Posted on September 25, 2026September 25, 2026 by Dale Phillips The Charles Fox Guitar-Building Method, Part Five The Charles Fox Guitar-Building Method, Part Five by Mark French Originally published in American Lutherie #143, 2022 See also, A Guitar Is Born: Attending Charles Fox’s Hands-On Guitar Making Course by Mark French The Charles Fox Guitar-Building Method, Part One by Mark French The Charles Fox Guitar-Building Method, Part Two by Mark French The Charles Fox Guitar-Building Method, Part Three by Mark French The Charles Fox Guitar-Building Method, Part Four by Mark French The Charles Fox Guitar-Building Method, Part Six by Mark French The fretboard is the final part needed to complete the neck, our final guitar subassembly. The fretboard is important to both the instrument’s playability and its harmonic accuracy. Its dimensional, geometric, and other specifications represent thoughtful design decisions by its maker. The fretboard is fashioned from a fretboard “blank,” a hardwood billet sufficiently oversize to yield the intended fretboard, typically of rosewood or ebony. Charles’ production sequence should be familiar to anyone who has made a fretboard from scratch, regardless of the specific methods they’ve employed: 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 September 25, 2026September 25, 2026 by Dale Phillips The Charles Fox Guitar-Building Method, Part Six The Charles Fox Guitar-Building Method, Part Six by Mark French Originally published in American Lutherie #144, 2021 See also, A Guitar Is Born: Attending Charles Fox’s Hands-On Guitar Making Course by Mark French The Charles Fox Guitar-Building Method, Part One by Mark French The Charles Fox Guitar-Building Method, Part Two by Mark French The Charles Fox Guitar-Building Method, Part Three by Mark French The Charles Fox Guitar-Building Method, Part Four by Mark French The Charles Fox Guitar-Building Method, Part Five by Mark French The completed neck is attached to the body with four bolts, whose geometry is shown in Fig. 1. There are two bolts side by side under the overhanging part of the fretboard. Only one dotted line shows there. 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 August 31, 2026August 31, 2026 by Dale Phillips Reducing Build Variation In Arched Plates Reducing Build Variation In Arched Plates by Mark French and Eddie Efendy Originally published in American Lutherie #101, 2010 It is generally assumed in manufacturing operations that build variation and build quality are inversely related. This can be problematic in instrument manufacture because of the natural variation in wood properties. The point of series production is to make identical products that match a blueprint or some other geometric description. For a group of instruments to be identical, they must not only have identical geometry, but should also sound the same. This is a very difficult task and there is probably not a single objective metric that describes tonal quality. However, one necessary condition is that the resonant frequencies of the instruments should be the same. 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 August 14, 2026August 14, 2026 by Dale Phillips An Optical Sensor For Detecting String Motion An Optical Sensor For Detecting String Motion by Mark French Originally published in American Lutherie #106, 2011 For luthiers who want to make accurate dynamic measurements on their instruments, it is a challenge to achieve precision for a cost that stays below the pain threshold. Commercial test equipment is readily available, but the prices can be breathtakingly high. There is always eBay, but the selection isn’t always there and the condition of the equipment can be a little sketchy. That leaves the option of making test equipment for yourself. Since the average luthier is constantly making nifty jigs and fixtures, it makes sense to offer a very inexpensive DIY option. I needed a pickup for some projects that require measuring the first twenty or thirty harmonic frequencies of a vibrating string. I’m worried that the pickup response at high frequencies might drop off. All pickups have a window over which they are sensitive, and that window needs to be very short in order to observe the really high harmonics. Single-coil pickups have a shorter window than humbuckers. This makes them more sensitive to higher frequencies and is at least part of the reason that they can sound “brighter.” Also, the presence of a strong magnetic field from a coil pickup might affect the motion of the string. In order to affect the string as little as possible, I wanted to make an optical sensor. 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 21, 2026July 21, 2026 by Dale Phillips A Better Approximation to the Rule of 18 A Better Approximation to the Rule of 18 by Mark French Originally published in American Lutherie #132, 2017 Historically, luthiers often used the Rule of 18 to lay out fretboards for guitars and other fretted instruments. (See “Classic Guitar Intonation” by Greg Byers, AL#47; Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Four.) While builders seldom now use the number 18 as the coefficient for calculating fret positions, the name is still used as a shorthand way of identifying the method. While 18 is a very convenient whole number, it is far enough from the exact value of 17.81715 that noticeable errors can accumulate. Still, it is often convenient to use a simple approximation for a long decimal number — many of us have used 22/7 as an approximation to π and 355/113 is even better. With this in mind, you can replace the number 18 with 285/16 and lay out frets very accurately. Let’s see where these numbers come from and why the approximation works. 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.
