Hand Made, Hand Played: The Art & Craft of Contemporary Guitars

418 Pages·2008·176.47 MB·English

by  Robert Shaw

Hand Made, Hand Played
The Art Craft of Contemporary Guitars
&
Robert Shaw
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~ lARK B<DK5
A Division of Sterling Publishing Co., Inc.
New York / London
Editor: Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Cassie Moore
Shaw, Robert, 1951-
Hand made, hand played: the art & craft of contemporary guitars / Robert
Art Director: Shaw.
p. cm.
Travis Medford
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-57990-787-7 (hc-plc with jacket: alk. paper)
Production Editor: 1. Guitar makers. 2. Guitar--Pictorial works. I. Title.
Linda Kopp MLl015.G9S5122008
787.87'192--dc22
2008007972
Assistant Editors:
Amanda Carestio 109876543 2
Susan Kieffer
Published by Lark Books, A Division of
Sterling Publishing Co., Inc.
387 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10016
Front cover
Text © 2008, Robert Shaw
Frans Elferink
Photography © 2007, Artist/Photographer as specified
Moderne, 2006
Photo by Martin Philippo Fender®, Stratocaster®, Strat®, Telecaster®, Tele®, Relic®, Precision Bass®, Jazz Bass®, and the
distinctive headstock and body designs of those guitars are trademarks of Fender Musical Instruments Corp.
Spine, title, half title, All rights reserved. Used with permission.
and page 3
Gretsch®, Falcon TM, and the distinctive headstock and body design of the Billy-Bo Jupiter Thunderbird are
Johann Gustavsson
trademarks of Fred W. Gretsch Enterprises, Ltd., and are used herein with express written permission.
JG Bluesmaster '59 All rights reserved.
Custom, 2006
The Double Neck Harp Guitar design is a trademark of William Eaton. Used with permission.
Photo by Matte Henderson
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Photo by Mark Thomson
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Jean Larrivee,
Jean Larrivee Guitars The written instructions, photographs, designs, patterns, and projects in this volume are intended for the personal
use of the reader and may be reproduced for that purpose only. Any other use, especially commercial use, is
LV-tO KOA, 2000
forbidden under law without written permission of the copyright holder.
Photo by F. Miyazaki, Blue G
Acoustic Guitars, Tokyo
Every effort has been made to ensure that all the information in this book is accurate. However, due to differing
conditions, tools, and individual skills, the publisher cannot be responsible for any injuries, losses, and other
Page 2 damages that may result from the use of the information in this book.
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Photo by Ray Baldino
Back flap
David Myka
Myka Sungazer, 2005
Photo by Robert Taylor
Contents
Introduction .. . .. . .. . ... . ....... .. ... 6
Acoustic Guitars .. ........ ..
18
Historic .. . .. . .. . .. . ..... . ..... ... .2 0
Classical & Flamenco . .. .... .. ..... . .2 8
Flattop ......... .. .. . .......... . .. .5 6
Harp . . ...... . .. . .. . ..... . ..... . .. 168
Acoustic Bass ..... .. .. .. .......... 178
Archtop & Other Jazz . ..... . ..... ... 190
Hawaiian & Resonator .... ..... . . . .. 258
Electric Guitars ........... .
276
Hollow & Solid Bodied Electrics .. ... .. 278
Electric Bass ............. . ..... . .. 372
About the Author . . .. ... . ... . ..... .4 08
Acknowledgments .. . ..... . ..... .. .4 08
Bibliography and Other Resources .. . .. 409
Photographers Index . ..... . ..... . .. 410
Web Directory and Index of Luthiers . . .4 17
T his book is dedicated to the memory of my mother,
Terry Shaw, who taught me to love music, books,
nature, and all things of beauty.
Robert Shaw
The Art and Craft of
the Contemporary Guitar
C) .. ) e are living in the greatest age of guitar building the top of the charts. Below the level of mass popularity,
-,/-V
in history. A renaissance of guitar making was roots-oriented and socially conscious artists like Baez,
set off by the sea changes in popular culture and music Dylan, Phil Ochs, Odetta, and Pete Seeger intersected
that took place in the 1960s, when seemingly everyone with the Civil Rights Movement and other social causes;
was inspired to learn to playa guitar or knew someone long lost bluesmen of the 1920s and 1930s-including
who did. Thanks to now legendary artists such as Joan Sleepy John Estes, Mississippi John Hurt, Skip James,
Baez, The Beatles, Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, Son House, and Bukka White-were rediscovered and
and Joni Mitchell and manufacturers such as Fender, given brief second careers; and country and Bluegrass
Gibson, Gretsch, and Martin, the guitar became the masters such as Lester Flatt, Don Reno, and Doc Watson
most popular instrument in the world. Inevitably, some flatpicked with blazing speed and precision, all helping to
of the baby boomers who picked up guitars in the '60s bring the guitar to new prominence.
began building their own instruments, and, as musicians
A somewhat parallel scene took place in Britain, where
grew older and more sophisticated, they sought (and
Lonnie Donegan led a '50s craze for "skiffie," a loose
could afford) more and better guitars. This synergy
amalgam of American jug band music, gospel, and
has continued to expand and mature, and today there
blues played on cheap guitars accompanied by simple,
are more highly skilled luthiers at work, making more
homemade instruments. His biggest hit, which reached
outstanding instruments, than ever before.
number one in Britain in 1956 and climbed into the top
The rise of the guitar began with the great American ten in America, was a version of Leadbelly's "Rock Island
folk boom-or as many now call it, "The Great Folk Line." Donegan, and what he called his "mongrel music,"
Scare"-of the late 1950s and early 1960s. During this set off a massive increase in guitar sales in Great Britain.
period, traditional, if variously authentic, folk music by Many of the key musicians of the coming "British
guitar-strumming groups such as the Chad Mitchell Invasion," including Mick Jagger, Pete Townshend,
Trio; The Kingston Trio; The Limeliters; the New Van Morrison, and Ray Davies, got their start playing
Christy Minstrels; and Peter, Paul, and Mary reached or listening to skiffie. Also influenced by the craze,
• Mississippi John Hurt enjoyed a revival during the early '60s. • Country legend Doc Watson played his part in the American folk boom.
Courtesy of the Hulton Archive. Getty Images Courtesy of the Michael Ochs Archives, Getty Images
Photo by the Frank Driggs Collection Photo by Michael Ochs Archives
" T¥e are living in the
greatest age of guitar
building in history. , ,
• The Beatles perform on The Ed Sullivan Show.
Courtesy of the Hulton Archive, Getty Images
Photo by CBS Photo Archive
a Liverpool schoolboy named John Lennon formed In the meantime, a new generation of independent
a skiffle band called The Quarry Men in 1957, later hand builders, led by pioneers such as James D'Aquisto,
drafting a couple of other kids named Paul McCartney Michael Gurian, Jean Larrivee, Jon Lundberg, and
and George Harrison to join him. Richard Schneider, was headed in the opposite direction.
These artists explored the fine points of guitars made
On February 9, 1964, just over two months after John
before the corporations stepped in, and designed
F. Kennedy's assassination, The Beatles played The Ed
new instruments that incorporated their discoveries,
Sullivan Show before 73 million viewers-the largest
experiments, and inventions.
audience in television history-and tens of thousands of
young turks decided on the spot that they had to learn As was the case with many of the handcrafts that found
to play guitar (and maybe have hordes of girls scream at new life amidst the counterculture of the '60s and
them, too). Guitar sales soared to unprecedented levels '70s, lutherie (the hand building or repair of plucked
that year and continued to climb throughout the next
decade, bolstering several guitar manufacturers toward
new growth. In 1965, for example, c.F. Martin & Co.
built a new 64,000 square foot factory, producing more
than 10,000 guitars in its first year and more than 20,000
instruments annually by 1971.
Ironically, if not surprisingly, as major manufacturers
like Fender, Gibson, and Gretsch ramped up production
to meet demand in the 1960s and 1970s, quality went
down. Larry Acunto, co-publisher of 20th Century Guitar
magazine, explains: " ... the small, often family-owned
companies started selling out to the major corporations.
In 1965, CBS bought Fender, and Fender went downhill
pretty quickly. In 1967, Norlin bought Gibson, and
Baldwin bought Gretsch. All of these big companies were
going into the guitar business, and they didn't have a
clue as to what they were doing. At that point, American
guitar manufacturing went right down the tubes."
• Located on North Street in Nazareth, Pennsylvania, the historic Martin Factory
served as the company's main guitar-making facility from 1859 to 1964.
INTRODUCTION
" We were a bunch
of eccentric) odd-ball
misfits) operating
be tween the cracks. , ,
ball misfits, operating between the cracks," says Ervin
Somogyi. "It was terra incognito." Nashville guitar
guru, dealer, and author George Gruhn adds, "When
I first opened my shop in 1970, I used to joke that if
I lost a finger on my left hand for each independent
• Legendary classicalluthier Manuel Velazquez works on a piece in his shop. luthier producing fine quality handmade guitars, I would
still have at least as many usable digits left as Django
Reinhardt." (The count would be three; Reinhardt's left
and bowed stringed instruments) was so far below the
hand was badly burned when he was 18, rendering his
radar as to be nonexistent. In America, guitars were
ring and pinkie fingers unusable for playing.)
produced in factories; the only hand builders worthy of
apprenticeship made traditional classical guitars, not the
The arcane, highly specialized archtop tradition hung
acoustic and electric steel-strings popularized by the folk
on by a thread due to the efforts of James D'A quisto,
boom and the British Invasion. So many young builders
who had apprenticed with the great New York-based
turned first to the Old World traditions.
archtop builder John D'Angelico in the 1950s and early
1960s. D'A quisto almost single-handedly kept the art of
Irving Sloane's Classic Guitar Construction, published in
archtop building alive after his master's death in 1964.
1964, was for years the only printed resource available to
In 1970, he was by far the most prominent missing digit
budding builders. Many of those who did not have access
on George Gruhn's metaphoric hand. Happily, a few
to a living craftsman built their first guitars following
Sloane's instructions. A lucky few found mentors who
could teach them. Pioneering acoustic steel-string guitar
builder Michael Gurian, for example, studied with
legendary classicalluthiers Eugene Clark, David Rubio,
and Manuel Velazquez, all of whom were working in
New York City in the mid-1960s. He started his career
building classical guitars, lutes, and Armenian ouds. In
Canada, Jean Larrivee followed a course parallel to that
of Gurian; after graduating from playing Duane Eddy
riffs to classical guitar at age 20, he studied with classical
luthier Edgar Monch, who was then working
in Toronto.
But America is the country where the steel-stringed
guitar was born, and, within a few years, cultural and
economic forces led most members of the first generation
of independent builders to concentrate on steel-stringed
instruments. For the most part, they had to make it up
as they went along. There was no tradition of steel-string
hand building to learn from and no established lutherie
• Archtop builder John D'Angelico poses with musician Johnny Smith
profession to join. "We were a bunch of eccentric, odd-
and then apprentice Jimmy D'Aquisto.
ambitious young builders like Bob Benedetto, Roger Another pioneer of high quality acoustic building was
Borys, John Monteleone, and Phil Petillo chose to follow Stuart Mossman, an accomplished flatpicker who began
the demanding path of archtop building as the decade producing dreadnought-shaped instruments in Winfield,
wore on, giving D'Aquisto the chance to act as a bridge Kansas, in 1970. His company's early literature makes
to the great tradition in which he had apprenticed and his viewpoint clear: "We at Mossman are disgusted with
worked for so long. what has happened to the quality of goods produced in
this country. Quality has been sacrificed for quantity.
But most of the new hand builders chose to look further
Mass production has gotten out of hand. Craft has
into the past for models and found them in guitars made
almost been completely eliminated from our society.
years earlier by Fender, Gibson, Martin, Gretsch, and
This vile abomination (of plywood) is currently being
other manufacturers. Many, like Jon Lundberg and Mario
perpetuated on the unsuspecting guitar-playing public
Martello in Berkeley, Bozo Podunavac in Chicago, and
on a grand scale. We at Mossman considered plywood
Matt Umanov in New York, cut their teeth as repairmen
briefly one day and unanimously decided that plywood
and learned lutherie from the inside out by taking old
makes the best cement forms available. We do not
guitars apart and putting them back together, discovering
now nor will we ever stoop to the level of plywood
literally what made them tick and what made one
construction, and we apologize for our contemporaries
instrument sound better than another. Lundberg ran the
who have lowered the station of our craft by using
Berkeley guitar shop in the early '60s, which apparently
laminated backs and sides." Mossman's operation grew
everyone passed through. He built a reputation for
steadily and was producing 1,000 guitars a year by 1975,
retopping old Martin archtops with X-braced flattop
when a fire destroyed the company's entire supply of
soundboards, a trick that Marc Silber brought back to
rosewood. The company recovered quickly, but Mossman
New York in the early 1960s and practiced at his seminal
survived only as a small manufacturer, never regaining
Fretted Instruments shop in Greenwich Village.
the prominence of his early years.
Michael Gurian began building steel-strings in the late
1960s and moved to New Hampshire in 1971. There he
founded Gurian Guitars, Ltd., building a few thousand
instruments before a string of bad luck and a major
fire forced him to close shop a decade later. Gurian
continues to playa pivotal role in the world of acoustic
guitars, supplying custom parts to Martin, Taylor, and
other manufacturers around the world. An astonishing
number of today's most respected luthiers apprenticed
with Gurian, including renowned classical builder
Thomas Humphrey, Froggy Bottom Guitars founder
Michael Millard, the eclectic and innovative builder Joe
Veillette, and William Cumpiano and Jonathan N atelson.
Cumpiano and Natelson went on to write Guitarmaking:
Tradition and Technology, the standard textbook on
lutherie since its publication in 1985.
Again paralleling Gurian, Jean Larrivee started his
own company in 1971, building distinctive high quality
acoustic steel-strings. From 1971 to 1977, Jean Larrivee
Guitars grew steadily, moving four times to ever-larger
spaces and employing a steady stream of apprentices,
most notably Sergei de Jonge, William "Grit" Laskin,
and Linda Manzer, all of whom are now part of any
short list of the world's premier luthiers. Larrivee's • Some of the world's premier • Using only high-end woods, Stuart
luthiers got their start under Mossman was dedicated to the
company has continued to grow over the years and is
Jean Larrivee, creator of this philosophy of quality over quantity.
now manufacturing several dozen guitars a day in two
LV-l0 KOA, 2000.
Golden Era Deluxe #4662, 1977 (page 148)
factories, one in Vancouver and the other in southern (page 97) Stuart Mossman
National Music Museum
California, where he lives.
The University of South Dakota
Photo by Bill Will roth. Sr.
INTRODUCTION
• Jefferson Airplane performs at the Naumberg Bandshell in Central Park, • Alembic Guitars' # 1 For Jack Casady, 1972, helped
New York City, August 15, 1972. launch a new genre in high-end instrument building.
Courtesy of the Hulton Archive, Getty Images
On the West Coast, a young luthier named Steve Klein and neck, which ultimately left him with a fishbone
began shaking things up in the early 1970s with his shaped skeleton that still boggles the minds of luthiers
radical acoustic guitars. Rather than modeling his and musicians alike. Thirty-five years later, Mike Stevens,
work after existing examples, Klein was one of the who ran Fender's first custom shop, still calls the original
first builders to rethink the instrument and produce Gittler one of his favorite guitar designs of all time.
completely original designs. Working from novel bracing
Also working on the plugged-in side of things were
concepts developed for the classical guitar by the physical
electronics wizard and design engineer Ron Wickersham
chemist Dr. Michael Kasha, Klein built
and his artist wife, Susan. In 1969 in Santa Rosa,
steel-string guitars that were different both
California, the pair co-founded a company called
inside and out; his model featured a huge,
Alembic and began customizing guitars and sound
voluptuous body shaped like an oval sitting
systems for the likes of Jefferson Airplane; the Grateful
atop and intersecting a much larger circle.
Dead; and Crosby, Stills, and Nash. Designing
As would many builders after him, Klein
specialized electronics and pickups for existing
hung around clubs and concert venues,
instruments ultimately led to designing and building
befriending roadies and managers for
guitars from the ground up. The first Alembic bass, made
the chance to show his work to stars like
for Jefferson Airplane bassist Jack Casady, was completed
Stephen Stills and Doc Watson, who gave
in 1972 and cost more than $4,000, an absolutely
him valuable feedback, and Joni Mitchell,
staggering price at the time. The following year, the
who eventually commissioned her own
Wickershams negotiated an agreement with a distributor
Klein guitar.
and began manufacturing a standardized high-end
Even more radical than Klein was the instrument. Susan Wickersham recalls, "Many people
avant-garde jazz guitarist Allan Gittler, thought that no one would be interested in an instrument
who in the mid-1970s designed one of so dedicated to excellence that the price was unheard
only two musical instruments ever to reach of for production instruments. I guess they were wrong,
the collection of the Museum of Modern weren't they? It was the advent of an entirely new genre
Art in New York. Gittler took an extreme, in instrument building."
minimalist approach, seeking to remove
That genre, sometimes called the "boutique guitar," has
everything from the guitar that was not
grown exponentially over the past 30 years. There are
essential to its function. Among the parts
now hundreds of independent luthiers and small shops
he deemed nonessential were the body
• The Gittler Guitar, by Allan Gittler, is one of two instruments found
in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York,