Review: Classic Guitar Making by Arthur E. Overholtzer

Reviewed by William McCaw

Originally published in American Lutherie #1, 1985 and The Big Red Book of American Lutherie, Volume 1, 2000



Classic Guitar Making
Arthur E. Overholtzer
Williams Tool Company, 1983 (revised edition)
Out of print (1999)

For readers who are familiar with the origi­nal edition of Classic Guitar Making, this edition is a new printing, using a full-page format instead of the two-column style used in the original, and has about two-thirds of the illustrations (180). As far as I can tell, the text is the same, with some general tightening up of Art’s rambling style. The printing and illus­trations are of a higher quality than the original version. The directory of sources for materials and supplies has been expanded and updated.

When I first got interested in building clas­sic guitars, I read several books and soon discovered that there were several ways of doing most of the construction operations. At that time, the first edition of this book was out of print. When I finally got a copy through inter­library loan, it struck me as being the most logical and complete source that I had read on classical guitar building, so I started using Overholtzer methods. His concepts have done well for me and have been a good platform from which to experiment, in building eleven classic guitars, a fingerpicking steel string, and a 34" scale acoustic bass guitar.