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Tag Archive for: acoustic guitar

1930 Martin 000-45

 

 

 

This is a treasure. A well preserved 1930 Martin 000-45, quite simply one of the most collectible Martin Guitars ever made. Martin only made 21 of these in 1930 and only 341 in total. This pre war sweetheart embodies that Holy Grail tone all guitarist long for and all builders hold in esteem. Every note is alive and complete. This one plays like a new guitar and appears to be all original but for a pro refinish and proper replacement bridge. We are honored to offer this rare and special 1930 Martin OOO-45.

Please click here to hear this amazing guitar!

“We all feel very lucky to get to know this guitar if even for a short while. Just a moments play and you realize exactly why Martin Guitars from this era are held in such high regard. Big round bass, clear, present mids and bold and singing trebles make this as complete a guitar as a player could ever hope for. Collector’s will also be delighted by this vintage pre-war Martin 000-45, it is after all a Holy Grail of guitars.” – Paul Heumiller

    Measurements 

  • Body Size: Small
  • Scale: 25 2/5 in. (645.2 mm)
  • Nut Width: 1 7/8 in. (47.6 mm)
  • String Spacing: 2 3/8 in. (60.3 mm)
  • Body Length: 20 1/2 in.
  • Upper Bout: 11 in.
  • Lower Bout: 15 in.
  • Serial #: 41539
  • Body Depth @Neck Heel: 3 1/4 in.
  • Body Depth @Tail Block: 4 1/4 in.
  • Frets to body: 12
    Extras 

  • Cutaway: None
  • Pickguard: None
  • Case: OHSC
  • Pickup: None
  • Condition: Excellent, professional refinish, 2 perfectly repaired top cracks, no cleats. Newer belly Bridge. Everything inside is original, includes original case.

 

    Woods & Trim 

  • Back/Sides: Brazilian Rosewood
  • Top Wood: Adirondack Red Spruce
  • Fingerboard: Ebony
  • Neck Wood: Mahogany, 1 Piece
  • Bridge: Ebony Belly
  • Rosette: 45 Style Abalone
  • Binding: Ivoroid
  • Fingerboard Bindings: Ivoroid
  • Headplate: Brazilian Rosewood
  • Headstock Bindings: Ivoroid
  • Headstock Inlay: Torch
  • Top Trim: Abalone
  • Back Strip: Marquetry
  • Fret Markers: 45 snowflake
  • Tuners: original
  • Tuner Finish: nickel with ivory buttons

 

This guitar is now sold.

Paul’s Pick is a new feature on the Dream Guitars website that highlights exceptional vintage and handbuilt guitars that deserve more attention — guitars with exceptional tone, playability, appearance and provenance. For more information on the featured guitar, or any instrument we offer, please call Paul or Steven at (828) 658 – 9795.

One of our favorite builders is the brilliant Jordan McConnell from Winnipeg, Canada. His guitars are impeccably crafted, and they offer stunning design and rich, articulate tones. Recently, Jordan informed us that he has developed a new model with the following dimensions.

Length: 19.5″
Lower bout: 15″
Upper bout: 11.25″
Standard scale length 25.25″

In Jordan’s words, “I like this shape for it’s versatility. It can be voiced to put the focus more in the midrange and trebles to create a very intimate and clear sounding guitar, but it doesn’t lack power and can still pack a pretty serious punch in the low end if that is desired. It’s a very comfortable size to play and can be more manageable than a jumbo sized body in a stage setting if someone is gigging a lot.”

If you would like to receive more information on this stunning guitar, or on any of Jordan’s other guitars, please give us a call. We’ll be happy to talk to you about these very special creations!

 

To see more photos, please click here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The talented Mary Flower stopped by Dream Guitars recently and spent the afternoon playing some of the fine guitars we have in stock. Mary plays a great combination of roots music, including ragtime, acoustic blues and folk. If you like these videos, be sure to check out Mary’s website for upcoming gigs, and information on her albums and instructional DVDs.

Steve James is a well known name among devotees of contemporary acoustic folk and blues; this notoriety based on numerous critically acclaimed recordings, a tireless international tour schedule and a sheaf of published work including articles, instruction books and videos. His instrumental versatility (on guitar, slide guitar, mandolin, guitar-banjo) also makes him a favorite at music camps and workshop programs.

Recently Steve stopped by Dream Guitars and played some of our great vintage and custom-made guitars.

Everyone knows that Al Petteway is an extremely fine guitarist, but what you may not know is that he is also an excellent guitar teacher. In this video Al instructs how to play  his  original tune “Tennessee Mountain Rag”. If you live in the greater Asheville area or just visiting, Al is available for one-on-one lessons that are sure to inspire. Give us a call anytime — we’ll be happy to schedule a lesson or two for you!

Canadian luthier Jordan McConnell dropped by Dream Guitars last week and sat down for an interview with our own Paul Heumiller. For those who don’t yet know, Jordan is building outstanding, versatile instruments that are in high demand. As a touring professional guitarist with his band the Duhks, Jordan understands the needs of the guitarist, and his instruments deliver on all fronts.

Dream Guitars was recently honored when classical guitarist extraordinaire, Charles Mokotoff, visited  our showroom and auditioned our wonderful collection of new and vintage classical guitars. We were immediately seized by Charle’s command of the instrument, as he treated us to  an impromptu overview of his current repertoire.

Because we are a premier acoustic guitar shop, we are fortunate to have an eclectic, deeply talented family of clients and friends. We are very proud to count Charles among them. I highly encourage you to check out his music soon.

From Charle’s website:

CHARLES MOKOTOFF holds both Bachelors and Masters degrees in guitar performance from Syracuse University and Ithaca College, respectively. He has served on the faculties of numerous colleges and universities in the New York and New England area as a lecturer in classical guitar and lute.

Prior to settling in the Washington, DC area in 1991, Mr. Mokotoff made his home in New England where he was widely recognized as an active guitarist and Renaissance lute player during the 1980s. During that period his career culminated with two Far East tours and a well-received New York City debut at Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall in 1987, featuring the Premier of Autumn Elegy by William Coble, written and dedicated to him.

Mr. Mokotoff has been hearing impaired for a good deal of his life and was featured inHearing Loss Magazine in January 2010.


 

You may purchase his CD “Autumn Elegy” from iTunes by clicking HERE, or from CD Baby by clicking HERE. Or enjoy his music live at one of the the upcoming recitals.

 

 

Dake Traphagen is one of our favorite builders here at Dream Guitars. Whether it’s one of Dake’s legendary classical models, or one of his newer steel string designs, the results are always impressive, toneful, and satisfying. Recently Dake built  this gorgeous harp guitar and the it is simply extraordinary in every way.

Spec-wise, the body is a basic ‘000’ steel string size for extra width for the basses. The playing neck is 51mm at the nut with a 650mm scale. The tuners are ‘peghed’s’ which work beautifully. The body depth is 4 1/8 lower bout and 3 5/8 upper bout. The top is Englemen spruce with Bubinga back and sides, finished with an oil varnish. The basic tuning of the sub basses is a diatonic scale with the 7th being a ‘d’ and the 11th being a ‘g’.

Though this particular instrument is spoken for, Dake is accepting custom builds for this model and his entire line of stellar designs. Please contact us if you would like to learn how one of these beautiful guitars can be yours.

 

 

Kathy

Kathy Wingert is an artist that has complete control of her medium. I met her for the first time at the most recent guitar festival in Ft. Lauderdale, at the Hard Rock. Her displays are hugely popular at guitar shows — the lines of her instruments are so elegant, the voices of her guitars are so original, the inlay work is beautiful and so…non derivative.

I have a tremendous amount of respect for Kathy’s skills. She is an exceptional luthier, and consistently builds instruments with supreme voices.

First a little biography please. How long have you been a builder? With whom, if anyone, did you study or do repairs? Please tell me about your “ah-ha” moment when you realized luthiery was to be your chosen path.

A tiny little seed got planted during a trip to a guitar shop, the World of Strings.  One of the employees showed me a billet of Indian rosewood and proudly proclaimed that he was going to learn to build a guitar.  I was very curious about where and how that got done, and he said he would be learning from his boss, Jon Peterson.

My ah-ha came during a moment of soul searching, which I happened to be doing in the library.  I was ready for a new chapter and a new direction, the kids had gotten old enough for me to start thinking that way, and I was wide open to new ideas.  As luck would have it there was a book on guitar making in my library.  (I wish I could say which book it was, I haven’t seen it since.)

Though I knew instantly and deeply that I could be good at guitar making, I also knew it would take a little time to find my path.  I was on the cusp of the internet, and back in those days, kids, you had to leave your house to get information.  I read my way through five libraries and had collected quite a few books, including books about sharpening chisels and the amazing number of ways a router could be used, but I hadn’t found in print the book that made it all make sense.  I really don’t know how long the discovery process went on, but one morning I woke up and I understood how to build a guitar, not from a plan, but from a design of my own.

The next hurdle was finding materials.  A kind employee of a woodworking store told me about a guitar making class at a community college, and after I had been in the class for two months, the instructor told me that Jon Peterson at the World of Strings was looking for someone.  I took in some necks I had carved and an electric drop top that I had completed and got hired in 1995.

Has being a woman, in a field largely dominated by men, been advantageous or disadvantageous in anyway?

It was annoying as heck in the busy repair shop.  If I went to the counter they’d just ask for the “repair guy.”  I think being a woman kept my client list a little leaner than some builders with whom I feel I am well matched, but time has sorted a lot of that out.  I do know that I have had more than my share of wonderful customers with whom I have enjoyed every part of the journey.

On your website, you mention that you are in love with your job, and how deeply you enjoy the creative aspects of being a builder. Can you tell me more about that emotional connection, and how it relates to building guitars for clients, who may have different preferences than your own?

The answer to that probably relates pretty closely to the issue of being a woman in a male dominated business.  I think many times the people I work with are just open to letting me do what I do.  I can tell you for sure guys have let me build some pretty frilly guitars for them while pretending it was my idea!

Look, I’m very invested in what I do, and I am emotionally connected, but I’m also 100 percent pro.  There is almost always a middle ground, and I can catch the vision even if a client’s tastes are different from mine.

Working with your daughter Jimmi must certainly add to the love and meaningfulness of designing and constructing your instruments. How does that collaboration work?  How much free reign do you allow her to incorporate her own ideas?

Jimmi just continues to get better and better busier and busier, so I’m loving what’s going out the door to other builders, and I stare meaningfully in her direction hoping she will have time for me again one day!

Jimmi works with me much the same way as she works with any builder.  A lot of the time she works directly with the client and then construction issues are sorted out with the builder.  When we’re working on one of mine we have the advantage of passing materials back and forth, but she works it out really well by mail too.

When someone calls you to commission a guitar, how does the communication process work? How do you discover what type of guitar to build for a client that has difficulty articulating how they’d like the

instrument to be voiced?

Sometimes it’s a matter of discovering how much a potential buyer might know about the subject of tone and wood differences.  If it’s an experienced collector I ask a few questions about what they like and/or don’t like about guitars that they’ve owned.  I always look for that little area of common experience and we work from there.  If it’s a less experienced guitarist or guitar buyer, I look for the same thing, but perhaps instead of talking about whether they like the punch of sitka or the twinkle of koa, I might ask a lot of questions about voices of singers or instruments in an orchestra.  The point, for me, is to find out whether they are looking for a guitar like mine.  Occasionally I have suggested other builders when I’ve felt there would be a better match up.

Speaking of voicing, please take me through the process of voicing a guitar with a contemporary sound, and how that differs from voicing a guitar that is more traditional.

I don’t know if I’m qualified to answer that one.  My work has been toward a sound that I wanted to hear, and I have learned through hard lessons what takes me away from that.  I have all the same anecdotal information about what makes a prewar Martin sound like they do, but I have never pursued that sound.

You have mentioned using a signal generator and Chladni patterns in voicing your guitars? Could you describe what Chladni patterns are and how you use them to help in the process?

When you play a harmonic on a string, you have divided it in segments, but the reason it physically works is because at the mathematical division of the octave or fifth or whatever, there is a nodal point on the string that allows it to vibrate freely around a still point when the conditions are right (meaning when the string is struck and your finger is on that node).  At those naturally occurring places, there is no displacement. When a guitar top is excited with vibrations, there are also nodal points and in those areas of little to no displacement, the glitter piles up.

The arrangement of the glitter patterns at a given frequency range indicates the efficiency of the top, or more instructively, the non-appearance of a pattern at a target frequency means I have work to do.

Chladni patterns are not a recipe for a great guitar, they are an indication of what you just did.  Hopefully, if you stumble on a great recipe, you can do it again.

I am not an expert on Chladni patterns or any other science approach to lutherie, so my use of glitter testing is merely a way to double check that I’m on the right track.  The range of frequency at which I get certain patterns are what I’m interested in, and the rest I do the old fashioned way.

The first Kathy Wingert guitar that I had the pleasure of playing had back and sides of blackwood. It immediately became my favorite tone wood, even passing Brazilian Rosewood as my tone wood of choice. Please tell me about working with blackwood, how you view its tonal characteristics, and when you would recommend it over Brazilian.

I love AB, but I’ve come to hear it very differently from Brazilian, and for a long time I wouldn’t have said that.  What I like and what I hear in the heavy woods, AB and cocobolo is a weightiness and sustain in the mids.  If you try to hold me to a blindfold A/B test, I’ll be happy to tell you that I learned a long time ago it’s darned hard to do!  I believe that 90% of tonewood choice has to do with the feedback the player gets and has very very little effect on the listener 15 feet away, at least not if there is any other noise in the room.

How important are trade shows and guitar festivals for bringing in new clients and expanding the growth of your business?

I think the trade shows and festivals are enormously important for custom lutherie as a whole.  I know I personally benefit from doing them, though many times it is long after the show.  I always see or hear something the kicks my fanny.  I also believe it’s really important for the community as a whole to show up, present well, and let people know that we are accountable to a larger community.  As a community, professional luthiers have built a lot of trust.  We have buyers who write checks for a deposit on something they aren’t going to see for years.  That’s huge.

You seem very environmentally aware. How can the traditions of luthiery evolve to embrace a new “greener” philosophy?

I might be wrong, but I think small builders working on a few instruments are remarkably green.  We waste as little as possible and most of us don’t do a lot clothes or shoe shopping for this career.  Many of us commute only a few steps from the house to the shop.

I am going to guess that the nastiest thing we do is over use abrasives.  I love working with planes and drawknives, but I have power tools and it just goes faster.  If I were to grab for that knife, the dust collector could stay quiet.

As for the protection of exotic hardwoods, it’s important to care, and it’s important to stop asking for woods that are in trouble from places that are over harvested.  The highest and best use of precious exotic woods is in fine instruments, and some of the controls that are in place should go a long way toward stopping the indiscriminate use of fine woods on not so fine factory instruments, or as flooring or lawn furniture.  It’s also important to understand that the trees won’t be protected if they have no commercial value, so it is important as a community that we fight for the woods that we need.  For those who are somewhat new to the subject, please re-read that last line!

Please tell me about your fascination with Harp Guitars?

That was a case of a customer wanting something I didn’t really want to do.  In fact, I refused for more than a year.  But the customer was a friend and he has patience, so he wore me down.  After I built one and had a minute or two to try to play one, I was interested in building more, if only for my own use.   I haven’t been able to hang on to one long enough to learn much, and what I do work out on one is easily forgotten, but harp guitars aren’t meant to make guitar playing harder, they are meant to make it easier once you get a toe hold.  The jumping off place is a lot more difficult on harp guitar, and I’m still there.

Some of your larger harp guitars have sycamore back and sides. Why sycamore? Tonally, what does this wood offer?

Some of my harp guitars are sycamore because I had it!  Harp guitar sets are hard to come by and I thought it would look cool.  It was very successful for harp guitar because it didn’t add a lot of clutter to the bass.  The bass was clear and strong, but not ringy.  The first thing you have to learn is to find the sub basses on a harp guitar, the second thing you have to do is shut them up.  I haven’t built a standard six out of sycamore, so my experience with it is limited to the outcome of those two harp guitars.

When I play your guitars, I am always impressed with the strength of the treble frequencies all the way up the neck, and how well balanced they are with the lows and mids. What is the secret to building an acoustic guitar that has such strong treble fundamentals?

Thank you!  Again, I can only tell you that my recipe has been added to over time.  I tease that it used to take me 120 hours to build a guitar and now I’m pretty sure it takes me twice that long.  There are all the added steps that I have acquired over the years.

I think one of the big secrets in guitar building, and one that gets talked about very little has to do with how well the neck tunes to the body.  I’m really lucky that my steel string headstock seems to be about the right size and weight.  I have nodal points that fall pretty much where I need them to be, and that little extra adds to consistency up the neck – or so my violin making mentor taught me.

In the next 5-10 years, what do you envision for Wingert Guitars? Will there be a continuing evolution in your designs? Will you branch off in new directions?

I have been working on something old rather than something new.  I love classical guitar and I have started taking time to pursue that.  I’ve built some passable classicals and have sold them at fair prices for their abilities, but I am ready to take commissions on classical guitars now for the right buyers.  By the time this goes to print, I will probably have had time to prototype the last couple of things I want to iron out.

I’ve learned over the last couple of years that I really enjoy teaching, but my personal evolution isn’t complete yet.  So much of what I do is intuitive or ingrained, it is hard for me to break it down for someone else, so in the next few years, I would like to get better at that kind of communication.  I think it might be so appealing because it is at a completely different pace from the daily madness of wearing all the hats.   To explain the steps to someone else simply requires taking a deep breath, and that’s kinda nice.

Finally Kathy, do you have any additional thoughts that you’d like to share with our readers, i.e., thoughts about guitars, information about you, thoughts about creativity, life lessons… anything?

Well, all of your readers need a Wingert guitar because they know lots of songs, will entice your creative muse to show up,  and will even improve your singing voice in just 14 days!

My great thanks to Kathy for her participation in this interview. Dream Guitars is proud to carry her uniquely voiced one of a kind creations.

 

Steven Dembroski

 

 

 

 

 

Walker Twins

Walker Twins

I warn you, if you haven’t seen these guitars already, you may want to sit down. These two Scott Walker Custom Twins are the very same instruments that were the hit of the recent NAMM Show in Anneheim, CA. Crowds gathered around to see the intricate sculpting, deep quilting and exceptional details that only Scott Walker could imagine.

 

Mr. Walker is an exceptional builder. His instruments are rich with unique appointments and custom features that set them far ahead of the pack.

Honduran Mahogany

Honduran Mahogany

With Scott’s recent set of twins, he has taken his craft to yet another level creating instruments that are timeless and at the same time revolutionary.

 

Shared features include gorgeous, solid Brazilian Rosewood necks. The color is so dark and chocolaty you might just be tempted to sink your teeth into them — but don’t do that! These necks have been shaped to perfection, and are appropriate for guitarists playing any genre. The feel of natural Brazilian Rosewood against the palm of your hand is natural, and so comfortable, you’ll find yourself playing things you never knew possible.

The bodies are made of gorgeous flamed Honduran Mahogany, and capped with exquisite quilted maple so deep you could swim in it. The slightly tinted very natural color brings out the nuance and detail of the maples figure, and lends an earthy sophisticated look to the guitars.

Scott Walker is one of a very small handful of builders that we represent at Dream Guitars. We know our clients only want superior instruments, so we are extremely selective in who we choose to represent. Scott Walker’s inspiring creations, go way beyond what conventional electric guitars offer.

Call us to find out more about these exceptional instruments, and learn how they can be yours today. We prefer to sell these 2 as a set, but we are very happy to discuss individual purchases with you as well.

Don’t miss this chance to own a part of the Scott Walker Legacy!

James Olson, Larry Robinson, Kevin Ryan, and Michael Keller

Clearly, luthiery requires a diverse set of finely honed skills, but it also requires a deep aesthetic understanding. Do you consider yourself more of an artist or a craftsman?

I definitely consider myself a craftsman with a very strong artistic sense. I had always been fond of arts of all kinds — decorative, interpretive, pre-modern, impressionist, surrealistic. I am fond of many types of art. But I’m also very fond of many types of crafts, pottery, jewelry and knife making, and furniture. This is the world of my imagination.

MICHAEL KELLER

MICHAEL KELLER

When you’re starting to build a guitar and you’re trying to picture it in your visual mind, many artistic considerations come into play that go beyond crafting a fine sounding guitar. Different colors of wood, different colored shells, colored purflings, bindings and shapes, all become a pallet that is available to you to compose a beautiful looking instrument.

One must also realize ultimately you’re making a tool for a musician. No matter how beautiful or arty a guitar looks, if it doesn’t play well and sound great I don’t care how arty it is. I would much rather have a guitarist tell me, “I love the sound of the guitar”, rather than “the sound is OK but the inlays are great”. It’s really totally about the sound and playability.

Recently, flying back from a guitar festival I noticed one of the editors of a guitar magazine on the plane who had been at the show. We started talking, and he mentioned that he had played a lot of very expensive heavily inlaid guitars that didn’t play or sound very good. He said exactly what I was thinking from my own experiments at the festival. A lot of the guitars at the show were designed to be eye catching, but a lot of effort had not been put into making them play well. So the artistic side of guitar making is a field that one should embrace carefully, making sure the instrument sounds and plays well first. After that, as far as I’m concerned, anything goes.

Read more

John Osthoff 000-12C

This gorgeous new John Osthoff 000-12C is headed toward the Dream Guitars showroom. A stunning guitar with gorgeous African Blackwood back and sides! Give us a call to find out how this exceptional instrument can be yours!

John Osthoff 000-12C

John Osthoff 000-12C

Osthoff 00-12C

Osthoff 00-12C

The seat takes shape.

Brian Boggs is one of the most highly respected furniture makers in America. Known for his creative passion and attention to detail, Brian now brings his considerable talents to the world of music, giving us the ultimate Guitar Chair!

As soon as I sat in the Guitar Chair I noticed an immediate improvement in my playing posture. Long rehearsals and performances are definitely made easier when you are comfortable. I find that the Guitar Chair lessens back fatigue, and helps break the bad habit of slumping over the guitar. Paul and I both highly recommend the Guitar Chair by Brian Boggs. It is the ultimate guitar accessory!

What makes your guitar chair more appropriate for players than a standard kitchen chair?

The Bogg's Guitar Chair

The Bogg's Guitar Chair

What is different about the guitar chair is that the whole chair is designed around how guitar players move, hold their guitar, and position their hands. Beginning with the seat, I sculpted it to support the player comfortably, but it’s round shape and forward slant address the guitarist’s forward lean as well as leg movements. It provides comfort while rocking out on the blues or meditating on a classical number. The rolling downward of the front of the seat allows either knee to drop down or move to the side comfortably. No edges to catch you under the thigh so your legs don’t fall asleep.

The back is narrower and shorter than a typical kitchen chair. It also has a pitch designed for the position of a guitarist in performance. The lower portion of the back is carved back to so that when leaning forward there is still some support in the lumbar area.
A kitchen chair, on the other hand is designed for single position sitting, is tilted slightly backward, and usually has a trapezoidal seat shape. Having said all this about the differences, this design will make a great kitchen chair with a simple change to the pitch. I am working on that version now.

Hand crafted perfection!

Hand crafted perfection!

If someone wants to order a Guitar chair, and have it customized to match their décor, what is the process?

That will depend on just how much is needed to make the accommodation. They will need to call the shop and we will take it from there. If it is simply a wood choice matter, we can do that easily enough. Harder woods for the seat or back will cost more in labor, and the chair price will also have to reflect any additional wood cost if more expensive woods are chosen. Any changes to the design will add cost just because the chair can’t follow the usual well honed process we work with. It will need extra time and attention. That is always done on an individual basis.

Do we have plans to develop any other products especially aimed at musicians and guitarists in particular?

Brian Boggs -- sculpting the Guitar Chair.

Brian Boggs -- sculpting the Guitar Chair.

I don’t have new designs up and going right now, but a music stand and drawer unit for music storage are on my mind. We have the craftsmen to build them beautifully. It’s just a matter of getting the designs worked out.


What is the typical wait time for a custom order?

Right now we are looking at about 10 weeks. Production of the chairs is fairly constant. Orders arrive in a more erratic pattern, so our backlog will fluctuate from 4-12 weeks for a while. We will know when we get an order what the delivery time will be on that chair.

Can you tell us more about the mission of your company?

The Boggs Collective represents a new business vision that fosters the highest levels of design, craftsmanship and sustainability in studio furniture making. Our model integrates four key components: materials, workspace, training and visibility creating opportunities for landowners, loggers, sawyers and craftspeople to work collaboratively. With this full cycle collaboration fine craftsmanship, sustainable forest management and our clients’ needs are integrated into a mutually supportive and sustainable partnership.

The seat takes shape.

The seat takes shape.

For landowners, loggers and sawyers who practice sustainable forestry there is an assurance that their efforts are helping create value-added wood products that stimulate the regional economy. For craftspeople involved, it offers an infrastructure that allows woodworkers to focus on their passion. For our clients, it represents the chance to own timeless, handcrafted furniture produced in a reliable and sustainable manner. For all of us, it presents a new way of looking at the items we live with, an awareness of the labor and materials that go into each piece and a conscious choice to hold these values at the heart of our philosophy and practice.

THE BOGGS COLLECTIVE — MISSION

Our Mission – Design and produce exquisite furniture in a reliable and sustainable manner
Our Vision – To provide a model that supports furniture makers and forests sustainably
Our Core values – Excellence – creating conditions that promote our highest level of engagement in all facets of our work.
Innovation – creativity drive development of processes and products designed to support and inspire us.
Integrity – holding our values and beliefs present in both our individual and collective actions and products
Social and Environmental Responsibility – honoring our responsibility to the health and well being of our forests, communities and craftsmen.

Large Accessory Box

All of us at Dream Guitars are huge fans of the Paul Reed Smith line of Private Stock acoustic guitars — and we’re not alone. These are great sounding instruments with exceptional playability. And now, we’re thrilled to bring you the newest addition to the line, two exceptional new signature models for guitar legends Tony McManus and Martin Simpson.

“It’s an ironic thing to say about such a beautiful instrument but it becomes invisible- leaving the player to concentrate solely on the music- which is what it should be all about. The Tony McManus signature model is based on the Angelus model but with the PRS wide fingerboard. The bridge and fingerboard are in ebony, and the Private Stock wood choices are pretty spectacular. The guitar is capable of going anywhere I’m capable of going musically. It works beautifully as a solo fingerstyle guitar but if I need to flatpick, it’ll go there too. It’ll accompany songs, tunes…whatever I need…tuned high and tuned low, gently caressed or driven hard,” said Tony McManus.

PRS TONY McMANUS ACOUSTIC GUITAR

PRS TONY McMANUS ACOUSTIC GUITAR

Tony McManus Private Stock Acoustic Specs

Tony McManus Private Stock

Tony McManus Private Stock


Shape 15 1/2″ Cutaway
Bracing PRS X-brace/classical hybrid
Back and Side Woods Cocobolo
Top Wood European Spruce
Neck
Neck Wood Mahogany
Fretboard and Bridge Wood Ebony
Strength Rod High-Modulus Carbon Fiber
Inlays Mammoth Ivory J Birds
Hardware
Nut Bone
Nut Width 1 3/4″
Saddle Bone
Tuners Proprietary Robson Hand-Machined Tuners
Tuner Buttons Ebony
Electronics
Electronics PRS Pickup system

MARTIN SIMPSON PRS ACOUSTIC

MARTIN SIMPSON PRS ACOUSTIC

“The new Martin Simpson signature model guitar is simply the result of the PRS team being truly attentive to the feedback of a player. I have felt privileged to be able to tell them what I think will make a better guitar for great acoustic playing, and they have listened to my input from materials to neck width and string spacing, pick up sound and inlays….and when the last model arrived, I was blown away by the results. The new signature model is entirely the best materials, and the specs which I asked for, presented in a deluxe version. It is a great instrument made by people who care and strive always for the highest standards in tone, playability, workmanship and aesthetics.” – Martin Simpson.

Martin Simpson Private Stock Acoustic Specs

MARTIN SIMPSON PRIVATE STOCK

MARTIN SIMPSON PRIVATE STOCK


Shape 15 1/2″ Cutaway
Bracing PRS X-brace/classical hybrid
Back and Side Woods Cocobolo
Top Wood Adirondack Spruce
Neck
Neck Wood Mahogany
Fretboard and Bridge Wood Ebony
Strength Rod High-Modulus Carbon Fiber
Inlays Green Abalone J Birds
Hardware
Nut Bone
Nut Width 1.81″
Saddle Bone
Tuners Proprietary Robson Hand-Machined Tuners
Tuner Buttons Ebony
Electronics
Electronics PRS Pickup system

Click here to hear examples of Tony’s amazing playing on the Maker’s Mark CD!

Click here to read part 1.

PART 2: ERVIN SOMOGYI

On stage, Woodstock 2010.

On stage, Woodstock 2010.

You seem to be one of, if not the most, scientifically informed builders. Did you find that you needed to learn things from a scientific perspective to fully understand the full potential of the steel string guitar?

No.  I am, in fact, an essentially intuitive builder.  This doesn’t mean that I get messages from crystal balls or anything like that.  It just means the feel, heft, density, flex and tap-tones of my woods make sense to me.  But also my cortical brain has gotten connected to my somatic brain and I’ve been able to use some of the ‘scientific’ language to communicate information verbally that previously existed in only the wordless realm of  hands-on and ears-on impressions.  I mean, try to explain what it’s like to be right-handed; you won’t be able to until you find words for it.  Until then, you’re stuck with metaphor.

I never felt the need to master scientific perspectives in order to have a better relationship with, or understanding of, the guitar.  I felt the need to find language with which to articulate a craftsman’s reality in order to answer my students’ earnest questions.  Unless you’re studying Zen, for which words are entirely the wrong track to be on, a teacher needs a language.

The thing is, scientific jargon is discriminating, critical, cerebral, and ‘yes-no’.  But my guitar making is integrative, immediate, total, and somatic; it has to do with my sense of things.  These words merely mean that my work is, well, personal, in a way that technical language and linear thinking aren’t.  It’s as personal just as one’s dog is personal.  In fact, I can claim that I’ve gotten to know the guitar in the same way that one gets to know one’s dog over the years: one pays attention, one loves it, and one learns to notice the changes in its behaviors even when they are subtle.  I’ve done this ‘befriending’ with my hands, eyes and ears, through playing the guitar and making it and listening to it and thinking about it.  I have measured thicknesses and weights and kept records, but that’s not, strictly speaking, scientific; it’s common-sense.

The book Engineering the Guitar was published at about the same time mine was; as its title suggests, it’s a very engineering/physics perspective on lutherie and its pages are replete with jargon and the kind of complicated looking formulas that will make any

Coffee Bean Guitar

Coffee Bean Guitar

left-brained person’s heart beat faster.  But these are all unintelligible to me.   I  think that such language may make you seem very impressive at a cocktail party but I don’t see how you can learn to build a good guitar out of that approach.

Is it essential for modern builders to understand the principles of structural engineering?

It depends on what you mean by ‘understand’, but I don’t think so; at least not any more than knowing the few basic principles I’ve written about.  Any competent luthier will certainly have internalized a body of practical knowledge that will be consistent with any formal, scientific approach — even though he may lack the training, background, and language to sound formally educated in that discipline.  From my point of view a guitar maker needs to understand his tools and woods, period.  However, if he wants to be a teacher, that’s a different ball game.

In your DVD, Voicing the Guitar, when lecturing on the different ways guitar tops vibrate, you made brief mention of triploles. What are they, and how do they effect a guitars top in comparison to monopoles, cross dipoles, and long dipoles?

Graham Caldersmith, among others, has written some very informative articles about guitar vibration modes, for the Guild of American Luthiers.  He considers tripoles to be very important for good sound.  ‘Tripole’ is the word used to describe a mode of movement in which a string or membrane is vibrating in three sections of maximal activity, separated by two nodes (points of non-vibration).  It sort of looks like a stretched and elongated number “8” (or an infinity sign) but with three tummies/bulges rather than just two.  There are ways of bracing and constructing a guitar so that it has the freedom to move like that, while most guitar tops have a facility for vibrating mostly as a unit and also, simultaneously, in two halves that seesaw around a center line or center point.  As far as I know, tripoles have been studied in Spanish guitars top vibrations, but not so much in steel string guitar tops.

Tripole motion can happen across the grain (cross tripole), or diagonal to it (diagonal tripole) or along the grain (long tripole), and in various combinations of these. Each of them has a specific implication for the kind of sound that the listener hears, and each of these modes can be facilitated or inhibited by judicious calibration of the top and the placement and profiling of its bracing.  It doesn’t take much to shift this mode, either: a ridiculously small amount of wood removed from here or there, or left here or there, will do it.  The tricky thing, of course, is to facilitate one or two or all three of these modal orientations without inhibiting some other mode of motion.  With the rather limited energy budget that the average guitar has, whatever energy you channel into one mode will starve, or potentially starve, some other one.  You simply can’t have it all unless your top’s motions are amplified electronically.

The significance of the tripole in the Spanish guitar is that this instrument needs a specific mix of higher-frequency action than the steel string guitar does.  As modal motion gets more complex, it contains more high-frequency signal.  The monopole has the lowest pitch; the dipole has a higher pitch, the tripole has a higher pitch yet, and so on.  Going up this particular food chain, you might consider that there are also quadropoles, which are by definition the first harmonics of the dipoles (each half vibrating in its own halves); and there are then the pentapoles, in which the face vibrates in five sections with four nodes in between them; the pentapoles would be quite high frequency indeed.  And so on.  But no one has studied these yet.

Somogyi Gryphon

Somogyi Gryphon

To help all this make sense, I might give you a bit of background here.  Bear with me.  Or simply skip the next five paragraphs.  (I discuss these matters more fully in chapter 32 of The Responsive Guitar, by the way.)

THE BACKGROUND: There are significant structural differences between steel string and classic guitars.  They also are expected to have distinct and differently balanced ‘target’ sounds.  Steel string guitars want to produce a bright sound, not a bassey one, as a function of their basic construction and stringing.  The natural voice of the fan-fretted nylon strung classic guitar, on the other hand, is the opposite: the bass is normally stronger than the treble.  This is likewise a function of its basic design, construction and stringing.  The woods might all be the same; but the stringing, structure, and mechanical tensions these guitars operate under are hugely different.

Yet, these are not at all the desired target sounds for these instruments.  In any discussion about classic guitars it is essential to recognize that the ‘best’ instruments have treble notes that sound brilliant.  They not only stand up to the bass notes, but they have their own very clear identity: that’s the standard by which these guitars are judged.  ‘Best’ is here defined by the ‘romantic’ standard that Andres Segovia created, and which standard is still applied even to the newer classic guitars with thinner tops (about which there’s a lot to say but that’s outside the scope of this discussion).  When an experienced classic guitar player first puts his hands on any guitar that he’s never played before, his left hand immediately goes to the twelfth fret position and the first notes he plays will be the high ones; it’s the acid test, pretty much the first thing one does.  It’s sort of like stepping into a new racing car and immediately revving the engine to get a sense of its power.  In contrast, any steel string guitar player, when he picks up a guitar and strums a first chord on it, will have put his hand in first position.  Have you ever noticed these things?

And what is this brilliance in the classical guitar?  Well, listen to some of Segovia’s early recordings in which he plays slowly, expressively, and romantically.  He emphasizes some of the high notes in such a way that their smoothly accented ping becomes part of the romantic sensibility of the song. Those notes are very musical, and they sparkle.

On the other hand, in any discussion about the steel string guitar, the ‘best’ ones are those that have a full, good, solid, vigorous, punchy, present, and open low end response.  This is the realm of the monopole and the cross dipoles.  Historically, the quest for a strong bass response has been the main factor behind the creation of the larger steel string guitar bodies such as the dreadnoughts and the jumbos. Low-end response is important in the steel string guitar; but smaller soundboxes can’t give it easily.  (It is interesting to note that the Spanish guitar, in spite of having every opportunity to grow physically bigger along with its metal-strung cousin has — with only one technical exception — not done so.  That exception is the Mexican mariachi bands’ bass guitar, the guitarron.)

In the light of all this, the luthier’s challenges in making either one of these models of the guitar are directly opposite.  In the steel string guitar — to achieve a good target sound — the maker has to ‘build in’ a good bass response, which the instrument will normally lack.  In the nylon string guitar — to achieve a good target sound — the maker has to ‘build in’ a good treble response, which the instrument will otherwise lack.  “A good treble” is the realm of the tripole, the quadrapole, the pentapole, etc.

Finally, to get back to your original question: awareness of the ins and outs of the tripole is thought to be an important part of the skill set required to make a good nylon string guitar.   As far as I can make out, while the steel string guitar undoubtedly engages in tripole motion, this is less important for that instrument.

Parenthetically, the luthier may or may not have a cognitive understanding of these things; he may have only an intuitive one.  One interesting thing is that as consumers we are taught to evaluate the things that we buy on the basis of how understandably that thing’s good points are brought to our attention.  But a lot of perfectly adequate luthiers aren’t all that verbally articulate; they will be unable to ‘talk knowledgeably’ or ‘convince’ you that they know what they’re doing.  Intuitive knowledge is by definition difficult to communicate verbally.  Lutherie, lovemaking, Zen, and a bunch of other perfectly wonderful things share this quality. So when evaluating your next guitar purchase don’t get hung up on whether the maker knows about the tripole: listen to the guitar and

Somogyi Guitar and Sarod!

Somogyi Guitar and Sarod!

determine whether it has a voice that you can’t live without.

The cube rule — before watching your aforementioned DVD, I had not heard of it, yet the application of it seems to be essential knowledge — especially for those interested in variations to conventional bracing. Could you please explain, the cube rule for our readers, and how it has informed your opinion on structure?

The Cube Rule (it’s my wording; engineers call it different things) is a fundamental principle of physics and engineering.  It states that the load-bearing capacity of a  material such as a beam or joist is a cubed function of its height or thickness.  That is, a ceiling rafter one inch thick has a ‘stiffness’ of one (1 x 1 x 1); a floor joist that is two inches thick is eight times as stiff (2 x 2 x 2); a beam that is three inches thick is twenty-seven times as stiff as the first one (3 x 3 x 3); and so on.  What this geometric progression means is that relatively small increments of thickness can  translate to significant differences in stiffness.

The percentages/gross numbers are the same for every unit of measurement: that is, the same formulas and numbers work for inches, feet, centimeters, etc. And they work the same on the small scale of guitar parts, too.  What this means is that a thirty-second of an inch or two, or even less, maybe just a few thousandths of an inch too much or too little, one way or the other, can make a difference of stiffening or loosening a guitar top by as much as 100%.  You can really hear that; it’s certainly worth knowing about.  Especially when you can appreciate that you’ve unknowingly been making one guitar top up to two or three times as stiff as your last one, without knowing you’ve done so.  From the standpoint of the strings, that’s hugely significant.  Your guitars will of course sound very different from one to another, possibly without your having any clue as to how you’ve managed to do that.  And it’s all from adding or taking away very small amounts of wood.

An important corollary to the above is the connectedness of your structure.  If your braces are a little longer or shorter (even if they’re the same size), or are a little further from or closer to their neighboring braces, or possibly angled a bit differently, it makes just as much difference.

Are you a good guitarist, and what do you look for in a personal instrument?

I’m a great guitarist.  I play the flamenco guitar very well.  I’ve played this music for almost fifty years and from early on I managed to play expressively and lyrically, and with impressive rhythmic control and technical subtlety.  I improvise well.  My teachers discovered pretty early on that I’ve got a remarkable Natural Talent, because of which gift I hardly ever make mistakes or play a wrong note.  Most impressive of all, I play a lot of the very same notes and chords that really famous, great musicians play — and even record with!    I’m . . . . oh, sorry.   Wrong cue card.  I got a bunch of these cheap at a White House garage sale when the Bush people moved out. J

Well, I do love and play flamenco — somewhat of an irony in view of the fact that I’m so prominent in the world of steel string guitar making.  But I have been under flamenco’s thrall since high school.  I’m not a  great player but I’m pretty competent.  Most important, though, is that playing music simply makes me happy.  I actually made my living as a flamenco guitar player for a while — when I was young, skinny, had no responsibilities, and lived on close to nothing.

Somogyi Lute

Somogyi Lute

I came to the guitar in high school, during the huge popularity of the Kinston Trio.  They were at the forefront of the folk music movement (among white people, that is; but that’s another story) and all of us high school guys ran out and bough cheap Mexican guitars (this was in San Diego, only an hour from exotic Tijuana, where there were cheap guitars to be had; my first one cost $22), learned three chords, and started to belt out folk songs.  We’d found out that if we played the guitar and sang we could get girls to pay attention to us!  That was a pivotally significant learning experience.  It was also when I found out that I can’t sing.

#&%?©*$!

But I liked the guitar and plunked on it a lot, and eventually I found my way to flamenco — in which the singing sounds so awful that I felt at home with it.  I got some Carlos Montoya and Sabicas records and I was really blown away: they were playing a whole lot more than three chords.  I’ve made myself a few flamenco guitars over the years and I have been sufficiently impressed by the work of luthier Eugene Clark that I’ve commissioned two flamenco guitars from him, which I own and will play forever.  Clark is legendary in flamenco circles.  He’s one of the earliest living American guitar makers, and a brilliant craftsman.  He lives in Tacoma, Washington.

As I said, it is an irony that I have become known as a steel string guitar maker, as it’s an instrument I don’t really play.  I tried making a living at making flamenco and classic guitars for some years early on, but I was on the early part of my own learning curve and that effort didn’t pan out.

However, all is not lost.  The fact is that knowledgeable musicians seek pretty much the same qualities of response in their guitars, regardless of how they’re strung.  These qualities are: overall sensitivity of response, a ‘great voice’, dynamic range, a certain warmth, a dynamic ability to keep up with the technical demands of the player’s right and left hands, plenty of head room, and vibrancy and liveness.  And ease of handling and playing, natch.

For my flamenco guitar playing I don’t look for a smooth, golden voice such as classic guitars are supposed to have.  I want something that sounds dry, almost harsh, with a metallic edge.  Sustain should be minimal.  A little string buzz adds to the spice, and the strings need to be low, close to the face so that I can make the tapping sounds that are part of that music. A good, rough flamenco guitar sound that carries well really pleases me.

Skull detail one.

Skull detail one.

Houses of fashion design, like Givenchy or Perry Ellis, have taken in the next generation of designers to carry on the brand name. Have you ever considered to continuance of Somogyi Guitars as a future enterprise, under the creative leadership of a younger builder?

No.  Well, yes, briefly.  But not really.  I think that when I go I should go.  The idea of becoming ‘Somogyi, Inc.’ is weird to me.

In any event, none of my apprentices have wound up making guitars that sound exactly like mine.  They make guitars that have the same qualities of openness and complexity that mine have . . . but they still manage to have a sound of their own.  So I’m not sure that anyone could meaningfully ‘carry on’ the work that I do.  I  mean, the label might say Somogyi but it would be someone else’s sound.

Skull detail two.

Skull detail two.

What is your method for determining the natural impedances inherent in your building materials and compensating for them?

First of all, all materials have some amount of natural impedance.  Interestingly, most luthiers have never heard of impedance, yet it is fundamental to the functioning of the soundbox.  I’ll quote myself from the Foreword to Making the Responsive Guitar and chapter 34 of The Responsive Guitar, in explaining this.

Impedance is a basic concept of physics and electrical engineering.  Any time  energy transfers (such as the one between strings and a soundbox) happen, impedance will be part of those processes.   Impedance can be defined as the mismatch of materials properties or capacities, such that an efficient transfer of energies or transformation of energies from one form to another and/or from one material to another is hampered or prevented.  Impedance occurs, for instance, when mechanical energy becomes electrical, magnetic, acoustic, or heat energy.  Friction, heat buildup, mechanical deformation, or just plain waste, dissipation, or loss of energy can be consequences of impedance.  Put in different words, they are all versions of a form of resistance or damping that is innate in materials. One thing to do, therefore, is to work with materials that have little inner damping.  Brazilian rosewood, wenge, padauk, and a lot of spruces, cedars, and redwoods are acoustically live.  Maple, oak, walnut, ash, koa, bubinga, teak, myrtle, African blackwood, zebrawood, etc. are less live and manage to damp vibrational movement to some significant extent — in spite of the fact that one can build perfectly adequate guitars with these.

A simple example of impedance is one that we might all have done in a high school physics class when we suspended a small weight from a rubber band and observed the motion of this weight as a function of our jerking the rubber band up and down at different speeds and with different amounts of vigor. We could move our hands up and down quickly and vigorously without moving the weight very much at all: it seemed like a total waste of energy and the weight might as well have been an anvil.  But we could move our hands up and down minimally at the right frequency, and the weight would bob up and down in tandem with our hand motions: this showed an efficient coupling as a function of a frequency-to-elasticity-and-mass relationship.  This is, on a different scale, exactly what a gymnast bouncing up and down on a trampoline is doing: he can leap higher and higher as he bounces in harmony with the trampoline’s elastic membrane; and he can stop his motions in a second by changing his body movements.  Same body mass, same trampoline, different impedance. On yet a different scale this is the same phenomenon observed in the behaviors of suspension bridges when, during military maneuvers, the bridges’ harmonic frequencies are matched by the footsteps of soldiers marching across them and the bridges start to shake.  Soldiers are supposed to not march across bridges in lock-step for this reason: in extreme cases they can bring the bridge down by simply exciting it at that particular frequency.  A fourth example might be that of firing a gun at a parked car: the bullet would probably go through the car or smash itself against the engine block, but the car wouldn’t move.  On the other hand, if you stood in front of the car (and it was parked on level ground, with its parking brake off) and you pushed with the same amount of energy that the bullet had but at a different velocity (and of course pushing in a greater than bullet-hole-sized area), you would move the car a few inches: impedances will have been matched (or nullified, depending on the wording one prefers).  The principle illustrated in these examples is that, in the right frequency/harmonic relationship, a small amount of energy can move a large mass — even when brute force fails to achieve the same result.

What does this have to do with the guitar?  Everything . . . and at every level.  Potential mismatches between the strings’ energies and the receptivity of the guitar’s various parts are easily resolved once the respective energy-receiving/exchanging capacities of these components are “lined up” with each other. When those conditions are met dramatic results/activity will result where there has been little or no impact before.  In other words, a well made guitar is amazingly and dramatically more responsive than an ordinary one.  It is possible to look at top-making and top-bracing in general as nothing other than an attempt to match the impedances of the materials

7 String Peghead

7 String Peghead

so as to allow/invite/bring about the most spectacularly easy and wholehearted cooperation possible between the strings and the guitar’s respective parts.

This formulation is likely to be somewhere between baffling and amusing to the novice guitar maker — particularly as (1) this is likely to be unfamiliar language, and (2) the language that often is used makes it sound as though one either needs a higher degree in physics to understand the concepts or (3) that there’s some kind of spiritual energy or Zen/metaphysical thing going on, instead of something that happens on any practical, real-world [albeit scientific] plane.  Also, (4) he or she has probably not yet had the chance to experience for themselves how dramatically different, positively explosive, a really intelligently built guitar’s tonal response can be — so they don’t yet have their own language to use.  But it is unproductive to worry about how “right” or “wrong” any of these formulations are.  I think that, mumbo-jumbo aside, guitar making is an art — but it is a real-world practical art in which knowing “the science” makes you a better artist.   Bottom line: don’t worry about the language; simply do the work, pay attention, learn from everything you do . . . and you’ll get better at it regardless of whether you believe you’re matching impedances, simply being a skilled woodworker, or speaking to the spirits of dead trees.  You will find that as you make the guitar lighter and lighter in construction, and its parts engage less and less in resisting and fighting each other and the strings, it will become better and better . . .

In question #9, above, you asked me whether I’d considered it important to learn technical language and concepts in order to further my lutherie work.  I didn’t.  What I did instead was to work away at it, accumulate a bunch of interesting learning experiences (one could uncharitably label these as ‘failures’), and possess a pretty large number of as-yet-undefined impressions.  Then, I stumbled onto the concept of Impedance and a bunch of stuff just fell into place for me: it gave me a name for something that I couldn’t have put my finger on previously . . . sort of like the silent, mysterious spook in old spy movies who wears a dark trench coat and hat and skulks around in the shadows stalking the hero: you know he’s there, but who is he and what is he doing? And why?  Being introduced to the concept of Impedance was a genuine lightbulb-going-on episode for me.

So, to get back to your question of “how do I determine the impedance of my woods and compensate for it”: I don’t do anything like that.  I start with the most live materials I can get my hands on — unless there’s a tonal reason for my doing otherwise.  (For instance, I once made a guitar for a professional songwriter; he returned it because it was too loud and drowned his singing out.  So I made him a quieter guitar that he was happy with.)

I think the real answer to your question is in my treatment of the voicing of the guitar, which is described at great length in chapters 18 and 19 of The Responsive Guitar.  This is: I remove wood from certain specific parts of the guitar top, in certain amounts.  I do this slowly and carefully, listening to the voice of the guitar change as I do this.  There comes a point when the guitar’s voice starts to open up.  It’s an unmistakable transformation.  Then I push the envelope a little more, until the guitar top literally makes a live, drumlike sound when I tap it even lightly: the top is, after all, a kind of drumhead — and you can get it to actually make a sound like one. To someone who has never experienced this it’s jawdroppingly dramatic.  But mostly, instead of ‘determining’ something, I’d say that my work is very much like stumbling around in a room that’s dark but that I know by feel and by ear — until I find the light switch.  Or, if you will, the volume switch.  This effort is spread out over two days of steadily inching forward.  I have some special chisels I do this

Carp

Carp

with.

One of several things I studied at University was composition  — a topic which when approached formulaically, quickly lost its luster. In your guitar building classes, how do you encourage the creative thought process in a field that is experimental yet closely bound to physical rules?

Mostly, I teach the Principles that I’ve learned about over the years and try to get my students to apply them to the design of guitars.  I don’t teach ‘creative though’t in the sense that one might teach it in an art class, though.  Physics, acoustics, and a sense of the materials come first; pretty lines and inlays come second.

There are Principles and Rules that work to make a guitar sound really good, in the same sense that there are Principles and Rules to follow to make an airplane fly.  I haven’t studied such things formally the way an engineer might; instead, I’ve made a lot of guitars and noticed that they behaved in certain ways that seemed to be connected to specific work I’d done on them.  Then, I noticed that if  I changed something structurally the guitars’ sounds changed in predictable ways (and by the way, I didn’t do this all by myself; I got lots of feedback from musicians.  I couldn’t have done this without them).  I call these cause-and-effect phenomena ‘principles’ — which they are, even if others would have more formal names for them.  Which brings me to the question of acquiring a useful vocabulary, which I’ll address further below.

A lot of people such as airplane designers, chefs, and acrobats deal with experimental work that’s tied to physical rules.  Airplanes, automobiles, and guitars can all be designed in lots of ways and still do what they’re supposed to.  And they’ll work quite well so long as the designers, cooks, and acrobats stay within the applicable Rules of Physics, Energy, Dynamics, Materials, Air, Chemistry, and Engineering.  It’s just that luthiers have had no access to this level of education until recently; hence they’ve been working in the dark, mostly empirically and, in default of a better method, copying Martin guitars as well as each another.  And they’ve not had a way to talk about whatever they’ve learned; they’ve only had the most primitive practical vocabulary to work with.  (I’m using ‘vocabulary’ here to mean both the words and the concepts behind the words.)  Once you have a grasp of the underlying Principles and can formulate your thinking into cogent sentences — regardless of whether you call these principles the Cube Rule, the Third Law of Thermodynamics or, say, the Purple Thursday Principle — the sky’s the limit as far as artistic creativity, aesthetics, use of natural or space age materials, ergonomics, etc. are concerned.

Largely, I sort of think that my contribution will be to have helped cobble together a  verbal and conceptual vocabulary with which to talk about guitar making to both ourselves and with each other . . . a bit like taking an L.S.L (Lutherie as a Second Language) course.  I did not invent any of this, by the way: engineers and designers have known a lot of this stuff since the Wright brothers time.  I’ve just brought it to our network with more user-friendly language.  Well, o.k., I have contributed a few ideas and insights of my own, too.

Much has been made about the openness of French polish versus lacquer. Can you quantify the noticeable differences of each on otherwise identical tops?

One could.  I can’t: I don’t have the electronic equipment with which to do that kind of work.  I can tell you, though, that I can really tell the difference between the tap tone of a guitar back before the finish is applied, and the tap tone after.  You can, too.  It’s really obvious with lacquer, even to an untrained ear.

The importance of the finish is twofold.  First, its function is to protect the guitar’s woods agains the elements — not the player.  (It doesn’t hurt if the finish is beautiful, but that’s a commercial and aesthetic consideration, not an acoustic one.)  Second, to the extent that the finish is heavier than it really needs to be, it will hold the vibrating plates back from full motion and damp the instrument’s sound.  Finishes (lacquers, urethanes, etc.) are significantly heavier and denser than spruces, cedars, etc. are.  It doesn’t take many thousandths of an inch of finish thickness to kill off a lot of sound.

The virtue of a French polish is that it’s really thin.  Much more so than lacquers and urethanes.  This is better for sound.  It’s so thin that it can scratch easily; but it’s still better for sound.

Finally Ervin, do you have any additional thoughts that you would like to share with the readers of our blog?

Thank you.  This certainly sounds like my chance to get on my soap box and proclaim away.  Pardon me while I light up this doobie . . .    ;-p

First . . . uh . . . I’d like you all get my books and DVD, and to visit my website.

I think my guitars are interesting for no other reason that they’re the product of a certain amount of human intelligence applied in a new way to a very common material.  I’m smarter than some people; I’m dumber than others. Otherwise, I generally put my pants on one sleeve at a time.

Turtle

Turtle

I’ve cited a number of Guitar Making Principles in this interview, and I cite a few more in my books.  They represent the Basic Rules of working with wood.  But there is another interesting Principle that I would like to mention.  It’s from a different discipline entirely, but it has an application to lutherie.  I have in mind something that former California governor (and trained Jesuit) Jerry Brown said in a televised political debate some years ago: that as far as our society is concerned there is no Principle of Enoughness to contain all the striving, efforts and judgments we make, as a people and as a body politic.  I’d never heard anyone mention this thing before but it seemed like a shaft of light in the darkness. There really is no Principle of Enoughness at most levels of personal, social, business, or governmental life.  In our own ways, we all want to Increase Our Market Share — without any ultimate stopping point in sight for such effort.

I think that this very New-Agey-sounding principle can be a metaphor for guitar making.  It has as legitimate an application to lutherie as do the Cube Rule, the Monopole and Dipoles and Tripoles, Stiffness to Weight Ratios, Coupled Harmonic Oscillation, Structural vs. Monocoque engineering, the guitar-as-air-pump, Helmholtz resonances, the Law of Conservation of Energy, Impedance, Huygens devices, bracing (i.e., strategies for regulating vibrational modes), Young’s Modulus of Elasticity, and the behaviors of I-beams and engineered trusses — all of which are discussed in my books.  They all support the idea of ‘that’s enough; you can stop carving away now’.

(Oh, wow: The Jesuit’s Guide to Guitar Making!  . . . But I’m kidding about kidding: I think Enoughness is a profound principle in real life.)

Aside from that, and on a different level entirely, I find butterflies fascinating.  Bear with me a bit here.  They are GREAT design work!  Consider the humble butterfly’s life course.  The young larva emerges from the egg, which of course has previously been fertilized; and that’s a whole different discussion.  The larva then feeds, grows, survives, and becomes a  pupa, and then a caterpillar — which is basically a bigger, fatter larva that’s reached full puberty, except for the acne.  The caterpillar encases itself in a cocoon (ever wonder how those peanut-sized worms ever learn to do such a thing?  I mean, with humans, it takes agriculture, an entire viable culture of teaching, the complex social relations involved in learning, problem-solving, extracting dye from plants and dyeing the fibers, making looms, division of labor, skill and experience , etc. . . . to just weave a friggin’ blanket, for crying out loud!) . . . and a whole goddamn butterfly emerges from the cocoon, in due time.

Now, the butterfly is totally different than the caterpillar.  It’s more different anatomically than you are from your pet cat.  It has different internal organs, body shape, mouth, eyes, color-coded wings, legs, sexual organs, it doesn’t eat leaves any more, it flies, it swarms, it gives off pheromones . . . etc. etc. etc.   And get this: the caterpillar doesn’t ‘morph’ into the butterfly the way a seed ‘morphs’ into a tree — that is, through a process of serial steps of growth that you can observe, measure, and track.  THE CATERPILLAR BECOMES AN UNDIFFERENTIATED LIQUID INSIDE THE COCOON.   It just melts away!   And a whole new TOTALLY DIFFERENT CREATURE is formed from that . . . uh . . . soup.  Wow.  It’s like putting all the Legos back in the box and then making something completely different with them.  Now THAT’S reeeeeeallllllly cool.  I mean, it sort of puts a monopole to shame, you know.  Can you imagine the time and hassle that would be saved if your teenage kids just melted into a puddle and then came out as fully formed adults?  It is enough to make one weep with awe.  And no one has any real clue as to how this is done.

Likewise, consider the common spider.  You know, those icky things.  Spiders have no muscles. What!? you say.  Even bees and beetles and maggots have muscles!  How do spiders manage to get around?!  The answer is top-drawer-level design work, Watson.  You see, spiders’ legs are hollow and filled with fluid.  Spiders — the big ones and the small ones — move around through a system of carefully controlled and coordinated hydraulic pressures.  I mean, Dude, what a brilliantly great design idea!  And with these carefully articulated hydraulic pressures spiders can coordinate their eight legs to weave webs, catch food, etc.  Not only that, but their webs — material for which come out of glands in their abdomens — are sticky to everything except themselves!  And no one has any real clue as to how this is done.

Well sure, you say, it’s the DNA thing, obviously.  Everybody knows that.  Don’t you watch the Nature Channel?  Oh, yeah, right, totally.  And this might perhaps segue us into an appreciation of the fact that you and I, along with your first grade teacher, and the clerk who sold gum to the bully who made your life miserable in the fifth grade, and your sister-in-law’s ex-husband’s second cousin’s neighborhood librarian, and all the Ugandan building custodians who were hired last November, etc. . . . are each made up of one trillion cells . . . that are furthermore mindbogglingly specialized, and that started out as one measly single one.  That’s pretty cool too.  I mean, it sort of puts a monopole to shame, that does.

Know how much a trillion is?  Hah!  I betchayadon’t, as Sarah Palin might say.  If you were to read out loud the following sentence: “a thousand, plus another thousand, plus another thousand, plus another thousand, plus another thousand, plus another thousand, plus another thousand, plus another thousand, plus another thousand, plus another thousand, plus another thousand, plus another thousand. . . . . . “  etc., at a rate of two of these every second, it would take you sixty years to get to a trillion.  You couldn’t ever stop for lunch, dinner, sleep, bathroom breaks, or to admire my guitars, or even to scratch where you itch.  Not ever. Two thousand, every second, for sixty years!  All from one little germ cell!   Yep, I’m not gonna worry much about being well-regarded by that Bostonian in 2057 who never met me — and who furthermore might turn out to be a sonofabitch I wouldn’t even like.  If that guy has any sense he’ll be out worshipping butterflies and spiders. And maybe even Jerry Brown.

Of course, I do feel peeved that the guy might be making a bunch of money off my guitars, without his having ever made even one.  That sort of sucks. It is soooooooo unfair.

Any idea of whom I can complain to?  Anybody out there?  Hello? . . .

The Great Ervin Somogyi!

The Great Ervin Somogyi!

END OF PART 2

Special thanks to Robert Carrigan for the generous use of his Woodstock photos.

I remember my first telephone conversation with Dake Traphagen. I admit, I was a little nervous to call him — maybe it had something to do with that imposing last name. Traphagen… It just sounded tough, and to the point.

Frankly, I don’t know exactly what I expected, but to me “Dake Traphagen” sounded more like the name of a European action star than the name of a builder of fine guitars.

Okay, jokes aside, my reticence to call him seems pretty silly to me now. A few minutes into our telephone conversation, I realized that Dake is one of the smartest, insightful men I have ever had the pleasure to speak with – a real fountain of knowledge, about life, politics, history, and of course guitars.

For almost 40 years, classical guitarists have known what steel string guitarists are only now discovering — Mr. Traphagen builds extraordinary musical instruments. These are the kind of guitars that become an extension of your musical being, the kind that you bond with – guitars you can’t bear to be without.

Recently, Dake began offering his very special steel string guitars to the general public. Once, these guitars were the exclusive treasures of his friends and very close associates — but now, to the good fortune of acoustic guitarists everywhere, you can get your very own.

It is a real honor to present the following interview with Dake Traphagen. Thank you Dake, for your generosity, knowledge and candor.

DAKE TRAPHAGEN

DAKE TRAPHAGEN

You are primarily known for your classical guitars. Why have you decided to bring steel strings into the market at this point in your career?

I have made steel strings all along, but mostly for friends or friends of friends. I decided to jump in full bore because I really enjoy the creativity of all the different models I make, as well as being inspired by many of the fine players now playing these instruments.

The attention to tonal colors and musical nuances now being used is fantastic — and an inspiration to build for. Also, the level of workmanship and design in the steel string world is phenomenal, a real inspiration. How could I not want to add my little part to this renaissance?

Who did you apprentice with? And what did you take away from that experience?

My first apprenticeship was with a violinmaker and restorer/repairman named Ed Hunntington, in California. He was a superb repairman and restorer to whom I owe a great debt of gratitude. I was a violinist at the time, but when he saw my hands he said, “you have workman’s hands” — and in the end he was correct.

Five years later I studied in Holland with Nico van deer Waals. He is a master guitar and lute maker. I worked with him for several months in Europe, and when he took his vacations in the USA, we would work together in my shop. This went on for a few years, and we always inspired each other to look deeper into the how these wonderful instruments actually worked, how they were made, and their sound.  Nico and I enjoyed a deep friendship.

You are known for having an incredible supply of Brazilian Rosewood, some of which is over 150 years old. How does the stability of this premium grade wood differ from the highly figured crotch/stump wood many builders are using these days? And is there a significant tonal difference?

I’m fortunate to have a good friend in Brazil whom I’ve visited several times. We would go to salvage yards and find gems in the rough. Sometimes we find Brazilian rosewood beams, which we’ve since carbon dated.

The oldest one so far was cut in 1786. I currently have wood from beams dated 1887 and 1904. Some of the stump wood is quite old as well, late 1800’s, and it is excellent tone wood.

I use a heat press to pre-stress all my backs to make sure they will remain as stable as possible throughout the life of the guitar which it is used in.

This very old wood just seems to have a magic to it. I know that sounds a bit corny, but each guitar I make with this wood turns out be really special. It’s a mystery to be sure.

Tell me about your new website.

The updated website has many more photos, and has been divided into a steel string section and a classical/nylon string section. I’m working to get many more sound clips, which I hope will be coming soon. At least the players say they are!? As with most web sites if you want to keep them current it’s going to be a continual work in progress.

Dake in the shop.

Dake in the shop.

I am particularly fond of your dreadnoughts – they have amazing    headroom for the flat-picker, yet sound great when softly fingerpicked. How do you build a large body guitar that has such great dynamic range, and is not just a cannon?

All of my guitars are considered to be loud — and I could make them even louder,

but I feel the musical quality of the instrument is lost when you just go for

volume. I have been using a different bracing pattern on many of these guitars,

which is a modified standard ‘X’ bracing and lattice bracing combination.

This bracing design produces a guitar that has a very nuanced sound, capable of a wide color pallet, and excellent dynamic range. It’s an exciting change from the ‘standard’ bracing pattern we all know and love. Also, I just get lucky sometimes. The harder I work the luckier I get.

I’ve heard your name pronounced a variety of ways: Trap-hag-in, Traf-hagen, etc. Which is correct?

Here in the good ole USA it’s pronounced Trap-hagen (long a as in day). In the old country it would sound like Trop-haugen.

Can you explain how you make double tops for your guitars, how they differ from other double tops, and what they bring to the sonic equation?

The double top, or ‘sandwich’ top, has been a design feature in classical guitars for the past 20 years or so. The salient point of a double top is the weight to strength ratio. A well-designed and constructed top is 15% -20% lighter in weight than a traditional top, yet has the strength of a solid top. This is true with both classical and acoustic guitars.

The actual mechanics of a double top, the way the top moves when a string is activated, is also different than solid wood. It moves/pumps more as a cohesive unit than a solid top, thus influencing the overall sound to be more even and full, and usually a bit louder than solid wood.

My construction method is quite complex — with the use of a router and outline gig to cut the cavity where the Nomex will be glued, and using a vacuum clamp system to glue the Nomex to the inside. There are strategic places in the main core of the top that are still solid wood  which helps the overall structural integrity of the top. I use different configurations in the wood core depending on the size and shape of the guitar.

So far I have used it for classical guitars, ‘OO’, ‘OOO’ and my concert model steel strings. I’m not sure yet if it’s appropriate to use it on large bodies such as a jumbo or Dred size guitar. I’m going to have to make one and see how it turns out. If it works well, then I think it would make a great finger style jumbo guitar.

I’ve recently seen one your guitars with stunning Myrtle wood back and sides. What tonal characteristic does this wood have?

Flamed Tasmanian Myrtle wood is visually a very striking wood. It’s overall weight and sound characteristics lie somewhere between Indian rosewood and Mahogany. It’s fairly easy to work with, and I look forward to using it on future guitars.

In addition to Myrtle wood, what are some of the alternatives you have to offer clients, beyond Brazilian, Indian, and Mahogany?

In the rosewood family, Honduran Rosewood is my second choice to Brazilian. Panamanian Rosewood is also acoustically very similar to Brazilian, but it is rare to find, and often light in color — which is not that appealing to people who are used to seeing dark rosewoods. If it was readily available,  I wouldn’t hesitate to use it. It makes great sounding guitars.

Spanish Cypress is also one of my favorite back and side woods. Most people think of it as only being used in flamenco guitars but it works great for standard classical guitars, and I look forward to using it on a steel string before long.

Is all Brazilian Rosewood equally appropriate for classical guitars, and steel strings? That is, will a great set of wood for a classical guitar automatically mean the wood is great for a steel string? Or do you look for different properties, even within the same species of wood, which make it more appropriate for specific guitars?

In general great wood is great wood for any stringed instrument. That being said, there are some sets of Brazilian that are so heavy I would prefer to use them on a larger body steel string guitar rather than a classical or small body acoustic. Great Brazilian Rosewood is rare, and if thicknessed appropriately, it should make a great guitar of any style.

You’ve developed a unique hybrid bracing system for your steel string guitars. Can you describe the way you brace, and why you’ve come to believe that this is the best way for you to do it?

I referred to my bracing system earlier, but prefer this hybrid ‘X’ lattice design because of the way it distributes tension evenly over the entire top. It seems to activate the top more as a whole unit, as opposed to the various tone bars for specific areas in the traditional design.

I still make traditionally braced steel strings for those wanting that ‘traditional’ sound, but usually I use this hybrid system when I’m free to make the guitar the way I choose.

I don’t see Sitka spruce available as an option on your website? Is this an intentional omission? Do you build with Sitka?

Well, this may rub some people the wrong way but I just don’t like the sound of Sitka spruce. In general it is much too dense for classicals and has a rather generic sound on steel strings.

I much prefer the spruces from Europe, with all their variations. Northern Italian spruce is quite different from the Swiss ‘moon’ spruce. Carpathian spruce has its own voice and is different from German spruce. Adirondack spruce has its own character as well, and is actually quite similar to the Carpathian spruce in my view.

Depending on the sound a client is requesting, I can use these different spruces to help achieve the voice the player hears in their head.

Do you use hide glue? Why or why not?

I do use hot hide glue, as well as fish glue, which is very similar in strength and hardness. I always use it with everything having to do with the top. Sometimes I’ll use it for the entire instrument. I prefer hot hide glue or polyurethane glue for the fingerboard, as it will not ‘creep’ under extreme climate conditions.

I often use clear aliphatic resin glue, like Titebond but clear, for the back and linings.  It goes on very cleanly and cleans up easily too, When you look through the sound hole you don’t see any excess glue, which is difficult to clean off when it’s hide glue.

I’ve never asked you this before — are you a good guitar player? Do you think being a player is essential to becoming a great builder?

I do play some. Not as much as I used to as my hands are a bit ‘used’ from building for so many years. It will be 40 years next year, yikes! As my violinmaking teacher told me “you have workman’s hands”.

I have played many different instruments over the years, mostly strings and keyboard, and I do think it helps to be ‘musical’ in order to make a fine guitar. Historically however, luthiers usually didn’t excel at playing the instruments they made. For instance, a violinmaker may have been a very good horn player and so on.

I am intrigued by your French Baroque guitar. Is it based on a specific historical instrument, or is it your interpretation of that style?

There are two Baroque guitars on my website. One is in the guitar section and another in the slide show. The one in the guitar section is a copy of a French Baroque guitar in the Victoria Albert museum in London built by Jean Voboam. I had the pleasure of handling this guitar and measuring it while I was visiting London.

The other is an Italian Baroque guitar based on a guitar by Mateo Sellas, which I measured and cataloged while visiting the Brussels Conservatory of Music in 1975.

The tunings and double stringing are different between the two as well. In the early music scene, players want historically accurate instruments in order to play the repertoire as closely as possible to the way it would have been played back in its day. I rarely make these instruments anymore, as the decorative work becomes rather tedious and laborious. It was very exciting the first few times I did it, now however I know how much time it’s going to entail so I shy away from it.

What sets Traphagen guitars apart from other custom and high-end hand built guitars?

Each builder has their own unique sound, and works in a way that makes sense to them. It is nearly impossible for me to copy another builder’s guitar and expect it to sound exactly the same — and vice versa. We luthiers are, in a way, stuck with our own voices/sound. Sometimes that is a little frustrating if you’re trying to make big changes in ‘your’ sound.

I’ve done a lot of experimenting with top bracing for instance — sometimes radical changes — and in the end they will have slightly different characters. Overall though, they still sound like one of my guitars.

I once had and apprentice who was making some nice guitars. We decided we would make identical guitars using wood cut from the same boards, using the same tools, in the same shop environment, with the same design/plan etc.

In the end you could tell the two guitars were related, but his sounded like his and mine sounded like mine.

My guitars are known for their volume and beauty of tone. If this is what a player is looking for, then they’ll love my guitars. Also, having nearly 40 years experience doesn’t hurt.

The luthier's workbench.

The luthier's workbench.

What advice would you give to someone who is considering a career in luthiery?

If you don’t get consumed/obsessed by it then it’s not for you. This craft takes complete dedication and it’s hard work as well. You’ll spill a lot of blood, sweat, and tears – literally – in the pursuit of becoming an accomplished luthier.

Also, start off with a standard tried and true pattern and bracing system. I’ve seen many novice builders think they are going to change the guitar world with some clever design, only to find that they didn’t really understand the basic mechanics of how a guitar produces sound in the first place.

Many builders say you won’t really understand what’s going on until you’ve built at least 100 guitars. I think that time frame has been shortened a bit because there is so much more information readily available now, as opposed to when Istarted back in the dark ages. However, hands on experience is still the best teacher – as long as one is paying close attention to what their doing.

Even after all the hours and years I’ve put into guitar making I’m still learning little things I didn’t realize before. It becomes a way of life, not just a job or ‘product’.

Do you have any final thoughts for the readers of our blog?

For me building guitars has been, and still is one, of the most gratifying pursuits I can imagine. Each day I thank everyone who has helped me along the way to becoming a better builder and having such a fantastic ‘job’.

Please don’t call your guitars a ‘product’. I feel it is an insult to the builder, and to the amazing musical instrument that is the guitar.

I also want to thank you Steven, and Paul, for believing in my guitars and for giving me the chance to share a few thoughts about my instruments. Good luck to everyone who is building or wants to build these beautiful musical tools,  and to the players that make us luthiers sound so good.

If there is one thing I have learned for sure while working in the world of custom guitars it is this; everyone loves Bill Tippin. I don’t just mean they love his guitars, (how could you not) — I mean that they love the man himself too.

Pink Ivory Staccato

Pink Ivory Staccato

Always quick with a funny anecdote, Bill has a knack for setting you at ease, and reminding you how great it can be to talk to good friends, share some laughs, and shoot the breeze about fine guitars.

Personally, Bill has been extremely generous with his time, educating me about the finer points of guitar construction and design. I bother him regularly for information, and he is always patient, and always willing to go above and beyond in explaining the alchemy that turns mere wood into breathtaking works of mellifluous art.

I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Mr. Tippin, and I found his answers to be both insightful and delightful. With that said, I present you now with a portion of our conversation. I’m sure you’ll agree, Bill Tippin really knows his stuff!

Bill Tippin

Bill Tippin

First, some basics. How many years have you been building? And how many guitars have you completed?

I started fixing guitars as a hobby, as early as 1972, and started building my first guitar in 1979. My son still has it.

At what age did you catch the bug, and decide that building instruments was to be your chosen path?

In 1980, after the completion of my first guitar — that was when the bug hit me. I made mistakes, but it sounded pretty good, and it was an exciting challenge. Soon after, my best friend asked me to build a D-45 style guitar, and like an idiot I said ok!

Not knowing much, it was a real quest.

I continued building 4 to 5 guitars a year, until 1992. I had a backlog of orders and I built a guitar for Aaron Tippin. Around that time I went looking for a dealer.

In those early years, what resources did you draw from to inform your craft? Did you learn to build as an apprentice, or were you solely self-taught?

My first guitar, was Inspired by a shop owner that told me, you can do it with your woodworking skills. Later, I had some great input from my friend Dick Boak.

From there I am self-taught.

Pink Ivory Staccato

Pink Ivory Staccato

If Bill Tippin the Master could go back and speak to Bill Tippin the student, what advise would you give yourself?

I could fill this page with the things I should have done or not have done, but all of this led me to a good place. I am pleased to be where I am today.

I know that you play the guitar. What type of music do you play most?

I play a little finger style in open tunings. I also play finger style blues, slide guitar, mandolin, with vocal accompaniment. I can also play  banjo but I wont brag about it. A lot of my musical diversity came from repairing instruments, as a necessity.

Which model Tippin guitar best fits your playing style?

I guess it depends on what style of playing I am doing. They all have their avenues of expertise, but they also all have things in common. For example, if you played finger style blues on a Staccato, It would sound great but it would have a different voice than the Crescendo.

Crescendos give you a bigger sound and more bass — and the Bravado would give you even more headroom and bass. They all have good balance and can be played the same way.

I have made three Crescendos, one Bravado, and one Staccato for myself, but I sold them all. So for now I dont have a guitar. I guess one of each would be my preference!

Of the many innovations you’ve added to the lexicon of luthiery, which do you feel is the most significant, and why?

I think the process of developing my top bracing. There is less wood per brace, but slightly more of them in various shapes. This allows the guitar to be strong enough to survive time, but also brings out the strongest tonal potential.

I am also pleased with the way I have treated the cutaway. I bevel the neck block and use an asymmetrical neck heel to help reach the upper frets with less obstruction. This is all accomplished without cutting away more of the body. (See photo.)

Tippin Crescendo Cutaway -- Heel

Tippin Crescendo Cutaway -- Heel

What is your favorite non-traditional tone wood?

Traditional for me is Sitka, Adirondack Red Spruce, Brazilian Rosewood, Indian Rosewood & Mahogany, etc. And I am still very fond of all of them.

For tone, and different aesthetics, I really like the Moon harvested Spruce from Switzerland, and Alaskan Yellow Cedar for the top, and for the back and sides I like Amazon Rosewood, and African Blackwood. There are many others that I like too, but these are my favorites.

Could you make a good sounding guitar from wood purchased at Home Depot?

I dont know. I have never tried! I hear that they sell Acrylic sheets there, and 2-X- whats. Who knows???

Now, I want to question the guys that ask me this one! HA!

What unusual goodies do you have stashed in your wood locker — I know you have some amazing Pink Ivory sets?

Lots of very good stuff. Clients can call me and we can talk about what the might want. Ive been a wood junky since birth.

Please describe the most experimental instrument you’ve attempted, or are planning to attempt.

I am going to build a guitar specific to my own playing needs, and perhaps help beginning guitar players too. My new model will only have 5 frets 1 5!  (Just kidding!)

But on a serious note, I have had someone ask me to build a harp style guitar. I have an Idea for a slightly different approach — so there is an interest.

For the most part, I am a builder who likes to stay focused on improving what I have created. There are unlimited avenues to explore when building an instrument. I like to create elegance with a theme rather than seeing how much inlay I can put on a guitar.

If the design requires a lot of bling then it still needs to work together with the rest of the instrument.

My sole preference is simple elegance. The use of different woods in a  design can be as effective as any thing else.

My pet peeve is to see a guitar full of bling, that doesnt sound very good — and there are many.

My primary focus is in the tone of the instrument. Right now I have a new model in the works. It will have a significantly different voice, and multiple strings… soon to come.

Have you ever built an electric, or an archtop guitar?

Yes, I have made a Tele thin-line style, a carved top electric similar to a Les Paul, and also a solid body 4 string bass. No archtop acoustic though.

How do you envision the state of the custom guitar world 5 years from now?

Well, I hope to still be here in 5 years. The economy will greatly affect how many of us can continue to build by hand. There is much more interests from the foreign market than there use to be, which is good. But even their economic structure is flailing, and the Lacy act is making it harder for us to interact.

There are also many good up and coming builders, filling the market with great product — that enters the picture as well. They deserve to be there too — so the question is how many guitars can be made per customer that can afford them???

When you examine other builder’s guitars, what do you look for first? Which details interest you the most?

The details are the builders interpretation of ones personality, i.e., what he or she wants to portray. In all fairness, that cannot be judged. What I do look at is how clean the work is, how good the tone is, and of course the playability.

Which pickup do you most frequently recommend for your guitars? And do you have a preference for amplification?

There are many to choose from that are very good. I like the Highlander, the D-Tar, the K&K pure western, and the McIntyre Feather. It really depends on the guitar. I also like a good Mic and a good PA system.

Pink Staccato

Pink Staccato

What is the name of your favorite piece of music?

Thats a tough one. I think I have to say its a piece that my Mother use to play on the Piano. That still moves me to this day every time I here it. The title is Clare de Lune by Claude Debussy…and then there was Frank Zappa! I like all kinds of stuff man, you dig?

And finally, the question all of America has been waiting for… are you the tallest luthier in the biz?

I am sorry but I cannot honestly answer that with out accurate data. Sorry. Im

66 ¼” bare foot, you tell me.

Do you have any final thoughts youd like to share with the readers of our blog?

I would like to say that it is a pleasure to be apart of such an elite group of creative people. Luthiers want to share their talents and teach their skills. Guitar building is a sophisticated art that has progressed to a level that has never been reached before yet it still has the old world comfort that gives people a sense of pleasure that soothes the soul.

Amongst the pleasures of working at Dream Guitars, is the frequent opportunity it affords to speak with the most talented luthiers on the planet. To a guitar freak like me, these folks are real heros and celebrities, bigger than movie stars. I’m obsessed with them — though I do draw the line at having a fanboy pin-up poster of Bill Tippin on my garage wall. (Sorry Bill).

Sorry Bill.

Sorry Bill.

kevinchubbuck

Kevin Chubbuck holding his outstanding hollowbody electric guitar.

So when I get the chance to have an extended conversation about tone wood or bracing patterns with one of my heroes, I’m in six-string heaven.

Over the past few months I’ve had several opportunities to speak with a great new builder that you may not yet be familiar with. His name is Kevin Chubbuck, the one man dynamo behind Chubbuck Guitars. Write that down, because it’s a name you’ll want to remember.

Kevin brings a unique perspective and discerning sensibilities to the craft of guitar building. After several years of honing his advanced skills at the Santa Cruz Guitar Company, he moved East to the beautiful city of Marblehead Massachusetts, where he works side by side with the aforementioned,  and always affable Mr. Tippin.

Thus far, Dream Guitars has had the honor of hosting two of Kevin’s instruments – each a real beauty. His basic acoustic model is called the Rogue, a small bodied guitar with refined, graceful lines and a nuanced voice.

Kevin Chubbuck's amazing Rogue Guitar.

Kevin Chubbuck's amazing Rogue Guitar.

The Chubbuck Rogue Headstock.

The Chubbuck Rogue Headstock.

The Rogue is an extremely fine fingerstyle guitar, but it also has the headroom of a larger instrument – making it an excellent choice for rhythm playing, and flatpicking single lines too. This guitar is no one trick pony.

Kevin Chubbuck is a guitar star on the rise, and I hope you get a chance to test drive one of his finely tuned acoustic guitars. Once word gets out, these guitars will be in high demand.

This a new arrival with a lot of history-read more about it here at http://dreamguitars.com/preowned/martin/martin_00-21_75143/martin_00-21_75143.php