are inlaid bits of maple veneer. The only guitarish hardware involved is a Les Paul Jr. bridge, the machine heads, a single-coil pickup, a volume pot, and an output jack. Another piece of angle stock might have been used for the bridge, but the LP Jr. item smacks more of a musical instrument and was a good choice. Construction was accomplished entirely with a few hand tools. A bit of decorative trim was added by making a control cover and pickup ring from the same wood as the fingerboard. The guitar was finished in Danish oil. There’s an understated innocence to this instrument that I admire. It would be fun to show up at a jam with it and rock out just as hard as the guys with “real” instruments. It would be a very in-their-face statement. 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 January 14, 2010May 28, 2025 by Dale Phillips Review: Building an Acoustic Guitar by Dan Erlewine and Todd Sams Review: Building an Acoustic Guitar by Dan Erlewine and Todd Sams Reviewed by John Calkin Originally published in American Lutherie #84, 2005 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Seven, 2015 Building an Acoustic Guitar Dan Erlewine and Todd Sams Stewart-MacDonald, VHS, 71 minutes, 2002 www.stew-mac.com The title of this video is a bit misleading. It’s about building an acoustic guitar from a Stew-Mac kit, and if you are a first-time scratch builder with no kit experience, it will leave you in the dark in so many ways that you will be helpless. The kit comes complete with bent and contoured sides, joined plates, shaped braces, a 90% (or more) shaped neck, a slotted and radiused fingerboard, and a top routed for rosette rings. No mention is made of how to complete any of the pre-performed tasks, and that’s a lot of stuff to leave out. If they had only added the word kit to the end of the title, I wouldn’t have a complaint in the world about this video. You can’t knock people for not doing what they didn’t set out to do. The focus of this tape is on building a satisfying kit guitar with the fewest specialized tools and the least confusion. A portable drill and a laminate trimmer are just about the only power tools used. A few cam clamps and a bunch of large spool clamps are the only hand tools used that aren’t likely to be found in any home tool kit. A few shop tips are included — trade secrets, as Dan Erlewine would call them — but other than that, there is no extraneous information included. If you don’t need to know it, it isn’t there. It’s not a matter of holding back information, but a matter of preventing a clutter of information from causing confusion. I enjoy trivia, but this isn’t the place for it. 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.
