Birth of the Packaxe

by Francis Kosheleff

Previously published in Guild of American Luthiers Quarterly Volume 9 #2, 1981, updated 1994 and Lutherie Woods and Steel String Guitars, 1998

The Need. Several years ago after reading an article in Guitar Player about the hassles of traveling with a guitar and remembering my own camping trips in Europe and the United States, it dawned on me that the answer was a folding guitar. That night I went to work on that idea with pencil and paper, slept over it, dreamt about it, and the next morning started work in the shop. The following Saturday I went to the flea market and bought several cheap, broken acoustic guitars to experiment with. Later on that month I started the actual construction of the first folding guitar and named it the Packaxe. The name Packaxe is now trademarked.

The idea of a hinged neck on a guitar is not new. It must have occurred to many luthiers before me, yet I had never seen a folding guitar, nor read or heard of one. Knowledgeable people usually told me that such an instrument could not possibly work for a hundred reasons. I went ahead anyway building several types of guitars with folding necks, and sure enough, there were problems, lots of them. But for an inventor, this is a challenge to be enjoyed.

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Review: L’ELAN

Reviewed by Francis Kosheleff

Originally published in American Lutherie #20, 1989

L’ELAN
Ecole de Lutherie Artistique du Noroit Inc
226, rue Christophe-Colomb est
Quebec, Quebec G1K 3S7 CANADA

L’ELAN is a twenty page magazine published in French by the Ecole de Lutherie Artistique du Noroit, hence the E.L.A.N. which also means flight or momentum.

It is a free publication sent out by the lutherie school of Quebec which is financially supported by the Ministere des Affaires Culturelles, a Canadian government agency.

Of L’ELAN #2 (Spring ’89) the cover is color, a striking photo of part of a violin. There is a three page essay on the tonic of craft and craftsmen and their role in our times, followed by a three page informative article on the care and main tenance of keyboard instruments with drawings. There are also interviews, or visits with three luthiers: violin maker, Andre Gadoury; harp maker, Alain Beaudoin; xylophone-marimba — vibraphone maker, Denis Grenier; all with black and white photos.