Author Archives: luthsearch

Anne Ludwig

While studying for a music degree, Anne Ludwig took up the classical guitar and has been hooked ever since. She is a professional guitarist, an enthusiastic member of the Guild of South African Luthiers, and the founder of Guitar Talk magazine.

▪ bio current as of 2003

Adrian Lucas

A.J. Lucas

Adrian Lucas has been making guitars for about nine years. He first learned lutherie at an evening class run by Roy Courtnall and went on to illustrate Roy’s books Making Master Guitars and The Art of Violin Making. He currently builds classic guitars of his own nontraditional design and teaches electric guitar making at Newark and Sherwood College.

▪ bio current as of 2000

Wade Lowe

Wade Lowe was one of the early members of the Guild and has been involved on and off over the decades. He got serious about building musical instruments in 1963. In 1969 he was the primary repair person for the renowned Sutherland’s House of Guitars. Then in 1974 he opened Diapason Guitar Shop which was a wonderful shop that was influential to many Atlanta-area guitar builders. Today he continues to build beautiful instruments, is a purveyor, creator, and supporter of fine art, and resides in the center of the universe, which happens to be located in Decatur, Georgia.

▪ bio current as of 2014

Jason Lollar

Lollar Pickups

Long-time GAL member Jason Lollar literally wrote the book on making electric guitar pickups. His business outgrew his island homestead, so he moved it to the big city — Tacoma. He is slated to present at the upcoming GAL Convention.

▪ bio current as of 2017

Jeff Liverman

Jeff Liverman, Executive Director for the Danville Science Center, has worked in the science museum environment for over twenty years. Having a masters degree in Physics and a background in music, Jeff is interested in the intersection between music and science. Before moving to Danville VA, in 2003, he spent ten years repairing and building steel string instruments. Jeff also spent much of his semiprofessional life writing, playing, and recording music with the band Dirtball.

▪ bio current as of 2008

Sam Littlepage

In the middle of teaching Astronomy and Physics at a local university, four-year member Sam Littlepage builds classical and steel string guitars. (He has been caught building a few banjos, a dulcimer, and even a 12-string tenor). He is experimenting with new ways of doing guitar necks, bridges, soundboards, and so on.

▪ bio current as of 1998

William Leirer

New GAL member William Leirer is a hobby builder who teaches five-to-eight-year-olds to read, write, and do math in his day job. He says building guitars is not good for his guitar playing technique. The more he builds the less he practices. And the more he reads and writes about guitars and participates in guitar forums the less time he has to spend on either.

▪ bio current as of 2008

Chuck Lee

Six-year Guild member Chuck Lee and his wife Tammy have seven children, four still at home. Once a self-employed master plumber, Chuck now builds about eighty-five banjos a year. He also enjoys gardening, reading, and dreaming up his next business.

▪ bio current as of 2008

Lennis Laviolette

Lennis Laviolette

Thirty-year GAL member Lennis Laviolette is a retired land surveyor. He has designed and built liturgical furnishings for several Catholic church renovations, and makes classical, nylon-string jazz, and baritone guitars. He is working on guitar #92 and reports that everyone who has bought one of his instruments has become a friend.

▪ bio current as of 2014

Grit Laskin

William Laskin

A builder of steel string, classical, and flamenco guitars since 1971, William “Grit” Laskin is the first musical instrument maker to receive (in 1997) Canada’s prestigious Saidye Bronfman Award For Excellence In Craft. He apparently couldn’t decide whether to be a guitar maker or an artist. Thankfully, the two directions were not mutually exclusive.

▪ bio current as of 2015

Kent LaRue

Kent LaRue has a BA and MFA in music and an MA in public school administration. Before retiring, he was Director of Curriculum for Denville Township and president of the Morris Area Curriculum Network. He is now a “balladeer” performing authentic 18th-century music for visitors to Colonial Williamsburg.

▪ bio current as of 2009

Andrew LaBonte

Andrew LaBonte studied music at the University of Vermont and SUNY Albany and became interested in early instruments. He moved to the Boston area in 1990 and worked at Hubbard Harpsichords for several years before starting his own workshop. He continued building while also doing restoration on and making reproductions of antique gilt and veneered picture frames with historical finishes. For the past ten years he has been building and repairing stringed instruments, and teaching private music lessons.

▪ bio current as of 2014

Kevin La Due

La Due Guitars

Kevin La Due’s day job is teaching high school kids to make guitars and other things. When not at Vestal High, he can be found creating his next guitar, building furniture, teaching guitar, and playing at church. He still finds time to design more guitars, jigs, and fixtures and recently has begun writing music. Oh yeah; he also plows the driveway in winter and mows the lawn in summer.

▪ bio current as of 2005

Nick Kukich

Franklin Guitars

Nick Kukich has been an intermittent GAL member over the last thirty-five years. He built his first guitar while on a summer break from college in 1971 under the tutelage of Bob Marsh, a recent graduate of what would soon be the Roberto-Venn School. Convinced that no one would pronounce Kukich correctly, he founded Franklin Guitar Company in 1974, naming it for his address: Franklin Road, in Franklin, Michigan. Nick feels fortunate to have spent the last forty-four years in the lutherie shop and says he will make guitars till the very end, meaning he expects to be found dead at the bench.

▪ bio current as of 2015

John Kruse

John Kruse is a forty-two year GAL member. Years before joining the Guild, he bought a $10 brown bag of violin parts and assembled a violin that he still has. His day job was in biomedical engineering and lasers before retiring. He has made three guitars and recently attended Trevor Gore’s class at Robbie O’Brien’s shop in Colorado. He’s looking forward to building more guitars using the new bracing system.

▪ bio current as of 2023

Max Krimmel

Max Krimmel

Luthier and all around craftsman Max Krimmel is a thirty-two-year Guild member, past Board member, and past author. He currently divides his time between artistic turning work in alabaster, building dulcimers for Bonnie Carol and playing/building marimbas.

▪ bio current as of 2008

Francis Kosheleff

Francis Kosheleff joined GAL in 1979 and has maintained his membership continuously ever since. He joined the human race (some doubt it) when he was born in France in 1929 to French and Russian parents. A compulsive inventor and part-time luthier, he builds mostly instruments that no other luthier would build: balalaikas, domras, packaxes, and others with folding, adjustable, or detachable necks.

▪ bio current as of 2001

Joe Konkoly

Konkoly Guitars

Joe Konkoly is head repair tech and manager of the repair department at Elderly Instruments in Lansing, Michigan. In eighteen years at Elderly he has had the opportunity to repair and restore hundreds of the world’s finest new and vintage guitars, banjos, and mandolins. He also builds Konkoly Guitars — traditional steel string flattops — in his home shop, and does his best to keep the konkolyguitars.com website up to date. Joe lectured at last summer’s GAL Convention and has been a member for a total of twenty-eight years.

▪ bio current as of 2012

Saul Koll

Koll Guitar Co.

Eleven-year Guild member, GAL lecturer, American Lutherie contributor, and family man Saul Koll does beautiful work on his repairs, modifications, and custom guitars, but he sometimes needs a kick in the pants to get him out of the shop.

▪ bio current as of 2002

Neil Kok

Seven-year GAL member Neil Kok lives in eastern Finland. He has worked for years as a professional cellist and as a pastor. He started building violins and guitars in 1999, greatly aided by the advice of his luthier father-in-law, Johan Tromp, and the vital information so generously shared by the Guild members. He combines his workshop with a business accounting firm.

▪ bio current as of 2010

Thomas Knatt

Thomas Knatt has been a GAL member off and on since the ’70s. He builds guitars and violins as well as Violin Octet instruments as designed by Carleen Hutchins, and teaches guitar making in Massachusetts and France.

▪ bio current as of 2012

R.J. Klimpert

R.J. Klimpert collects, restores, and writes about vintage instruments while he plies his trade as a designer in the toy and game industry. A fairly clever guy with over a dozen patents to his name, he lives in Rhode Island with his three kids, thousand ukuleles, and one very patient wife.

▪ bio current as of 2010

Kalia Kliban

Cabinetmaker and occasional repairperson Kalia Kliban is a veteran of the Ervin Somogyi Finishing School for Aspiring Luthiers’ Assistants and a charter member of the Northern California Association of Luthiers (NCAL). She currently holds the American record for ongoing construction time for an Appalachian dulcimer.

▪ bio current as of 2008

Steve Klein

Twenty-five-year Guild member Steve Klein might have been running a ski shop today, if not for a meeting with Dr. Michael Kasha arranged by Steve’s famous scientist grandfather, Joel Hildebrand. Maybe you have heard this famous quote from Dr. Hildebrand: “Very few people do anything creative after the age of thirty-five. The reason is that very few people do anything creative before the age of thirty-five.”

▪ bio current as of 2003

David Kerr

David Kerr Violin Shop

Violin maker/restorer David Kerr opened Kerr Violin Shop in 1976. He was a cofounder of the Portland Baroque Orchestra in 1984, playing with them as well as Philharmonia Baroque in San Francisco until 1999. Instead of following in Jess Wells’ footsteps to an obsession with building fly rods, he discovered glass. Currently he is making fused glass in his spare time.

▪ bio current as of 2011

Dick Kern

For fifteen years geologist/violin maker Dick Kern has worked as a resource conservationist. He has taken a sabbatical to study lutherie under Paul Schuback, but he still collects rocks and does flint knapping in his spare time.

▪ bio current as of 2001

Steve Kennel

Twelve-year GAL member Steve Kennel is a sculptor and printmaker who once worked in a newspaper pressroom and an autobody shop. He’s been a cabinetmaker, a dishwasher, a shelver of books in a library, a furniture maker, a caregiver, a foundry worker, and a welder.

▪ bio current as of 2024

David Kempf

David Kempf is a lifelong woodworker. He picked up a Silvertone at age thirteen, but made his first guitar at age forty-four. He has now been a guitar maker for two years and says his “only desire is to build a world-class guitar, not for profit or gain, but for the purity it provides.”

▪ bio current as of 2000

Armin Kelly

Guitars International

His friends may call him an armchair luthier, but Armin Kelly spends his real time as founder of Guitars International on the telephone, match-making guitars to players, while encouraging guitar makers to produce their very best work for him. He considers his efforts successful when all parties concerned are happy. He moonlights as the artistic director of the Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival which he founded fifteen years ago. He has been a GAL member for fourteen of the last twenty-two years.

▪ bio current as of 2014

Carl Kaufmann

Carl Kaufmann, luthier for more than ten years; backyard boat builder for lot longer a half-century. Makes both classical and steel-string guitars (but not many of either) and an occasional mandolin or Irish bouzouki , which is what he calls a mandolin on steroids. When he worked for pay, it was as a writer and editor. Dividing time now between Block Island off the RI coast, and Mystic CT, where winters are more tolerable.

▪ bio current as of 2008

Tony Karol

Karol Guitars

Tony Karol was a hobby builder through his teens and after university, where he studied electrical engineering. He became a full-time luthier in 2001 after the telecom meltdown. He started teaching lutherie in 2003 and continues to do so at his shop in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada. He currently builds eight to ten instruments per year, including electrics, acoustics, and baritones.

▪ bio current as of 2011

Colin Kaminski

Colin Kaminski

Colin Kaminski dropped out of high school at fifteen to program for Bally Systems. He retired from computer programming at the age of twenty and now spends his retirement repairing violins for Jordan Music. When he is not looking for stars in the sky he is trying to become one on stage.

▪ bio current as of 1997

Dan Kabanuck

Dan Kabanuck was born and lives in the San Francisco Bay area with his wife of twenty-one years and his three boys ages seventeen, fourteen, and four. He took up the guitar at age twenty-nine, and in short order he was playing in a popular metal band. A real estate broker by trade, changing times landed him at LMI in 2007; he soon had several guitar projects in the works, and he’s helped build eleven ukuleles. Though he has no desire to be a full-time luthier, he wants to build instruments others would want to own.

▪ bio current as of 2010

Bob Jones

Bob Jones has been on the New York scene for many years. He does stringed instrument restoration and repair out of his home in Brooklyn. Don’t worry, it’s all legit.

▪ bio current as of 2005

Jack E. Johnston

Jack Johnston

Twenty-year GAL member Jack E. Johnston got into guitar making when he needed a lighter instrument than his 16 lb. banjo. A good guitar was too expensive, so he built one. He has studied with Charles Fox and Alan Carruth, has degrees in mechanical engineering and photography, worked at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory for thirty years, and plays in The Bluegrass Gospel Boys Band.

▪ bio current as of 2014

Thomas Johnson

Thomas Johnson made his first guitar in 1967. He retired from a career in social work in 1997 and now makes lutes, guitars, and experimental instruments as a therapeutic aid to maintaining health. He met Tuvan musicians at a studio near his shop and travelled to Tuva in 2001. His current workshop is a cabin purpose-built in Poland and shipped in sections to his garden in the UK.

▪ bio current as of 2011

Sue Johnson

Sue Johnson made her first guitar out of Grandpa’s cigar box before finding lutherie enlightenment with Adrian Lucas and then Newark College in England about ten years ago. She juggles babies, guitar work, and part-time work in the wood shop of the local girls high school where she subverts the academic curriculum by introducing pupils to the delights of sharp planes. Her degree in geography helps her know that guitars generally come from somewhere other than England. The dahlias in her garden were particularly good this year.

▪ bio current as of 2011

Bryan Johanson

Bryan Johanson is an active concert guitarist, composer, and author who taught at Portland State University from 1978. A Professor of Music and past Director of the School of Music, Johanson retired in January of 2016 to pursue composing, performing and writing. His articles and reviews on the guitar have appeared in the top journals and magazines in the field, including Soundboard, Guitar Review, Acoustic Guitar and American Lutherie. His compositions have been published by Columbia Music Company, Edizioni Musicali Berben, Frederick Harris Music Publishers, Guitar Solo Publications, Thomas House Publications, Earthsongs Music Publishers, Mel Bay Publications, Doberman-Yppan and Les Productions d’OZ. The recipient of many commissions, his music has been performed and recorded by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Chamber Music Northwest, the Oregon Symphony, the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, David Starobin, The Los Angeles Guitar Quartet, David Tanenbaum, the Portland Symphonic Choir, the Turin Philharmonic, the Bologna Orchestra and Third Angle New Music Ensemble. He has won numerous composition prizes, including awards from the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Aspen Music Festival, the Esztergom International Guitar Festival (Hungary), The Festival of August (Venezuela), the Roger Wagner Center for Choral Studies, as well as multiple awards from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP). Johanson’s music is recorded extensively and appears on record labels such as Albany, Bridge, EMI, GSP, Gagliano Recording, Naxos and Cube Squared Records. In 1999, his critically acclaimed composition Open Up Your Ears for guitar was recorded on David Starobin’s Grammy Award nominated New Dance, and in 2004 his Pluck, Strum and Hammer and Let’s Be Frank were recorded by the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet on their Grammy Award winning Guitar Heroes. Johanson is currently a member of the Oregon Guitar Quartet, which has released seven highly successful recordings. He has also recently been elected to the Board of Trustees for the Guitar Foundation of America.composing, and writing, he directs the Portland Guitar Festival. Current extracurricular activities include running marathons, distance cycling, and learning to play the pipa.

▪ bio current as of 2016

Jeff Jewitt

Homestead Finishing Products

In addition to running a full-time finishing supply company, Jeff Jewitt finds time to refinish, write, and teach. He has written extensively for Fine Woodworking magazine for over twelve years and is the author of four books, two videos, and numerous articles in other magazines. He has developed finishing products which are sold all over the world under the “Homestead” name.

▪ bio current as of 2015

Nupi Jenner

Nupi Jenner

Nupi Jenner began luthing in the early ’80s after being a folk musician and an unsuccessful student of medicine. He joined workshops by Lundberg, Romanillos, and others to fill the lack of professional education opportunities in Austria. Since 1990, he has taught lutherie in the only Austrian lutherie school, in Hallstatt. For the last sixteen years, Nupi has given summer workshops at the medieval Rapottenstein Castle, north of Vienna. He has made hundreds of instruments including guitars, violins, viols, lutes, mandolins, hurdy-gurdies, nickelharpas, and other more exotic examples. But the greatest highlights are four wonderful children, all dedicated to music.

▪ bio current as of 2015

F.A. Jaen

Five-year GAL member Fernando A. Jaén quit his engineering job and now makes guitars full time in Spain. That wouldn’t be strange if he built Spanish guitars, but he makes jazz archtops.

▪ bio current as of 2022

Paul Jacobson

Classic guitar maker Paul Jacobson has been a Guild member for nineteen of the last twenty-one years. He used to be workin’ on the railroad. Now he’s strummin’ on the old banjo. Well, not exactly but you see what I mean. And who is Dinah, anyway?

▪ bio current as of 1998

Barry Irvin

When three-year member Barry Irvin’s first son was born with cerebral palsy, he became the primary caretaker, and running a business out of the home became the logical choice. With backgrounds in fine woodworking, science, and music, Barry decided to put it all together and join the ranks of happily destitute luthiers. In addition to designing and building, he rehairs and repairs bows. He also does some editorial work for a national motorcycle-club magazine, and writes on the side.

▪ bio current as of 2005

Phil Ingber

Five-year member Phil Ingber is a New York transplant to Kentucky where he attended lutherie classes in Louisville. After building one dreadnought guitar, he had the bug and decided to build more at home. He’s still very much a beginner, but having a ball learning the craft and making new luthier friends around the world.

▪ bio current as of 2022

H.E. Huttig

Read Hart Huttig II’s memoriam

H.E. Huttig was a faithful Guild member from the very start, a frequent author in our early days, one of our first advertisers, and a good friend to many in the craft. He passed away a few months after the interview in this issue was recorded. he is survived by his wife Rose. Hart passed away in 1992. Read his memoriam.

▪ bio current as of 1992

Carleen Hutchins

New Violin Family Association, Inc.

Although twenty-eight-year GAL member Carleen Hutchins did not take up a string instrument until age forty, she has now been in the forefront of research into the physics of violins for over fifty years. She is a founder of the Catgut Acoustical Society, the first editor of its journal, and a developer of the New Violin Family octet. Carleen passed away in 2009

▪ bio current as of 2006

Jeff Huss

Huss & Dalton Guitar Company

Jeff Huss moved to Virginia from North Dakota to be closer to bluegrass music. He abandoned a practice in law to work for Stelling banjos, then opened a one-man guitar shop. Mark Dalton was born in Virginia but loves bluegrass music anyway. He, too, worked awhile for Stelling. H&D currently have four employees and build about 100 steel string guitars a year.

▪ bio current as of 1999

Peter Hurney

Pohaku Ukulele

When he lived in Hawaii, Peter Hurney made ukuleles when the surf was down. Now he’s in Berkeley, California, where the surf is always down. He still makes ukuleles, and also DJs a prime-time music show on the UC Berkeley radio station KALX and builds really cool automata sculptures in his spare time. Peter is also looking for an interested apprentice to share the knowledge with. His ukuleles and stuff can be seen on his website pohakuukulele.com.

▪ bio current as of 2019

Lisa Hurlong

Lisa de Granada

Lisa Hurlong claims the credit of being the first American female classic guitarist to concertize worldwide. She lives in a little Spanish village on the Portuguese border called Monroy, which was the home town of many of the Conquistadors. She commutes to China where she works with a Chinese Olympic equestrian judge to establish a Spanish cultural center in Beijing.

▪ bio current as of 2008

David Hurd

Ukuleles by Kawika, Inc.

Twenty-three-year member David “Kawika” Hurd is a former oceanographer and a full-time ukulele and guitar maker. His website at www.ukuleles.com will be of interest to luthiers who wish to learn about applying of scientific and engineering design principles to lutherie.

▪ bio current as of 2007

Bill Hunter

In 1970, Bill Hunter cofounded Satellite City with his brother Bob. Satellite City makes both Hot Stuff and Hot Stuff UFO (User Friendly Odorless), cyanoacrylates well known in the world of musical instrument making.

▪ bio current as of 2005

Doug Hunt

Three-year GAL member Doug Hunt has been a high school engineering and technology teacher for twenty-three years. He built his first guitar in 2007 following Melvyn Hiscock’s Make Your Own Electric Guitar and has incorporated electric and acoustic guitar design and construction in his manufacturing classes. He has received several teaching awards and credits his success to making guitars in the school setting. During the pandemic, Doug rebuilt a dilapidated 12´×18´ garage on his property to use as a guitar workshop and looks forward to happily creating lots of sawdust there.

▪ bio current as of 2021

Jason Hull

Twenty-nine-year Guild member Jason Hull has been building and repairing mandolins and guitars for more than thirty years. Mostly self-taught (with help from the GAL), Jason’s early training was at Guitar Services of Austin and Heart of Texas Music. He moved to Richmond in 2003, first working as an independent contractor and now exclusively at One Three Guitar.

2021

John Huffman

Music in Wood

Four-year Guild member John Huffman purchased his first classical guitar in 1968 while in the Navy, and learned to read and play music from books and fellow sailors. On shore leave in Valencia, Spain, he visited the Tatay guitar factory which sparked his desire to build guitars. Luckily, his college political science class was so boring, it enabled him to design the form he would use to build his first lute from local lumberyard woods. After college, John began building lutes and guitars, often with experimental features. In addition to building classical guitars, John continues to research and learn about historical lutes and build lutes to closely match instruments in museums.

▪ bio current as of 2024

Sergio Huerta Chavez

Sergio Huerta ChŒvez began formal study of guitar, cello, and vocal music at a young age. He then entered the Escuela de Lauderia and studied the construction of viola, cello, and viola da gamba there for five years, graduating in 1992 and opening his own shop in 1993.

▪ bio current as of 2001

Karl Hoyt

Nine-year GAL member Karl Hoyt built his first acoustic guitar in 1978. Lutherie was an excellent diversion and stress relief from his day job of working with troubled/court-involved teens. He has built scores of string instruments of all kinds, finishing off his career teaching woodworking and guitar making to high-school students on outer Cape Cod. Now in retirement, he is focusing on 0- and 00-sized guitars and ukuleles.

▪ bio current as of 2023

Elon Howe

Elon Howe is a building contractor, a violin and mandolin builder, a sawyer, a frequent Guild convention exhibitor, and a founding member of the Michigan Violinmakers Association.

▪ bio current as of 1994

Brian Howard

Brian Howard Guitars

Brian Howard is a lifelong player who has dabbled in repair for almost as long. After a thirty-year career as a cabinetmaker he decided to begin building guitars instead. Howard Guitars officially opened in 2011 and is in the process of introducing its first original-designed steel string acoustic.

▪ bio current as of 2012

Tip House

Tip House builds guitars, cases, and skis, plays bluegrass, and develops software. He did his first face-plant in 1967, wrote his first computer program in 1968, learned his first fiddle tune in 1969, built his first guitar in 1973, and still hasn’t learned any better.

▪ bio current as of 2015

Paul Hostetter

Paul Hostetter

Nineteen-year Guild member and card-carrying guitar nut Paul Hostetter has been both a musician and a luthier since 1963, playing, studying, restoring, building, and writing about fretted and bowed instruments. He lives and works in the hills near Santa Cruz, California.

▪ bio current as of 2008

Gary Hopkins

G. Hopkins Guitars

Gary Hopkins is an aerospace engineer by profession. He builds steel string guitars and does some repair work from a small shop at his house. He taught himself lutherie by reading books and articles, watching YouTube, talking to other luthiers, and listening to the opinions of semiprofessional guitar player friends.

▪ bio current as of 2012

Bart Hopkin

Experimental Musical Instruments

From 1985 to 1999 Bart Hopkin edited the quarterly journal Experimental Musical Instruments. He has written several books on instrument construction, produced several CDs featuring the work of innovative instrument makers worldwide, taught, and lectured widely. Bart makes no claim to fine craftsmanship; his primary interest has been in exploring diverse acoustic systems.

▪ bio current as of 2006

Jim Hoover

Six-year Guild member Jim Hoover built his first guitar in 2003 and hopes to build many more. To keep food on the table he works full time for a pipe organ company.

▪ bio current as of 2004

Randy Holmes

Silvertone World

Randy Holmes, a Silvertone aficionado for over thirty years, runs silvertoneworld.net, a resource for Silvertone-branded guitars and amplifiers. His goal is to put every Silvertone instrument ever online by 2016, the 100th anniversary of the Silvertone brand. Randy built his first guitar in 1980, and has worked as a music writer, audio technician, rock ‘n’ roll road manager, radio DJ and production manager, and computer builder.

▪ bio current as of 2015

Jerry Hoffmann

Hoffmann Lutherie

Jerry Hoffman began building instruments in 2005 while he was still publishing Blacksmith’s Journal. By 2007 he was building instruments full-time. Before the Journal, he owned a blacksmith’s shop that produced hand forged architectural ironwork. His education is in graphic arts and he worked designing special fonts for photo typesetting machines until 1976 when he opted for self-employment first as a farrier, then blacksmith, then publisher, and finally as a luthier designing and building custom ukuleles.

▪ bio current as of 2015

Rob Hoffman

In his professional life, Rob Hoffman is an archeologist and an antiques features writer, working part time in vintage guitar sales and restoration. He also plays guitar with the Southernaire Blues Band, and is into competitive springboard diving.

▪ bio current as of 2007

Benjamin Hoff

Benjamin Hoff

Benjamin Hoff, author of The Tao of Pooh, is a former recording guitarist, singer, and songwriter who owns (among other instruments) two custom guitars — a “theorbo” ten-string and a six-string classical, both by Jeffrey R. Elliott.

▪ bio current as of 2001

Paul Hill

Eighteen-year GAL member Paul Hill is a luthier and cabinetmaker in Moscow, Idaho, where he moved to escape the bugs. He plays Doggone Sophisticated bluegrass with his band Steptoe, enjoys the small-town life with his wife and daughter, and goes trout fishing whenever he can.

▪ bio current as of 2007

Kenny Hill

Hill Guitar Company, Inc

Guitar maker Kenny Hill first joined the GAL in the ’70s. Now thirty-seven years into his lutherie career, he designs and builds classical guitars, manages Hill Guitar Co. in the USA and New World Guitar Co. in China, writes for several publications, and occasionally teaches guitar making. He keeps up his classical guitar chops and is a pretty fair pipe organist, too.

▪ bio current as of 2009

Keith Hill

Keith Hill offers this insight: “I am an aesthetic scientist. Aesthetic science is the ‘scienta’ in the motto Ars nihil sine scienta est. My work is a reflection of my aesthetic science, in other words, it reflects the attention I pay to how I hear, what I hear, how I see, what I see, how I sense, what I sense, and how and what intuitions arise from such attention. I use harpsichord, fortepiano, violin, and guitar making as well as my music, painting, and decoration to express the principles of aesthetics as I understand them from my experience paying attention. Even the fifty chickens, twenty geese, thirty-six ducks, and eight cats I keep are subjects for my aesthetic study.”

▪ bio current as of 2001

John Higgins

For the last 10 years, John Higgins has run a private shop, focusing primarily on vintage guitar restoration. In the past 35 years, he has also worked in retail and wholesale repair, and served as the service manager for a large Martin, Gibson, and Fender warranty repair facility.

▪ bio current as of 2008

Lee Herron

Herron Guitars

As a kid, twenty-four-year GAL member Lee Herron made a guitar which soon came apart one hot day in the back seat of his dad’s car. In college he made an electric guitar, which he still has. Much later, in 1995, long-time GAL member Peter Yelda became his lutherie mentor. Lee has now made over fifty instruments including guitars, ukes, Weissenborns, and resophonics.

▪ bio current as of 2023

Chris Herrod

Chris Herrod was born in Healdsburg, California, and lives there still. He has been Sales Manager at Luthiers Mercantile Int’l for twenty-one years. Chris and LMI have been with the Good Ol’ Guild for a long, long time. He performs as a singer/songwriter in local venues.

▪ bio current as of 2018

Joe Herrick

Joseph Herrick got his love of woodworking at an early age from his father. Guitar making appeals to his engineering background. He was greatly pleased when his son recently completed building a beautiful first instrument, a ukulele, under his guidance.

▪ bio current as of 2008

Skip Helms

Twelve-year member Skip Helms builds mostly classical guitars and plays mostly steel string guitars. No longer a financial consultant, he now runs a cats-only kennel with his wife, Nancy.

▪ bio current as of 2002

Lizabeth Jane Hella

Lizabeth Jane Hella is a graduate of Lawrence University Conservatory of Music and completed postgraduate work at the American Conservatory of Music. She has appeared as a soloist in her home state of Minnesota, as well as Boston, Chicago and San Francisco. She was the music consultant for the documentary film, “Some Kind of Hope,” and the news documentary, “At The Crossroads.” She is an avid Montana outdoorswoman, an accomplished violinist, and actress and has a background in sound healing.

▪ bio current as of 2019

Melanie Heizer

Melanie Heizer grew up watching her father (GAL member Stephen Heizer) build acoustic instruments. One day she decided that she wanted to play the electric bass. Her parents wouldn’t buy her one, so to be contrary, she decided to build it. With the help of her father, she made a beautiful bass of purpleheart which she played at school. She is working on a second bass with help from Veronica Merryfield. Melanie just graduated from high school and hopes one day to involve her love for music and building in her future career.

▪ bio current as of 2012

Richard Heeres

Heeres Guitars

Richard Heeres started guitar making at David Freeman’s school in 1992. Like many luthiers, he can’t remember what some of the jigs in his shop are for. When he’s not building archtops or classical guitars he can be found sailing, playing with his band, or thinking of that one jig that will make all the others superfluous.

▪ bio current as of 2003

David Haxton

Haxton Stringed Instruments

Eight-year GAL member and California native David Haxton built his first guitar in 1971, but didn’t build his second until 1995. Since then, he has built twenty. When not engaged in luthier-related activities, he enjoys walking in the Seattle sunshine and listening to live music whenever possible.

▪ bio current as of 2002

Ben Haskenhoff

David’s Guitar Loft

Six-year Guild member Ben Haskenhoff is in charge of instrument repair at David’s Guitar Loft in St. Louis, Missouri. Ben builds custom one-off electric guitars at a snail’s pace in his free time. When he finds time to pry himself away from the wild world of guitar repair, he can be found hiking and canoeing on Missouri’s startlingly scenic riverways.

▪ bio current as of 2021

Bruce Harvie

Orcas Island Tonewoods

Bruce Harvie grew up surfing and listening to Dick Dale in Southern California in the 1950s and ’60s, then escaped north to Berkeley, ostensibly to study law. He wound up studying the Jefferson Airplane. He started building mandolins in the ’70s, and after moving to Orcas Island, Washington, in 1979, realized that he lived in the middle of a forest of tonewoods. After hanging out with luthiers who really knew what they were doing, Bruce soon realized that he’d better stick to cutting wood, and has done so for the past twenty-eight years.

▪ bio current as of 2010

Jason Harshbarger

Harshbarger Strings

New author Jason Harshbarger is two decades into being a luthier, and has been a GAL member most of that time. To date, his emphasis has been on steel-string guitars, both flattop and achtop, as well as archtop mandolins. His designs, building processes, materials, and tools emanate from an organic and earthy place with a forward, modernistic, and open bent.

▪ bio current as of 2017

Hiram Harris

Hiram Harris completed his violin-making apprenticeship under Paul Schuback in 1979, and worked for David Kerr from 1980 to 1985. He has been a FedEx courier for twenty-five years. Lately he’s preoccupied with motorcycles, cooking, and metal working, but mostly he wonders where the last thirty years have gone. If you know where that time may be, he’d like to hear from you.

▪ bio current as of 2011

Tom Harper

Thomas Harper Guitars

Tom Harper is a thirteen-year Guild member, building primarily classic guitars. His past is riddled with quixotic pursuits that include bicycle-frame building, ski mountaineering guiding, and climbing instruction. He took a couple years off to build a house, but he’s back at the bench now.

▪ bio current as of 2011

Eron Harding

Backwoods Guitar LLC

Six-year Guild member Eron Harding owns and operates Backwoods Guitar Repair in the backwoods of Missouri, performing instrument repairs and vintage restorations. Having no formal lutherie training, his skills were acquired via various Internet sources, Stew-Mac trade secrets, real-world experience, and support from fellow GAL member Erick Coleman.

▪ bio current as of 2017

Beau Hannam

Five-year GAL member Beau Hannam began his lutherie career in 2002 under the guidance of Girard Gilet in Sydney, Australia, later becoming an teaching instructor and full-time luthier at Gilet Guitars. He continues the Gilet tradition of creative instrument building since moving to his own shop in Colorado in 2013.

▪ bio current as of 2022

Bruce Hammond

Two-year GAL member Bruce Hammond did fieldwork for an oil field service company for twenty-five years, with a stint in Kuwait during the well fire fighting effort, before entering the training field. He admits to a compulsion to research the peculiar, bombastic luthier Joseph Bohmann, which should cement his position as the village crackpot!

▪ bio current as of 2009

Robert Hamm

Eighteen-year Guild member Robert Hamm has a lifetime interest in the classical guitar, having attended a Segovia concert as a teenager in the 1960s. Lutherie mentors include Jeffrey Elliott, Dan Biasca, Cyndy Burton, and Greg Oxreider. His life of building traditional classical guitars began when he attended the (free) public exhibition at the 2006 GAL Convention, where he spoke with Jeff Elliott and others, and left with an armful of wood. That moment taught him the value of Guild membership. Besides, attending GAL Conventions lets him think he is not completely crazy.

▪ bio current as of 2023

Paul Hamer

Paul Hamer has been a professional musician, guitar instructor, music store owner, luthier, musical instrument manufacturer and distributor. Paul, along with his partner Jol Dantzig, formed Hamer Guitars in 1974.

▪ bio current as of 1987

James Ham

James Ham

Six-year Guild member James Ham has recently seen his focus shift from making bass viols and cellos with traditional methods and materials to exploring the use of carbon fiber and balsa wood.

▪ bio current as of 2013

Carl Hallman

Twenty-year GAL member Carl Hallman has been into guitars for as long as he can remember. His parents could only afford to give him a plastic uke, but he got a paper route and bought an electric guitar and amp from the Spiegel catalog. He formed a band called the Sonix with other kids, and was soon doing repairs at the local music store. He has retired from his day job as an electrical engineer and is now making acoustic guitars.

▪ bio current as of 2023

Roger Haggstrom

Roger Häggström originally used a guitar as a songwriting tool. Then he played a good guitar, and was hooked. He was a computer programmer for many years, but then bought 150 old, wrecked, parlor guitars and started restoring them and inventing ways to improve their sound. That’s his day job now, but the music is still with him. He and his pals have made a couple of CDs of his songs under the name of Roger & the Rockets. He is allergic to all furry animals, and was the editor for ten years of Ciklidbladet, a Swedish magazine about cichlids, the coolest of the aquarium fishes.

▪ bio current as of 2022

John Hagen

Seven-year Guild member John Hagen lives in a neighborhood surrounded by dozens of small lakes, near the western shores of one of the biggest lakes of all, Lake Michigan.

▪ bio current as of 2006

David Gusset

David Gusset

David Gusset is an early graduate of the School of Violin Making in Salt Lake City and a member of The American Federation of Violin and Bow Makers. In 1985 he won the gold medal for violin making at the Stradivari Triennial Competition in Cremona, the only American to ever receive this honor.

▪ bio current as of 2010

Paul Gudelsky

The late Paul Gudelsky was guitar maker and collector, as well as a wood merchant. He was a GAL convention exhibitor and lecturer, and a Guild member for ten years. Paul passed away in 1996

▪ bio current as of 1996

Aaron Grumbacher

Aaron Grumbacher received his diploma from Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts in 1987 where he discovered David Russell Young’s book, The Steel String Guitar: Construction & Repair. He dropped out of UC Santa Cruz with aspirations of pursuing an apprenticeship in sustainable agriculture. Returning to his hometown of York, Pennsylvania, he served an eighteen month apprenticeship with local violin maker Mark K. Bluett. An intermittent Guild member since the late ’80s, Aaron has been building parlor guitars since 2007.

▪ bio current as of 2013

Stefano Grondona

Classical guitarist Stefano Grondona’s career includes concertizing worldwide, recording, co-authoring with luthier Luca Waldner La Chitarra Di Luiteria (Masterpieces of Guitar Making), and teaching guitar at the State Conservatory of Vicenza. He’s fortunate to own more guitars than he can possibly play daily, but is always finding ways to share with his audiences the bounty he discovers.

▪ bio current as of 2018

David Grey

David Grey is the senior partner of a law firm in Beverly Hills. He has been involved with woodworking for twenty-five years, and with guitar making for two. He attended the American School of Lutherie, and says that the binding jig he discusses in this issue “is a direct result of the influence of Charles Fox, jig meister par excellence.”

▪ bio current as of 1997

Michael Greenfield

Greenfield Guitars

With a history as a working guitarist, a vintage and antique instrument restorer, and a former consultant to the international hospitality industry, Montréal native and fifteen-year GAL member Michael Greenfield has handcrafted fifteen or so acoustic guitars each year since the early ’90s. While his guitars employ modern elements and a lot of physics, he still handcrafts them in a traditional manner with a goal to not merely to satisfy, but to thrill his clients.

▪ bio current as of 2010

Aaron Green

Aaron Green Guitars

Aaron Green began his lutherie career as an apprentice to Alan Carruth beginning in 1991 when he was a teenager. While his primary focus is building classical and flamenco guitars, he also repairs and has partnered with luthier Karl Franks for high-end restoration. He deals in vintage classical and flamenco guitars, and has started a company called Westland Music Group with three partners involved in handmade solid and laminated archtop jazz guitars and concert promotion.

▪ bio current as of 2012

Ralf Grammel

Nine-year Guild member Ralf Grammel worked on electric guitars for friends in high school back in the stone age, but then life got too involved. He came back to lutherie in 2012, restoring Harmony and Supertone guitars of the 1930s and ’40s. He’s currently making an elevated-neck classical guitar. Seeing the work and innovations of other Guild members pushes him to improve and gives him a sense of pride in our great organization.

2024

Bob Gramann

Bob Gramann

A member since 1999, Bob Gramann built his first guitar from a kit in 1992. The resulting obsession now produces several guitars each year. He quit his computer job in 2000 and loves life, family, whitewater, and music.

▪ bio current as of 2008

Trevor Gore

Trevor Gore Guitars

From an early age, five-year GAL member Trevor Gore was fascinated by guitar music, woodworking, engineering, and innovation. Dissatisfied with “store bought” instruments, he used his disparate experiences as a researcher, boat builder, engineer, and guitarist to produce Contemporary Acoustic Guitar, Design and Build, in conjunction with veteran luthier Gerard Gilet. Trevor builds high-performance classical and steel string guitars.

▪ bio current as of 2014

Brad Goodman

Goodman Guitars

Along with building guitars for fifty years, Brad Goodman has made knives, furniture, cabinets, and millwork. He has also had careers in antique restoration, kitchen cabinet sales, and construction project management. He recently retired from a twenty-year stint as a municipal building inspector. He and his wife live in a bucolic town in New York where they raised their seven children. Brad’s motto: “A lesser man would have cracked by now.”

▪ bio current as of 2024

Maria Gonzalez-Leon

Maria Gonzalez-Leon has never been a GAL member, but she has had the honor of knowing George Smith, who was a member for a total of thirty-four years. It is he who encouraged her to pursue her education, which included many travels. He wanted to hear all about her adventures, especially those in Spain that included flamenco music.

▪ bio current as of 2023

Steve Gonwa

Eight-year GAL member Steve Gonwa is a retired Sheriff’s Department Captain, woodworking enthusiast, and a hobby guitar builder residing in southeastern Wisconsin. He admits to spending too much time reading American Lutherie and too little time actually doing American lutherie. Still working on that first handful of steel string guitars.

▪ bio current as of 2022

Antigoni Goni

Greek classical guitarist Antigoni Goni began to study guitar seriously at age twelve and won the Guitar Foundation of America’s competition in 1995. Today she concertizes worldwide, teaches at the Royal Conservatory in Brussels, records, and directs the Volterra project in Italy each summer (www.volterraguitar.org). She was given her Romanillos guitar to play while studying with John Mills and Julian Bream at the Royal Academy of Music in London when she was eighteen, and it’s been her faithful companion ever since.

▪ bio current as of 2018

David Goen

David Goen has been very fortunate to meet a lot of people who are much more talented than he could ever hope to be. This does not depress him; rather, it inspires. When he was ten he read a book by James Blish that offered the following epitaph for mankind: “We did not have the time to learn everything that we wanted to know.” He has been asking questions ever since.

▪ bio current as of 2016

Mike Gluyas

Mike Gluyas (B.Sc., Ph.D., and Fellow of the Institute of Physics), born in Cornwall in Southwest England, was a lecturer in electronics at the University of Salford in the UK and has a lifetime’s experience in sound recording. He remains very active as a sound recording engineer for a number of orchestras, choirs, musical ensembles and soloists. His Ph.D., for the enthusiasts, was in the measurement of the third order elastic constants of germanium and silicon, using a ‘sing-around’ ultrasonic technique. He lives with his wife Wendy in the village of Morchard Bishop in Devon, England.

▪ bio current as of 2019

Evan Gluck

New York Guitar Repair

Nineteen-year GAL member Evan Gluck says he is not the world’s best guitar repairman, but Google says he is. Like many luthiers, he made models as a kid, then got into a rock band. His shop is in his New York City apartment. Evan was a popular presenter at the last four GAL Conventions in 2011, 2014, 2017, and 2023.

▪ bio current as of 2024

Alex Glasser

Iron Horse Instruments

Seven-year Guild member and repeat convention presenter Alex Glasser repairs guitars. He worked for years with Jeff Traugott and then at Gryphon Stringed Instruments. Now he has his own shop, Iron Horse Instruments, a full-service repair shop specializing in vintage restoration. Once in a while he may even have time to build a uke or a guitar!

▪ bio current as of 2015

David Giulietti

Dave Giulietti is a professional engraver who does work for National Resophonic, Fender, Deering Banjo, Tim Scheerhorn, First Quality, Stewart MacDonald, Resophonic Outfitters, Ome Banjo and many others. He holds a BFA in sculpture from the Atlanta College of Art and has an extensive background in metal working. Dave has been known to chase building contractors with a shovel on occasion.

▪ bio current as of 2001

Mike Giltzow

Giltzow Guitars

Nine-year GAL member Michael Giltzow has been building flattop acoustic guitars for the last nine years. He graduated from Boise State University with a B.S. in Biology in 1971 and was CEO of Boise Vault for twenty-five years. He’s a pilot, PADI Dive Master, and collector and diver of old hard-hat diving gear. Michael builds guitars in his home shop every day — unless he is on the golf course.

▪ bio current as of 2011

Ed Geesman

Geesman Fine Violins

Ed Geesman started violin making in 1972 in Portland, Oregon. In 1975 he got a repair job at Jecklin Violin Haus in Zurich, Switzerland. In 1978 he opened a violin shop in San Diego. Bow maker Robert Schallock came to work in that shop in 1980, and Ed picked up bow making. He moved to Zigzag, Oregon, in the foothills of Mt. Hood, in 1987 to concentrate on making instruments and bows. In 1998 he opened a full-service violin shop in downtown Portland, where he is today.

▪ bio current as of 2011

Topher Gayle

Topher Gayle

Topher Gayle claims to be the world’s slowest luthier, with three instruments built over the last twenty-five years. He just started an acoustic bass guitar from GAL Plan #13 and expects to finish it in the next millenium. But all is forgiven, because he is a twenty-year member!

▪ bio current as of 1998

Brian Garston

After obtaining his PhD in photochemistry from Manchester University in 1978, Brian Garston embarked on a thirty-five year career with Procter and Gamble and worked in the UK, Turkey, and Belgium. Following his retirement in 2012, he has focused on his passion for guitars and guitar making. He is currently a member of the Board of the Centre for Musical Instrument Building (Cmb) in Puurs, Belgium.

▪ bio current as of 2015

Bryan Galloup

Galloup Guitars

Bryan Galloup has racked up thirteen years of GAL membership across the last quarter century. He began his career with Dan Erlewine in the early ’80, and he has since become one of the country’s premier repair and restoration specialists as well as a builder of flattop guitars. He also operates the Galloup School of Guitar Building and Repair.

▪ bio current as of 2015

Claudia Fritz

Claudia Fritz

Claudia Fritz is a CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) researcher in the Lutherie-Acoustics-Music team at the University Pierre and Marie Curie in Paris. Following her post-doctoral work at the University of Cambridge (UK), she has been investigating the correlations between player and listener perceptions and measured acoustical properties. Her recent work with double-blind studies involving new and old violins has gained widespread international attention.

▪ bio current as of 2015

Joshua Alexander French

Joshua Alexander French, Luthier

Eleven-year Guild member Joshua Alexander French made his first guitar 1997 at the age of eighteen, and soon became enamored with the history and construction of classical guitars, especially bolstered by his experience at the Romanillos guitar-making course in Sigüenza in 2001. Though sometimes found at the workbench, he often pursues his other passions either at the local craft breweries, in the mosh pit, or traveling to both the near and far corners of the globe.

▪ bio current as of 2024

Mark French

Twenty-year GAL member Mark French has been making guitars since about 1990. He is a professor at Purdue, where he runs the Guitar Lab. He was trained as an aerospace engineer and worked several different places before fetching up at Purdue in 2004. In addition to making his own instruments, he teaches a guitar design and manufacturing class and writes books. So far, he’s done three books on guitars and one on nonlinear optimization. Surprisingly, the movie rights for all four are still available.

▪ bio current as of 2024

Debbie French

Debbie French is an Assistant Professor of Science Education and Director of Secondary Education at Wake Forest University. She started making guitars as a part of the STEM Guitar project when she was a high school physics, science, and engineering teacher at a school whose mascot was, somewhat paradoxically, the Fighting Quaker. She then did her Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Wyoming. When she isn’t professing, she likes to play tennis and curl (the ice-and-broom kind, not the barbell kind).

▪ bio current as of 2021