Posted on September 2, 2026September 2, 2026 by Dale Phillips Product Reviews: Mandolin tuners Product Reviews: Mandolin tuners by JAmes Condino Originally published in American Lutherie #93, 2008 About ten years ago, I was in the middle of a guitar lesson when my teacher suddenly put down his guitar and picked up a mandolin to describe a moment of musical universality. I was instantly hooked; the giant light bulb appeared above my head; I realized I could build a nice mandolin from my guitar off-cuts and scrap pile. I didn’t know anything about mandolin tuning machines, so I let a fellow at the local fiddle shop sell me a set that turned the gears in the reverse direction for every string. I thought they were a bit deco and fun. A few weeks later I found myself backstage at North Carolina’s Merlefest, new mandolin in hand, talking up a storm with one of the more popular (anonymous) mandolin players in the world who also can sing a great story while sawing on his fiddle. Quirky fellow that he is, he picked up my new mandolin and turned the first string a few cents out of tune in the wrong direction. After he adjusted the other seven strings, retuning the entire mandolin flat, he told me never to use those tuners again! That day I realized I needed a lot more information on what tuners were out there and how they worked. 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 14, 2026July 14, 2026 by Dale Phillips Meet the Maker: Stephen Marchione Meet the Maker: Stephen Marchione by James Condino Originally published in American Lutherie #114, 2013 I first met Steve Marchione writing a story for Mandolin Magazine. He was bold, confident, and opinionated; I liked him instantly. A couple of years later, we wound up next to each other at the 2011 GAL Convention. Two troublemakers with funny last names; we’ve been good friends ever since. The more I get to know him, the more respect I have for him and for his work, and also the more similarity I see in our backgrounds and in our core individuality as nerdy instrument builders. We’re working on a collaborative project in the near future that will be a celebration of the work and heritage of our mentors, highlighting the history and heritage of the first two generations of great Italian American guitar builders and pushing it beyond into the next level with our own flair. Give us a little bit of background and the early years: I was born in Texas in 1966, but as a young boy, my family moved to Bergamo, Italy, outside of Milano towards Cremona. In 1972 I was seven, and I can remember my father took me to Cremona to see a Stradivarius violin. I didn’t quite understand everything, but I knew it was very important. 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 April 27, 2026April 27, 2026 by Dale Phillips Elliptical Legacy Elliptical Legacy by James Condino and John Monteleone Originally published in American Lutherie #109, 2012 Recently I had the good fortune to examine and draw the beautiful D’Aqusito mandolin in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. While in the area, I visited several great guitar builders and got a chance to play dozens of fine D’Aquisto and D’Angelico instruments, most of them still in the trenches, gigging hard with the local fellows. John Monteleone did the restoration and finish work on the mandolin for the museum, and I stopped by John’s place for a bit of laughter and to pick a few tunes. The shop is an icon of 20th century guitar building. The walls are lined with photos of famous people and their instruments, along with little glimpses of the history of our craft. The original iconic photograph of a young Jimmy D’Aquisto standing next to an older John D’Angelico outside the Kenmore Street shop hangs on the wall. There are amazing instruments in various stages of construction and repair, and his old upright bass is instantly accessible right next to the main workbench in case a nice old jazz standard comes up on the radio and the moment strikes him. John’s wonderful stories connected the soul and craft of the mandolin and guitar from his shop on Long Island, through the traditions of some of the greatest luthiers of all time, all the way back to the origins in Italy. 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 April 3, 2026April 3, 2026 by Dale Phillips Meet the Maker: James Condino Meet the Maker: James Condino by Roger Alan Skipper Originally published in American Lutherie #105, 2011 James Condino has lived and traveled in forty-three countries in his forty-four years. The instruments of this extreme outdoor adventurer have accompanied him to highest mountain peaks and through raging rivers. He’s an author with a pair of books in the works, one concerning the mandolin, and the other on the double bass. He’s also a lutherie teacher, previously at the college level, and now one-on-one in his shop. He’s landed, for the moment, in Asheville, North Carolina, where he builds mandolins and double basses, and specializes in repairs on vintage guitars and the plywood basses he digs out of the Appalachian hills and hollows that surround him. James, teaching is interwoven with your building. Let’s start with the school of lutherie mentioned on your website. Beginning when I was nineteen, I spent almost six years in the Air Force; I got out just after Desert Storm. Then I went to school at Oregon State University. It’s an old-school land-grant institution, and still had a nice public-access woodshop. When I built a flattop steel string guitar there in 1995, they approached me about teaching a lutherie class. I was busy with field expeditions just then, so I didn’t have the time. The following winter, though, I taught a very popular ten-week course in solidbody electric guitars. That morphed into a three-academic-quarter, nine-month class in building acoustic steel string guitars. I taught there for four years, and I learned as much as the students during that time. That experience also allowed me to home in on what I wanted to teach and how to approach it. 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, 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.
