Author Archives: luthsearch

Mark Frazier

Mark Frazier is a software engineer specializing in open-source software platforms. By night, he vents his frustrations by building “real” things like Arts and Crafts furniture and acoustic guitars. He also built his solar-powered straw bale house. For the past four years he has been building guitars for the local high-school band’s fundraising efforts, yielding nearly $10,000 to date.

▪ bio current as of 2015

David Franzen

Guitar Lessons with David Franzen

Guitarist David Franzen has performed and taught guitar for more than twenty-five years. After receiving his Master’s degree in performance and teaching from North Carolina School of the Arts, he moved back home to Oregon. David performed at two GAL conventions, in 2002 and 2006. As fellow Portlanders, he and George Smith became good friends, and over the years George made several guitars for him.

▪ bio current as of 2023

Charles Fox

Ergo Fine Guitars

Thirty-three-year GAL member Charles Fox was present at the creation. His lutherie schools, beginning in Vermont in the early 1970s and continuing to California in the ’90s and Oregon today, have set scores of luthiers on the right track to creative and efficient guitar making.

▪ bio current as of 2021

Eric Foulke

Seven-year GAL member and registered architect Eric Foulke has lived at the four corners: born in California, raised in south Florida, and lived in Massachusetts before moving to Seattle with his wife Molly in 1999. He built his first mandolin in 1996 at Tom and Al’s Luthier’s Workshop and recently made the leap into the wild world of ukuleles. He hopes to build full-size instruments some day.

▪ bio current as of 2003

Mike Foulger

Ten-year GAL member Mike Foulger is an amateur instrument builder and musician. He was a full-time cabinet maker and wood carver for fifteen years prior to his current “real” job as a full-time software consultant. He loves to create new and useful tools for instrument making and has a steady repair business.

▪ bio current as of 2008

Eric Fouilhe

Eric Fouilhe

First-time Guild author Eric Fouilhé began in the ’70s as a self-taught maker of hurdy-gurdies, flutes, bag pipes, and Baroque guitars. He now specializes in violin family fittings, and over thirty Stradivarius violins are now fitted with his parts.

▪ bio current as of 1999

George Fortune Jr.

George Thomas Fortune, Jr., has been many things in his long life, but most people know him now as The Fiddle Man, a maker and fixer of violins. He is self-taught, and has completed thirty-five violins and a small clutch of other stringed instruments.

▪ bio current as of 1998

Alastair Fordyce

Twelve-year Guild member Alastair Fordyce is a retired Scottish orthopedic and hand surgeon, and a member of the NCAL luthier’s group. He took to lutherie on the advice of his wife Moira, who “received” the suggestion while musing in Salisbury Cathedral, Wiltshire, England. When she looked up she was standing in front of the tomb of 18th-century English cello builder Benjamin Banks. He has just beaten his age (73) for the first time, with a round of 72 (gross) at San Clemente Golf Course.

▪ bio current as of 2006

Jim Forderer

Read Jim Forderer’s memoriam

No stranger to the GAL, Jim Forderer and his wonderful collection of historical guitars have been a powerful presence at our last several conventions. Jim’s large family of children and his instrument collection keep him occupied, but he’s always on the lookout for the next great guitar or violin find.

▪ bio current as of 2008

Daniel Fobert

Six-year GAL member Dan Fobert is a self-taught luthier who has been building traditional and nontraditional instruments since 1995. He enjoys traveling, camping, cooking, and winery hunting and has been spotted at BBQ cookoffs.

▪ bio current as of 2008

James Flynn

The Balalaika and Domra Association of America

Fifteen-year member Jim Flynn is a past author and an active member of the Balalaika and Domra Association of America. He is an Honorary Life member of the International Wood Collectors Society (IWCS). As an Associate Editor of that Society for many years he has edited and published several well accepted books in the “Useful Woods of the World” series. He is in the process of preparing a paper, long in the making, titled “Exploring the Science of the Sound of Wood.” Jim promises some provocative views on the role of wood in the quality of stringed instrument sound.

▪ bio current as of 2008

Gabriel Fleta

Grandson of Ignacio Fleta and son of Gabriel Fleta Sr., Gabriel Fleta Jr. has inherited the mantle of Fleta Guitars, along with a very long waiting list. He built his first guitar as a teenager, which continued the tradition of directly absorbing the indispensable knowledge from his forebears, whose workbenches are still part of his shop today. When not building guitars, he relaxes by collecting and repairing clocks.

▪ bio current as of 2016

Patrick Flanning

Patrick Fanning’s ArtWorks

Patrick Fanning came to GAL and lutherie in 2009, by way of his hobby of building harpsichords and clavichords and restoring pianos. He prefers guitars now because the woods are more varied and interesting, and the instruments are much easier to store and move around. Patrick is also a watercolorist, writer, and publisher.

▪ bio current as of 2009

Brian Flaherty

Brian Flaherty is a reference librarian at the New England School of Law library. He is not a lawyer — he doesn’t even play one on TV — and so nothing he says carries the weight of “legal advice.”

▪ bio current as of 2009

Gary Clayton Fisher

Solarez

Gary Clayton Fisher attended Pepperdine University in Malibu. He did his Masters work in Public Health at University of Hawaii Manoa and at University of California Berkeley. Gary also did some post graduate work in physical chemistry at UC Northridge, where he got the opportunity to see Andres Segovia, of whom he has always been a huge fan, when Segovia received his honorary Doctoral degree in 1982. He was a High school Biology and Chemistry teacher before starting Wahoo International, Inc in 1985. Primarily a water sports company, they have expanded greatly on the development and utilization of UV-Cure resins since 1987.

▪ bio current as of 2017

Paul Fischer

Paul Fischer

Paul Fischer began his instrument making career fifty years ago. After military service in the Royal Armoured Corps (11th Hussars) he joined David Rubio and was appointed manager of the fast-developing workshops. He remained in that position for six years before establishing his own workshop in 1975.

▪ bio current as of 2008

Michael Finnerty

Eighteen-year GAL member Michael Finnerty entered the army as an apprentice carpenter in 1963, and soon built his first guitar. Since leaving the army in 1972 he has gained a degree in legal studies; studied industrial relations, industrial law, and economics; taught commercial law; and run a business building and repairing guitars.

▪ bio current as of 2005

Dave Fifield

Cambrian Guitars

Amateur luthier Dave Fifield started to make guitars in, and has been a GAL member since, 2008. His impetus was finding a potentially higher-end substrate for his marquetry and inlay efforts, with which he has been engaged with since 1999. Quickly realizing the limited space available on great-sounding musical instruments for such art, he turned his efforts to finding a good mix between traditional and more modern building techniques and uses CNC and laser engraving machines judiciously to create one-of-a-kind instruments for friends and family. He makes his real money as an RF Engineer in the high-tech industry. He has been a meeting/web/email administrator for the Norcal Association of Luthiers (NCAL) for about 2 years.

▪ bio current as of 2017

Alyssa Fernandez

Alyssa Fernandez starting making guitars as a graduate student in the School of Engineering Technology at Purdue, where she helped teach the guitar manufacturing class and manage the Guitar Lab. She earned her MS in Technology in August 2023. Hers was a unusual academic turn, having previously earned undergraduate degrees in Philosophy and English Literature, and an MA in English Literature. She started at Taylor Guitars, as an intern, in the summer of 2023. They and she liked it so much that she just stayed. She is now a Jr. Manufacturing Automation Engineer at Taylor, where she shares a desk with a gecko named Mashed Potato. She lives 15 minutes from the beach.

▪ bio current as of 2024

Patrick Fanning

Patrick Fanning came to the GAL and lutherie in 2009 by way of building harpsichords and clavichords and restoring pianos. He prefers guitars now because the woods are more varied and interesting, and the instruments are much easier to store and move around. Patrick is also a watercolorist, writer, and publisher.

▪ bio current as of 2009

Kent Everett

Everett Guitars

Kent Everett has been building guitars since 1977, first on weekends while he did repair work on the weekdays. In the ’90s he was a one-man operation building fifty steel string guitars a year. In the ’00s he ramped down production and began offering a line of imported guitars. Now, after thirty-eight years in lutherie, his emphasis is shifting to teaching.

▪ bio current as of 2014

Taffy Evans

Taffy Evans — The Lone Luthier — Spent 30 years building and repairing guitars a thousand miles from anywhere, in Central Australia. Now works and lives in the small gold mining town of Charters Towers in North Queensland, for the past 10 years. Taffy builds guitars: Flat tops, Resonators, Hollow Neck Lap Steels, solid body electric guitars as well as Mandolins. Much of the time he is doing repairs for players up and down the North Queensland coast and hinterland. He plays in The Venus Blues Band. He’s been a Guild member for twenty-six of the last thirty years.

▪ bio current as of 2008

Monica Esparza

Esparza Guitars

Nineteen-year GAL member Mónica Esparza commutes easily between her two jobs: her family’s soft drink company and her guitar shop on the second floor of the same building. Besides being a passionate, intrepid traveler, she finds time for guitar lessons, long bike rides, and guitar shows and conventions.

▪ bio current as of 2022

Chuck Erikson

Duke of Pearl

Chuck Erikson, known as the Duke of Pearl, is a familiar and elaborate sight at GAL Conventions and other lutherie confabulations. He’s a former gold miner, and is currently helping luthiers and others understand the Lacey Act. He’s been a GAL member for a total of thirty-one years.

▪ bio current as of 2017

Joseph Ennis

Joseph Ennis had a background in electronics and woodworking when he decided to restore a mandolin. He has now made several mandolins, beginning with a kit from Musicmakers. Joe also made a harp to prove a point about the notes of different musical scales: almost all of them are pitches that cannot occur on a piano.

▪ bio current as of 2002

Michael Elwell

Michael Elwell Guitars

Twenty-one-year member Michael Elwell built a dulcimer kit in 1974 and was hooked. Searching for info in libraries he discovered the GAL, and has been a member off and on since. After constructing dulcimers and citterns, he made a classical guitar at Leeds Guitar Making School in 1998. When his job as a foundry pattern maker and project manager went to China, he started making mostly classical and flamenco guitars in the woods of North Idaho where he lives with his wife of fifty years.

▪ bio current as of 2022

Sjaak Elmendorp

Twelve-year GAL member Sjaak Elmendorp has made classical and steel string guitars off-and-on for over thirty years. In addition, he has built acoustic bass guitars, archtops, ukuleles, mandolins, a kobza, and several balalaikas. Being trained as a physicist, he likes to apply modern mathematics to seek to improve upon the noble art of lutherie, only to find the old masters really had figured it all out!

▪ bio current as of 2023

Paul Eliasson

Paul Eliasson Guitars

Paul Eliasson studied political science and business management at Johns Hopkins University and is presently a management analyst at the National Institutes of Health. He began playing guitar at age ten. At age fourteen his father gave him a D-18 kit from The Guitarmaker’s Connection and the sawdust has not settled since.

▪ bio current as of 2017

Orn Eliasson

Fourteen-year GAL member Orn Eliasson is a physician in Baltimore specializing in pulmonary medicine, critical care, and occupational health. He began playing guitar at age seven using his sister’s songbook, and traveled from Europe to the USA at age nineteen to buy a Martin D-28 which still sounds and looks very nice, forty-seven years later. His interest in lutherie started when he gave his son, Paul, on his fourteenth birthday, a D-18 kit from The Guitarmaker’s Connection.

▪ bio current as of 2017

Franz Elferink

Elferink Guitars

Six-year GAL member Frans Elferink was born in the Netherlands in 1961, started playing guitar at age eleven, and built his first solidbody guitar at the age of eighteen. He has a degree in electronic engineering, and now builds archtop guitars as well as working part time in acoustical and electrical engineering.

▪ bio current as of 2003

Eddie Efendy

Eddy Efendy got his BS in mechanical engineering at Purdue in 2006, and his MS in mechanical engineering in 2010. Apparently happy with Purdue, he joined the faculty in the School of Engineering Technology, where he teaches classes in engineering mechanics.

▪ bio current as of 2023

Robert A. Edelstein

Eight-year GAL member Rob Edelstein is a urologist by profession. Raised in the Pacific Northwest and transplanted to New England, he has been building instruments in his spare time for the past ten years. He recently completed a long-scale mandola, although he was trying to build a short-scale octave mandolin. He is an avid reader of American Lutherie, and greatly appreciates all of the informative articles.

▪ bio current as of 2006

Ben Edelstein

Eight-year GAL member Rob Edelstein is a urologist by profession. Raised in the Pacific Northwest and transplanted to New England, he has been building instruments in his spare time for the past ten years. He recently completed a long-scale mandola, although he was trying to build a short-scale octave mandolin. He is an avid reader of American Lutherie, and greatly appreciates all of the informative articles.

▪ bio current as of 2006

Richard Echeverria

Twenty-eight-year Guild member Richard Echeverria attended the Roberto-Venn school in 1980 and has run his own repair shop since 1984. He also builds guitars, but he does that at home. He mentions that Echeverria is a Basque name, not Spanish.

▪ bio current as of 1992

Gila Eban

Gila Eban is a longtime GAL member, past Board of Directors member and convention lecturer. Apprenticed with Richard Schneider and studied with James D’Aquisto. Worked with Michael Kasha on guitar design. Was a member of the Catgut Acoustical Society. Is a member of the Acoustical Society of America. Participated and /or presented papers at conferences of these organizations and presented and authored/co-authored papers for their publications. Devised novel designs and methods for guitar soundhole decoration.

▪ bio current as of 2015

Paul Dzatko

Paul Dzatko is a ukulele and guitar builder who has been a Guild Member for fourteen years. Paul is a former scenic carpenter and stagehand who built sets for theater and motion pictures. He is now concentrating on crafting fine musical instruments.

▪ bio current as of 2023

Chris Dungey

Christopher Dungey

Nineteen-year GAL member Christopher Dungey is an award-winning maker of cellos with a degree in double bass performance. He attended The Newark School of Violin Making, then studied restoration with Hans Weisshaar and Thomas Metzler. He has been cutting and collecting cello wood since his student days in England.

▪ bio current as of 2007

Daniele Dubois

Danièle Dubois is an emeritus psycholinguist in the Lutherie-Acoustics-Music team at University Pierre and Marie Curie in Paris. Her work aims at identifying how cognitive categories for different sensory modalities (mainly vision, olfaction, and audition) are coupled to the diversity of the linguistic resources of languages and their uses in discourse by ordinary people as well as professionals and scientists, in a conceptual framework that can be qualified as situated cognitive semantics.

▪ bio current as of 2015

Mike Dotson

Located in Phoenix, Arizona, Mike Dotson has been a part-time builder now for about eight years. He started making metal-body resonators and now concentrates on wood-body resonators, electric guitars, and lap steels.

▪ bio current as of 2006

Mike Doolin

Mike Doolin

After sixteen years of full-time guitar making, thirty-one-year Guild member Mike Doolin retired from professional lutherie to play music full time. This doesn’t mean he has quit building guitars, it just means that now he gets to keep them all.

▪ bio current as of 2023

John Doan

John Doan

John Doan is a music historian, and Emmy-nominated composer/performer known for his pioneering efforts to revive the harp guitar. His latest CD The Lost Music Of Fernando Sor is the first recording of Sor’s music for the three-necked harpolyre. He is professor of music at Willamette University in Salem, Oregon.

▪ bio current as of 2009

Dave Dillman

Long time GAL member Dave Dillman operated Experienced Instruments repairing, restoring, and reselling instruments in the Chicago area for several years. Most of his lutherie since 2005 has been keeping his personal fleet of Kay basses alive, while concentrating on his day job managing audio and video systems and production and playing in bluegrass jams around Santa Fe, New Mexico.

▪ bio current as of 2008

Steve Dickerson

Twelve-year GAL member Steve Dickerson took his grade-school class on a tour of the Pimentel guitar shop in Albuquerque, and there he caught the bug. Years later he began making instruments from firewood. He now builds and repairs guitars and ukes in a converted garage. He spent ten years in Thailand and is converting a 1929 Model “A” into a fuel-injected street rod.

▪ bio current as of 2023

Stuart Deutsch

New York based film sound recording engineer Stuart Deutsch is a ten-year GAL member who collects and plays archtops, classicals, and flattops. He met Fran‡ois Pistoius while working on a film in Johannesburg, South Africa in 2000 and has a small flattop, an archtop, a 12-string, and a classical made by him.

▪ bio current as of 2003

Ethan Deutsch

Four-year GAL member Ethan Deutsch has really been there, done that. He spent a year in Spain studying flamenco at age fifteen, and since then has worked as a musician, research chemist, custom cabinet maker, and production cabinet maker. And he has made a few guitars.

▪ bio current as of 2000

Michael DeLuca

Two-year GAL member Michael De Luca completed an electronics engineering diploma at age thirty-five, then worked on fiberoptic laser transmission systems for eighteen years. On his 50th birthday, his eldest daughter, Elena, gave him a book on how to make an electric guitar, and he built guitars for both daughters as a legacy. He now makes carved archtop and custom electric guitars and winds his own pickups. In 2010, his younger daughter, Deanna, registered him for GAL membership as a surprise gift, and in 2011, his wife Luisa convinced him to attend the 2011 GAL Convention. He owes his family for the passion he now has for making guitars and for their continuous inspiration and support. He names his guitars using their initials; the letters of the DELM logo represent Deanna, Elena, Luisa, and Michael.

▪ bio current as of 2012

Marco Del Pozzo

Marco Del Pozzo Custom Guitars

Marco Del Pozzo moved to Spain from his native Italy over twenty years ago to teach Italian in a private school. He spent five years as a finish carpenter in London and also imported handmade Spanish pottery. While there he found Dan Erlewine’s Guitar Player Repair Guide and he has been a full-time luthier for ten years, specializing in electric guitars and basses. Now back in Spain, he reports that bulls run past his shop on the main street of town each June, chasing people, during the local fiesta.

▪ bio current as of 2006

John Decker

guitarmasterworks

John Decker trained as an aeronautical engineer at MIT and holds a Ph.D. in plasma physics from Cambridge University. He spent most of his career in the semiconductor and aerospace industries and briefly managed the Air Force’s optical observatory on Haleakala, Hawaii. While running a business making automated marine sextants, he started a back-burner project to make a stable and waterproof guitar of composite materials. This led to the development of the successful RainSong guitar. He retired from day-to-day operations at RainSong in 1998, and is now making classical guitars from exotic woods.

▪ bio current as of 2008

Randy DeBey

Bringing along a strong engineering and science background, Randy DeBey found his way to making and fixing violins by learning woodworking and making furniture for himself and others. He finished his first violin in 1991, spent a few years working in a violin shop in the late ’90s, and has had the good fortune of being his own boss ever since.

▪ bio current as of 2009

Robert Deacon

Six-year Guild member Bob Deacon has been working wood for thirty years. As a young classical guitarist he discovered Irving Sloane’s book and decided to have a go at building a classical guitar. The guitar turned out to be successful, and the process proved addictive.

▪ bio current as of 2004

Joshia de Jonge

Joshia de Jonge Guitars

Growing up in a family of guitar makers, Joshia de Jonge was thirteen when she built her first guitar in 1992. What began as an interesting pass-time has grown into a life’s passion of honing her craft. She learned her craft primarily from her father, Sergei de Jonge, and also spent time with Géza Burghardt, who taught her French polishing. She now resides in the Gatineau Hills of western Québec, Canada, where she enjoys balancing guitar work with raising her boys and spending time in the garden.

▪ bio current as of 2019

Ted Davis

Ted Davis was a GAL member for twenty-eight consecutive years. He was a frequent author and plan draftsman in our early days, spoke at GAL conventions, and was elected to the Guild’s Board of Directors in the ’80s. Ted passed away in late 2008. He will be missed by luthiers who knew him, and he should be thanked by those who did not; he helped to lay the foundations for the Golden Age of American Lutherie. Ted passed away in 2008

▪ bio current as of 2008

Rick Davis

Running Dog Guitars

After fifteen years of building, twelve-year GAL member Rick Davis has produced over 160 guitars. He was executive director of the Association of Stringed Instrument Artisans (ASIA) and editor of Guitarmaker magazine from 1999 to 2005. He moved to Seattle in 2006 to create a shared shop and lutherie center with wife Cat.

▪ bio current as of 2009

Keith Davis

After closing down the Michigan shop that he ran for nineteen years, twenty-year Guild member Keith Davis and his family moved on to Hammond, Louisiana where he reopened in mid-July. Then hurricane Katrina hit the area with devastating results. That changed everything.

▪ bio current as of 2005

Evan Davis

Evan Davis joined the Catgut Acoustical Society in 1976, earned a PhD in mechanical engineering from the U. of Washington with his work on the structural acoustics design of guitar soundboards in 1990. He has been a faculty member of the VSA’s Oberlin Violin acoustics workshop since 2006, and is currently employed as a Technical Fellow of the Boeing Company, directing research in structural acoustics, noise control, and sound quality engineering.

▪ bio current as of 2011

Michael DaSilva

DaSilva Ukulele Co.

Eight-year GAL member Michael DaSilva makes high-quality, handcrafted ukuleles. After falling in love with all things ukulele, he escaped the high-tech business world and began building instruments in 2004 and has built over 350 instruments to date. He continues to single-handedly build four or five instruments a month for ukulele enthusiasts around the globe.

▪ bio current as of 2015

Michael Darnton

Michael Darnton Violins

During his sixteen-year association with Bein & Fushi in Chicago, violin maker Michael Darnton had the opportunity to examine, photograph, and measure hundreds of Classical Period violins. He’s been a Guild member for a total of twenty-seven years, and is a past GAL columnist and convention speaker.

▪ bio current as of 2011

Olivier Fanton d’Andon

Olivier Fanton d’Andon comes from a family of musicians. He learned the flute at an early age and later the classical guitar. He pursued medical studies, but decided to make musical instruments instead. He has received many awards for his lutherie work, culminating in his designation as “Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur,” the highest national distinction in France.

▪ bio current as of 2014

Mark Dalton

Huss & Dalton Guitar Company

Mark Dalton grew up in a Virginia family in love with bluegrass music, and is an excellent guitarist and banjo picker. He joined the crew at Stelling Banjos for several years before having Jeff Huss (also a Stelling alumnus) build him a guitar. They got along famously and soon formed Huss & Dalton Musical Instruments, a company that is now over 20 years old.

▪ bio current as of 2017

Curtis Daily

Curtis Daily is a double bassist specializing in historical performance. He performs regularly with Portland Baroque Orchestra and Seattle Baroque Orchestra, as well as with other early music groups and festivals across North America. His interest in historical bass strings led him to Aquila Corde, whose gut strings he has used and vended for a number of years. He enjoys playing the classical guitar for diversion and has several stacks of fine tonewood in his basement that will someday become classical guitars if he ever comes up with enough free time.

▪ bio current as of 2011

Tom Cussen

Cussen Banjos

Tom Cussen came to the banjo in the late 1960s and was a founder of the popular band Shaskeen in 1970. While working as an electronics technician at University College Galway he began building banjos and soon expanded into repair, restoration, and manufacturing. Today Clareen Banjos is the premier banjo maker in Ireland.

▪ bio current as of 2013

Joseph Curtin

Joseph Curtin

Joseph Curtin completed his first violin in 1978, and has worked as a maker in Toronto, Paris, and Cremona. In 1985 he and Gregg Alf established the firm of Curtin & Alf in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Curtin opened his own studios in 1997. Along with researcher Fan Tao, Curtin is founder and co-director of the VSA Oberlin Acoustics Workshop. He has lectured on violin making at universities and professional associations throughout America and Europe.

▪ bio current as of 2009

William Cumpiano

Wm R. Cumpiano

William R. Cumpiano, a professional luthier for forty years, coauthored the bestselling textbook Guitarmaking: Tradition & Technology. He is a founder of the Association of Stringed Instrument Artisans and the Puerto Rican Cuatro Project, and a contributor to Acoustic Guitar and Guitar Player magazines as well as the defunct Journal of Guitar Acoustics. His current studio, Becker & Cumpiano Stringed Instruments is located in Northampton, Massachusetts, where he makes guitars individually, teaches, and researches Latin American stringed instruments.

▪ bio current as of 2006

John Cross

Eleven-year GAL member John Cross started building in 2003 when he decided foolishly he could save money building a guitar over buying one. Other hobbies include boomerangs and reorganizing his shop at least once every guitar (sometimes more).By day he is a manager for a team of oilfield chemists and engineers in Alberta, where he lives with his wife Katy and two sons. He builds guitars and the occasional ukulele at a pace that makes snails feel good about themselves.

▪ bio current as of 2016

Kjell Croce

Croce Guitars

Twenty-three-year GAL member Kjell Croce is a graduate of the Red Wing School in Minnesota. He worked for Ron Pinkham at Woodsound Studios in Maine for five years before moving to Michigan, where he has worked in the repair department at Elderly Instruments for thirteen years. He also builds guitars under his own name.

▪ bio current as of 2017

William T. Crocca

While still a teenager, Seven-year GAL member William T. Crocca was introduced to lute construction by Meeme Malgi, a violin maker in the New York City area. Bill could no longer spend the required time with Mr. Malgi once college began, so he acquired a few books and began building his first guitar. Of course, that also involved building tools and fixtures. A few guitars were sold, one to a violinist in the Trenton, New Jersey Symphony Orchestra. Career and family displaced a good portion of his available lutherie time, and now in retirement he is once again building instruments and learning new techniques.

▪ bio current as of 2023

Bruce Creps

Notable Woods

Twelve-year GAL member Bruce Creps started his tonewood business in 1999, incidental to what he thought would be a new career in lutherie. He still hopes to dabble when he and his wife finish building their small passive-solar house. Bruce transports shipments under 100 lbs. via bicycle trailer, and deducts bicycle costs as a business expense.

▪ bio current as of 2007

Birck Cox

One-year GAL member Birck Cox went to Reed College in Portland, Oregon in the 1970s. There he was friends with Ellen Black, who married lute maker Robert Lundberg. Birck acquired a graduate degree in medical illustration, and spent the next forty years drawing guts, not to put too fine point on it. But his attachment to lutherie is not simply journalistic. While a college student he learned to play the bagpipe, but later suffered some facial lacerations that made playing difficult. When he first heard the droning sound of a hurdy-gurdy, however, he was able to remember the pipe tunes as if played on a stringed instrument, and is slowly building up the knowledge and woodworking skills to build a hurdy-gurdy.

▪ bio current as of 2023

Ray Cowell

The Ukes of Northumberland

Ray Cowell, sixty-two, started his working life in the coal mines and retired after twenty-five years of running his own paint-industry business. He made his first electric guitar in the early ’70s, and in retirement he discovered the ukulele. He asked for uke-building help via the Internet. Luthier Tom Johnson lives close by, and answered. Now they are firm friends.

▪ bio current as of 2011

Stephan Connor

Connor Guitars

Thirteen-year member and established classical guitar maker Stephan Connor recalls that when he first got the fever to build a guitar, Richard Bruné recommended he join the GAL. He soon received a back issue reviewing lutherie schools which led him to study with David Freeman of Timeless instruments. Seems the Guild was “instrumental” to his career.

▪ bio current as of 2008

Marc Connelly

Nine-year Guild member Marc Connelly is an amateur luthier who has built about five guitars a year since 1998 with the help of GAL reference materials and the network of kindred spirits that is the GAL membership. Marc is a thirty-year veteran advertising agency art director, sits on the Board of Directors for the Hydroplane & Raceboat Museum, and is a principal member of the deck crew/restoration crew of the 1982 Atlas Van Lines and the Slo Mo V.

▪ bio current as of 2005

Robin Connaughton

Three-year GAL member Robin Connaughton was a folk musician in the 1970s. His first work on a musical instrument came when he got a basket-case Gibson J-50A and learned how to fix and improve it. After earning degrees in metallurgy and materials science, he worked as a research scientist for Australian steelworks, and then as a teacher and materials consultant at Sydney Technical College. In retirement, he has been researching the effect of various materials as saddle inserts for guitar bridges, and the suitability of bamboo for guitar manufacture.

▪ bio current as of 2023

James Condino

James Condino

Mandolin Magazine columnist, Fine Woodworking author, regular AL contributor, and a GAL member for a total of fifteen years, James Condino has been building instruments for over thirty-five years. He’s also a serious outdoorsman who guides whitewater expeditions and takes fine guitars and mandolins to volcanic summits.

▪ bio current as of 2022

Arianna Colombo

Arianna Colombo was born in Italy and became familiar with GAL while attending the Civica Scuola di Liuteria in Milan, where she learned how to build guitars, lutes, and Italian mandolins for four years. After graduating cum laude, she is gaining experience in some workshops and laboratories, and is also working for the Italian authorized “support and repair departments” of Martin, Taylor and Bourgeois. Fond of custom steel string guitars, she specializes in highly detailed decorations and inlays.

▪ bio current as of 2017

Luis Colmenares

An engineer by trade, Luis Colmenares is a husband and a father from Venezuela who works as a project manager in the health sector. He spends most of his spare time tinkering about all things instrument-making related, from acoustic guitars, to electric basses, to effect pedals, and Eurorack modules. As a maker he sees his rather experimental instruments as means to learn something new, and also as opportunities to combine his passions for music, design, wood, and electronics.

▪ bio current as of 2021

Bill Collings

Collings Guitars

The elusive Bill Collings is a shy and gentle creature of the Texas desert. He was spotted at GAL conventions in 1977 and 1978, although the astute luthiologist will note that at that time he was wearing the longer plumage of the starving artist/craftsman.

▪ bio current as of 2008

Erick Coleman

The D-Rays

Erick Coleman has been repairing guitars for over 25 years, working by appointment only out of his home shop in Athens, Ohio. As senior technical advisor at Stewart-MacDonald, Erick participates in the research and development of new tools, writes product instructions, and educates the staff. He has conducted numerous guitar repair workshops at the Guild of American Luthiers and Association of Stringed Instrument Artisans conventions as well as at the Northwoods Seminar and Purdue University. A guitarist for nearly 4 decades, Erick performs regularly with his band the D-Rays.

▪ bio current as of 2017

David Cohen

Cohen Musical Instruments

Twenty-year GAL member Dave Cohen built his first mandolin in 1973 while a graduate student at Florida State U. He taught college chemistry and did research in Richmond, Virginia, from 1974 to 2003. He returned to lutherie in 1997, and in 1999 began a collaboration with Dr. Tom Rossing, researching the physics of mandolin-family instruments.

▪ bio current as of 2015

Ben Cohen

Lutenist, amateur luthier, and ten-year GAL member Ben Cohen started building wind and percussion instruments from plumbing supplies while in college, inspired by Bart Hopkin’s brilliant quarterly journal Experimental Musical Instruments (www.windworld.com). Ben runs a klezmer band, plays in a Jewgrass band and a Baroque trio, and keeps his day job.

▪ bio current as of 2010

Bishop Cochran

Bishop Cochran

Bishop Cochran, a ten year Guild member, is now a guitarist and songwriter living in Spain. He has been a designer of guitars and amps, and he is the designer and manufacturer of the first plunge router base for the Dremel tools. He has designed many tools for both Allied Lutherie and LMI. His router bases are currently listed at Allied Lutherie and sold through the shop in Portland, Oregon and Bishop’s website.

▪ bio current as of 2008

Jim Clay

Six-year GAL member Jim Clay has been building on a hobby level since 1978 when his wife Susan gave him a plank of padouk and Irving Sloane’s book for a wedding present. A self-confessed “tool junkie,” Jim runs a custom cabinet shop at the University of Calgary, plays guitar, banjo, mandolin, and dulcimer. He has two wonderful kids, Julia, age seven, and Thomas age two.

▪ bio current as of 2000

Bradley Clark

Cole Clark Guitars

Bradley Clark was once an art student with a strong interest in science and engineering. He found himself re-engineering Australia’s Maton Guitar’s production and indeed their business. He feels that many aspects of guitar making can be simplified, given advances in technology. His late father would have said “Give it a go, you mug.” At Cole Clark Guitars, he has.

▪ bio current as of 2005

Chelsea Clark

Guitars and Caffeine

At age eighteen, Chelsea Clark got a weekend job sweeping the shop of Dan Erlewine. Soon she was assisting Dan’s repair team and learning about lutherie. In the fifteen years since then, she has devoted years to formal schooling in cultural studies and industrial design, and held a series of employments in guitar repair shops including Gibson’s restoration shop and one of LA’s legacy music stores. In 2016, she “decided it was time to grow up,” so she opened her own repair shop, Guitars And Caffeine.

▪ bio current as of 2019

Ermanno Chiavi

Chiavi Guitars

Swiss luthier Ermanno Chiavi, a guitar maker since 1985 and a GAL member since 1995, has developed unconventional guitars in various sizes, tunings, and string counts. With the Zurich University for Technology, he is researching the acoustics of classical guitars. Ermanno has been teaching classes for many years, including repair and construction courses.

▪ bio current as of 2005

Kerry Char

Char Guitars

Twenty-year GAL member Kerry Char repairs and restores fine acoustic instruments and still finds time to build classical, flamenco, and steel string guitars, not to mention Weissenborns and ukes. He has a special interest in and reputation for his work on harp guitars — restoring them, and building replicas of wonderful old Dyers and Knutsons.

▪ bio current as of 2008

Aaron Cash

Aaron Cash is a three-year Guild member building acoustic guitars when he isn’t teaching 6th graders the joy of reading. Still a kid at heart, he can be found playing a game of pinball in his workshop while the glue is drying. Aaron practices what he teaches his students: “Your best is good enough.”

2022

C.F. Casey

C.F. Casey Guitars

Forty-four-year Guild member C.F. Casey built his first dulcimer back in 1978, and studied with Božo Podunovac in 1980. Fred has lately been building a lot of ukuleles and has become an enthusiastic practitioner of Hawaiian steel guitar.

▪ bio current as of 2022

Bonnie Carol

Bonnie Carol

Bonnie Carol has built, written about, and performed upon mountain and hammered dulcimers for three and a half decades. She has recently teamed up with luthier Max Krimmel (www.MaxKrimmel.com) to expand her dulcimer building work. One of her choice gigs is as organizer of Moons and Tunes wilderness rafting trips where all participants bring instruments and jam down the river. She and Max also play African marimba and Max built their set of eight marimbas from the small sopranino to the huge fan bass (www.maxkrimmel.com/Marimba/MarimbaMain.htm)

▪ bio current as of 2008

Fred Carlson

Beyond the Trees

Thirty-two-year GAL member Fred Carlson grew up in rural Vermont, living for twenty years on a commune of woodworkers and musicians; making instruments seemed like the thing to do. Thirty-five years later on the other side of the continent, it still does. He’s currently building 39-string Harp Sympitars, and grafting fruit trees in his copious free time.

▪ bio current as of 2009

Steve Card

Wildcard Guitars

Like The Duke in the movie The Shootist, Steve Card is willin’. He’s willin’ to try things others will not, so he’s willin’ to make musical instruments. He succeeds more often than not, through persistence and blissful ignorance. He loves and thanks his teachers, but is not attached to their methods. He has no Facebook page (he’s in the Witless Protection Program), so an e-mail address will have to do.

▪ bio current as of 2010

Jan Van Cappelle

The Dutch Luthier

Dutch luthier Jan van Cappelle began making instruments at fourteen, during a dull family vacation. After dropping out of high school he went to Belgium and graduated from the International Lutherie School Antwerp (ILSA), then worked for a Dutch guitar company. Burned out at age twenty-five, he decided to follow his true passion of making historical lutes and guitars, as well as contemporary guitars. His work combines theory and practice, arts and technology, historical research and modern design. He recently published Making Masonite Guitars, a twenty-five page book, entirely written and drawn by hand, that helps you to make Danelectro-style guitars.

▪ bio current as of 2017

Jose Cano

The child of immigrants from Jalisco, Mexico, Jose Cano holds a degree in mechanical engineering but has dedicated himself to music full time. Sustainable living, the Dharma, and swimming in the ocean are among his passions.

▪ bio current as of 2017

Fred Campbell

Read Fred Campbell’s memoriam

Fred Campbell is a familiar face a GAL conventions, and has been a member for over fourteen years. With over 35 years experience in lutherie, Fred is considered a Master Finisher and Luthier. Doing business as Fred Campbell is a familiar face a GAL conventions, and has been a member for over fourteen years. With over 35 years experience in lutherie, Fred is considered a Master Finisher and Luthier. Doing business as F.W. Campbell & Sons in San Jose, California, Fred had clients from around the globe seeking his guitar finishing services and consultation. He is currently working with Tom Ribbecke at RGC in Healdsburg, California.

▪ bio current as of 2019

Todd Cambio

Fraulini Guitars

Four-year GAL member Todd Cambio builds guitars and mandolins that focus on traditional techniques and materials like ladder bracing, French polishing, and hide glue, as well as domestic woods like birch, white oak, walnut and poplar, which were once frequently used but which have fallen out of favor in modern times. Todd started the Fraulini Guitar Company in 2000 and has worked to provide instruments for traditional musicians. He has also done extensive research on Italian and Mexican immigrant luthiers who built instruments in the early 20th century. He works with his sons Felix, Oscar, and Leo.

▪ bio current as of 2024

Graham Caldersmith

Read Graham Caldersmith’s memoriam

Twenty-nine-year GAL member Graham Caldersmith started out studying reentry dynamics of spacecraft, but ended up studying the acoustic dynamics of guitars and violins. He lectured at the 1982 and 1998 GAL Conventions. Recently he has focused on developing a classical guitar family and refining the sound of violins made in Australian tonewoods.

▪ bio current as of 2017

Bruce Calder

Nine-year GAL member Bruce Calder unfortunately lets his day job get in the way of making guitars. He is hoping to increase his output from one every two years to two every one year.

▪ bio current as of 2005

Greg Byers

Guitars of Gregory Byers

I have been wrestling with lutherie since 1981 (I joined the Guild in 1983, if I recall correctly). My long-suffering wife and sons have tolerated and supported my affliction. I have built about 350 classical guitars along the way. I find it never really gets old because it is so hard to meet my expectations.

▪ bio current as of 2018

Ron Bushman

As a teenager, Ron Bushman built a “guitar” from 1/8-inch plywood and a 4×4 from his dad’s garage. He built classical and flamenco guitars during the ’60s, then had a career as a mechanical engineer. He attended ASL in the ’90s, and is now retired.

▪ bio current as of 2007

Michael Burton

Nine-year GAL member Michael Burton has been a guitarist since age thirteen, and got into guitar repairs about eleven years ago. He soon realized that playing the guitar was only part of the quest; learning what goes into a guitar’s construction and what makes it play well is the other half of the equation. He studied classical music and taught guitar at a music college in Newfoundland, Canada for a few years, then studied electronics engineering. He is always ready to talk your ear off about anything related to guitars, whether it is playing, music theory, or repair work.

▪ bio current as of 2022

Chris Burt

Chris Burt

Chris Burt lives, works, and plays on the North Olympic Peninsula, where he’s serious about taking life less seriously. When he’s not enjoying the beauty of making and playing mandolins, he’s hanging out with his wife, cat, horses, or the neighbors’ dogs. He can often be found riding Mai, his Icelandic mare, somewhere along the Straits of Juan de Fuca.

▪ bio current as of 2006

Brian Burns

Lessons in Lutherie

Brian Burns came under the influence of engineers at a tender age. He does a lot of number crunching during the building process, but insists that it’s the player’s Thrill-O-Meter reading that determines the success of an instrument. He makes classical and flamenco guitars and teaches guitar making in scenic Fort Bragg, California.

▪ bio current as of 2006

James Buckland

Presbyterian College

Thirty year GAL member James Buckland began building as a kid to get the left handed guitars he couldn’t find. His doctoral research on the terz guitar, which included building his first terz guitar, earned him first prize in the Dean’s Award for Distinguished Graduate Endeavors from the University of South Carolina. Today, his research involving the early 19th century guitar is the central focus of his performance, lutherie, and teaching activities. Jim and his wife Karen are kept busy with their family of ten rescue cats.

▪ bio current as of 2022

Howard Bryan

Erstwhile GAL member G. Howard Bryan restores harps at H. Bryan & Co. Harpmakers (www.hbryan.com). He’s also a retired Marine officer and engineer who worked in the pharmaceutical and nuclear power industries.

▪ bio current as of 2005

R.E. Brune

R.E. Brune

R.E. Bruné was on the Guild’s very first membership list in 1972. He’s a GAL founding member, a former Guild president and board member, the organizer of our 1975 convention, and a frequent author and lecturer. He’s a classic guitar maker and dealer, flamenco artist, and father of a luthier. And a grandpa, perhaps of a luthier. We’ll see.

▪ bio current as of 2017

Marshall Brune

Marshall Bruné grew up at the bench of his father, R.E. Bruné, then graduated from the Violin Making School of America and completed an internship with Carl Becker. He makes and restores classical guitars as well as making orchestral string instruments.

▪ bio current as of 2019

Joe Browne

Three-year member Joe Browne came to the realization that he wanted to build a guitar in the mid-1960s, while he was in college. He didn’t actually do it until approaching retirement from his college mathematics teaching career. He enjoyed it so much that he made it a new hobby and is currently completing guitar number six.

▪ bio current as of 2022

Todd Brotherton

Todd Brotherton

The loves of thirty-six-year member Todd Brotherton’s life are his wife Peg, their dogs, fine woodwork (furniture making and lutherie), great Northern Italian espresso, vintage BMW motorcycles and woodworking machinery, rural life in the mountains… and the Guild, of course.

▪ bio current as of 2013

Mike Brittain

Mike Brittain began working wood in 1970. He was a GAL member from 1978 through 1984, building guitars at night while running a cabinet shop and raising a family. After selling the cabinet business in 2000, he happily returned to guitar making and the GAL with a more relaxed feeling of devotion.

▪ bio current as of 2008

Duane Brewer

Violin builder, Irish music and dance enthusiast, and backpacker Duane Brewer was among the first students in the violin-building program at Boston’s North Bennet Street School. After six years in Paul Schuback’s shop he is on his own, living and building near the beautiful Blue Mountains in northeast Oregon.

▪ bio current as of 2001

Larry Breslin

Deerhead Guitars

Longtime GAL member Larry Breslin caught the guitar bug in the early ’60s at a concert featuring Carlos Montoya and Sabicas. Soon realizing he could not sing or even tune a guitar, he decided to make one. Eventually help arrived in the form of the very first GAL publication. Nearly forty years later, he’s still making guitars.

▪ bio current as of 2012

Mark Brenner

Brenner Guitar Products

Mark Brenner has been working in the Milwaukee tool and die Industry since 1977. His firm Brenner Industries specializes in die-sinking and engraving for the trade. The Brenner Guitar Products Division was established in 2015 to develop and market the company’s guitar-related innovations.

▪ bio current as of 2017

Michael Breid

Michael Breid has been a GAL member on and off for the last forty-two years. He lives in the Ozark mountains of Arkansas, where he likes to fly fish and feed the wild deer, foxes, and raccoons that visit him frequently. He repaired stringed instruments starting in 1968. Nowadays he likes to “keep his hands in the glue” by doing a few adjustments for friends or folks who pass through town.

▪ bio current as of 2022

Dan’l Brazinski

Fourteen-year GAL member Dan’l Brazinski has been a picker since he was ten, and he got into lutherie work to afford nicer instruments. A local luthier warned him to quit before he was bitten by the bug but it was, of course, too late. That luthier later gave Dan’l his American Lutherie collection, beginning with AL#1. Dan’l’s eighteen-year-old son Luke Deuce grew up in the shop and began picking at an early age. Dan’l says, “I love it when people ask Luke about his ‘pre-war Martin,’ which he built in 2015.” He also has two Cheagals (Chihuahua/Dachshund/Beagles).

▪ bio current as of 2023

Gary Bray

Gary Bray retired from the real world in 2003 and has been making guitars ever since. He began playing bluegrass guitar for his dad’s band in 1965 at age ten.

▪ bio current as of 2013

Tobias Braun

Tobias Braun Guitars

Eighteen-year GAL member Tobias Braun handcrafts traditional classical guitars in Gaaden, Austria, and teaches a yearly guitar-making course in Ottenschlag, emphasizing the work of historic masters. When not cutting trees, making or restoring guitars, researching about guitars, or educating others about guitars, he enjoys spending his holidays in Sicily and his free time on the tennis court.

▪ bio current as of 2024

Chris Brandt

The 12th Fret

Twenty-year GAL member Chris Brandt made his first electric guitar in eighth grade. By eleventh grade he was working six days a week as a repair man at Sherman Clay Music in Portland. Many years later, he owned and worked at the long-standing Portland guitar shop, The 12th Fret. He retired in 2016, and he now lives in the country with his wife Carol and Smokey, his cat.

▪ bio current as of 2021

Don Bradley

Read Don Bradley’s memoriam

Don Bradley got involved with the GAL way back in 1977 as a logical consequence of his fascination with all types of musical instruments. He is a professional electrical engineer and is well known in the lutherie community for the signal generators that he has developed and sold for instrument analysis. Don also applies his engineering abilities to electric vehicle research, studies sustainable gardening, and takes care of his two llamas. As if that’s not enough, he can also be spotted at folk dance gatherings.

▪ bio current as of 2012

Richard Bozung

Richard Bozung has dedicated the past forty years of his life to simplifying music making for everyone. He holds degrees in engineering and business administration, worked in the Apollo program, helped found the Institute for Earth Education, was elected to the City Council of Ventura, California, has extensive music therapy experience, worked as an organic grower, and is a Montessori school music teacher. He is a leading advocate of cooperative sports and has recently focused on earth rewilding initiatives.

▪ bio current as of 2022

Jayson Bowerman

Bowerman Guitars

Jayson Bowerman discovered woodworking while studying manufacturing in college. He went on to be the head of R&D at Breedlove, as well as a musician and a professional athlete. These days he runs a one-man shop and stays active in the many outdoor opportunities of beautiful Central Oregon.

▪ bio current as of 2015

Paul Bordeaux

Bordeaux Inlay

Fourteen-year GAL member Paul Bordeaux started in lutherie in 1981 with only a Les Paul and his dad’s tools. He worked at Carruthers Guitars in the late ’80s. Paul specializes in custom inlays and designs for builders, but also for players around the world.

▪ bio current as of 2008

Ralph Bonte

Arrenbie Guitars

Seven-year GAL member Ralph Bonte was born and is still living in Bruges (Belgium) where he works in a psychiatric hospital. He builds and repairs guitars, and lately has a special fondness for Weissenborns and ukes. He’s the lead singer of the Belgian blues band Hideaway and founder of the gospel choir Soul Spirit. In June 2010 Ralph won the coveted lutherie prize “de Gouden bootschaaf” (“the Golden fingerplane”.)

▪ bio current as of 2010

David Bolla

David Bolla graduated from Roberto-Venn School of Luthiery in 2004, and in 2005 began repairing instruments for a small guitar store in Grosse Pointe, Michigan. Working alongside the store’s owner, he helped grow the business to become a chain of six music-lesson studios throughout Metro-Detroit. In 2016, David and his wife moved to Payson, Arizona, where he now runs a small repair shop and services instruments for their local music store, Quiqtone Music and Supply.

▪ bio current as of 2022