Category Archives: flattop

Finding Inspiration in Early 20th-Century Instruments

2024
AL#151 p.6               
Todd Cambio                                                                                           

▪ From his 2023 GAL Convention lecture. For decades, it was received wisdom that the inexpensive steel-string guitars, made in their millions before WWII in American factories using American woods, were crap. Todd Cambio has been taking another look, and finds a lot to like and even to emulate. Hear him out; it’s a ripping yarn. Mentions Gibson, Martin, Lyon and Healy, Harmony, Sears, Wilhelm Schultz, Oscar Schmidt, Stella, Galiano, poplar, tulip tree, oak, parlor guitar, ladder bracing, bajo sexto, R. Crumb, Lead Belly, John and Alan Lomax, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Blind Willie McTell, Blind Blake, Lonnie Johnson, Carter family, Bristol sessions, Ernest Stoneman, Nick Lucas, Eddie Lang, Raphael Ciani, John D’Angelico, Lydia Mendoza, Guadalupe Acosta, Luis Acosta, Mike Acosta, Miguel Acosta, 12-string guitar, Michael Iuchi, mandolin, John Greven.

My First Twenty Years

2024
AL#151 p.40               
Jay Anderson                                                                                           

▪ Innocently attending a James Taylor concert, an Art major learns to his surprise that guitars are made by people. It’s an epiphany that changes his life. He has a day job as a building contractor, but he transitions to a full-time maker of fully functional musical sculptures. Along the way he finds himself established as the fun “uncle” of talented group of young musicians. Mentions James Taylor, Jim Olson, Brian Sutherland, Jenn Bostic, Dave Fenley, Pablo Picasso, Emil Ernebro, JLD Bridge Truss System, Don Kendall, pyrography, Harry Fleishman, Kevin Aram, Charles Rufino, Chris Herrod.

An All-American 7-String Guitar

2022
AL#146 p.38               
Lee Herron                                                                                           

▪ Sometimes you get a customer who just wants you to run wild. Check out the design and build process of this 17.75-inch, 7-string, multiscale black-locust flattop guitar. Fun!

“Restomodding” Wall-Hanger Guitars

2021
AL#144 p.6               
Roger Haggstrom                                                                                           

▪ A hundred and some years ago, Swedish folks sat around the house all of a dark winter and sang hymns together, accompanied by the strummings of cheap mass-produced guitars. Those days are gone, but a lot of the guitars are still hanging on the walls of old houses. Roger Häggström has made a business of restoring them to useful condition and modifying them to sound and play better than they ever could have. He restores and modifies. Restomods. Mentions the Levin guitar company.

Chalk-Fitting Guitar Braces

2020
AL#140 p.2               
Stephen Marchione                                                                                           

▪ The braces in an archtop guitar are very similar to the bars in fiddles, and Marchione fits them with the same traditional techniques. The mating surface of the brace is roughed out with a chisel, then refined with a small plane, and perfected with files and scrapers. Chalk shows the whole truth of the fit. Believe the chalk.

The Charles Fox Guitar-Building Method, Part Two

2020
AL#140 p.20               
Mark French   Charles Fox                                                                                       

▪ Building a Charles Fox guitar reveals the beautifully developed interdependence between the design and the process. In this episode we rough out the neck, work with the unusual neck block and the distinctive two-part lining, and then brace the top and back plates.

The J-45: Gibson’s Workhorse Guitar

2020
AL#139 p.35               
Kerry Char                                                                                           

▪ Vintage guitar restoration specialist Kerry Char runs down the many changes that Gibson’s most popular flattop has gone through over the decades. Then he presents a full drawing of one that falls into the best period of the model: a well-worn example from 1947.

A Smashed Top and a Shattered Headstock

2019
AL#136 p.12               
Kerry Char                                                                                           

▪ A cool old Gibson-era Epiphone guitar got well and truly smashed in an incident involving large and excited dogs. Better call Char! Kerry Char, that is. He jumps right in to remove the top, take off the braces, and then put the whole thing back together and polish it up nice before you can say “Kalamazoo!” From his 2017 GAL Convention slide show.

A Guitar Is Born: Attending Charles Fox’s Hands-On Guitar Making Course

2019
AL#136 p.54               
Mark French                                                                                           

▪ Author Mark French has made a lot of guitars over the years, but when he wanted to up his game he attended an intensive two-week course by the dean of all American lutherie teachers, Charles Fox. Four students each built a guitar in the white from scratch and strung it up.

Meet the Maker: Mark French

2018
AL#133 p.22               
R.M. Mottola   Mark French                                                                                       

▪ Mark French was a kid who took guitar lessons and paid the guy at the music store to change his strings. He went on to be an aerospace engineer, but with all that book learning he still did not know how guitars worked. Now he teaches college courses on guitar making and hangs out with captains of industry at Fender and Taylor.

Meet the Maker: Michael Bashkin

2017
AL#132 p.6               
Brian Yarosh   Michael Bashkin                                                                                       

▪ Michael Bashkin came to lutherie after earlier passions and careers in photography and tropical forestry. But for decades now he has been happily Geppettoing it, building beautiful steel string guitars in a cavernous industrial space. Mentions Harry Fleishman and Abe Wechter.

Offset Soundholes and Sound Wedges

2017
AL#130 p.22               
David Freeman                                                                                           

▪ Freeman has made a number of guitars with varying combinations of off-center soundholes, graduated body depth, rolled-over edges, and adjustable side ports. He gives us his thoughts on how these design factors interact and how they advance his quest for a more erognomic steel string guitar.

Meet the Maker: Jason Harshbarger

2017
AL#130 p.42               
Paul Schmidt   Jason Harshbarger                                                                                       

▪ A lot of the makers that we meet in the pages of American Lutherie are grizzled veterans of the early days. Not this one. Harshbarger is a young single father who went to lutherie school in the late 1990s, then survived on cabinet work until he could build a lutherie shop in his basement. His steel-string design work uses Steve Klein’s work as a point of departure, and moves forward boldly from there.

The Monster in the Attic

2017
AL#129 p.20               
C.F. Casey                                                                                           

▪ When a neighbor brought in “Grampa’s old guitar” for Fred Casey to look at, he got a shock. The guitar was a whopper. Or more properly, a monster. That’s what Lyon & Healy called this very wide guitar. It was pretty well smashed, but soon it was back in playing condition. Does this guitar make my hips look big?

The Guitar as a Structure and Some Practical Information on Bracing

2009
AL#100 p.30               
James Blilie                                                                                           

▪ A structural engineer and guitar builder gives his two cents on the guitar as a structure.

Dana Hears Voices: Optimizing Steel String Soundboard Response

2009
AL#99 p.22      ALA1 p.36         
Dana Bourgeois                                                                                           

▪ Taken from his 2008 GAL convention lecture, the author explains the basic functioning of a guitar top and how he manipulates the plates and braces to achieve the sound he’s after. Mostly, he says, he’s after the most different tap tones that the top and back can produce, but there are many other details given along the way. Bourgeois is often regarded as one of the champions of tap tuning. With 9 photos, 6 charts, and a bunch of diagrams.

Reviews: Guitar Voicing Class with Ervin Somogyi

2008
AL#95 p.65               read this article
Joe Herrick                                                                                           

▪ The reviewer not only learned a lot about choosing tops and designing brace patterns, he had a very good time. The class took him beyond building generic guitars and into the realm of building the specific guitars that he andor his customers want to hear.

Brace Voicing Through the Access Panel

2007
AL#92 p.48      ALA1 p.92         
Harry Fleishman                                                                                           

▪ This is a transcript of Fleishman’s 2006 GAL Convention workshop.He demonstrated how he could tailor the sound of his guitar by adding, removing, and shaping braces. He also showed slide shows of a similar project by Mark Berry, and the process of cutting an access panel into a finished guitar by Darrel Adams. With 15 photos.

Brave Shaver

2007
AL#92 p.52      ALA1 p.95         
Mark Swanson   John Calkin                                                                                       

▪ Mark Swanson brought a brand-new guitar to Harry Fleishman’s 2006 Convention workshop, and had the guts to recut the braces there under Harry’s tutelage with an audience of luthiers looking on. Everyone agreed the results were positive. With 2 photos.

This article has been nominated as one of the Guild’s fifty best articles published before 2010.

Letter to the Editor: Domino Guitar Article in AL#85

2006
AL#88 p.5               
Scott van-Linge                                                                                           

▪ The writer takes exception to some of the brace work done by John Calkin in his AL #85 article, “Resurrecting the Family Guitar”. Van Linge is the current leading proponent of parabolic bracing. Parabolic and ramped bracing (to coin a term) vary significantly in shape and true believers have a large stake in one or the other. Their discussions are fascinating, and since only side-by-side comparison of similar guitars can offer distinctions the general public is usually left to make decisions based on no real evidence. Which is how lutherie mythology is maintained. There’s a truth somewhere, but how do we dig it out?

Structuring Acoustics with Carbon Fiber

2005
AL#81 p.8   BRB7 p.274            
Steve Kauffman                                                                                           

▪ Kauffman and friend Steve Klein have used carbon fiber (graphite/epoxy) in as many guitar applications as anyone, stopping short (I think) of an entirely graphite instrument. If you’ve only dabbled with graphite truss rods and such you have no idea how hotly some others are pursuing synthetic materials to make wood guitars sound better and last longer. “All natural materials” has been a battle cry for decades, but perhaps the time is ripe for making natural materials better than nature had in mind. You be the judge. With 36 photos.

This article has been nominated as one of the Guild’s best articles published before 2010.

Product Review: Stew-Mac Shaped Braces

2004
AL#79 p.60   BRB7 p.512            
John Calkin                                                                                           

▪ The reviewer examines Stew-Mac’s top and back brace sets for flattop guitars and finds that they limit the luthiers design options, but he nonetheless is able to put them into one of his guitars with no qualms. With 4 photos.

Questions: Linings and Corner Blocks

2004
AL#77 p.68   BRB7 p.107            
John Greven   Eugene Clark   Charles Fox   Greg Byers   Gernot Wagner                                                                           

▪ A rationale, acoustic or structural, for single blocks VS solid linings VS kerfed linings between the sides and back and the sides and top when building a first guitar.

Is Guitar Design an Oxymoron?

2003
AL#76 p.8   BRB7 p.110            
Steve Klein                                                                                           

▪ Klein delivers a lecture that asks as many questions as it attempt to answer. Why has guitar design seemed to stall when so many other fields are jumping into the future? What do musicians really want? How can we make musicians want what we want to build? Is there any more to improve on the steel string guitar? A thought-provoking piece, indeed. With 13 photos.

This article has been nominated as one of the Guild’s best articles published before 2010.

Review: Shoptalk 6

2003
AL#73 p.61   BRB7 p.523            
John Calkin                                                                                           

▪ This video is a collection of shop tips that the reviewer found to be valuable and entertaining, especially in view of the low price.

What Happens If I Make It Bigger?

2003
AL#73 p.36   BRB7 p.14            
Jon Sevy                                                                                           

▪ This piece is aptly subtitled “Rules of thumb for approximating changes in the size of braces, tops, and strings,” which sums it up nicely. Our teachers promised us that math wouldn’t be irrelevant in our futures, and here their words come back to bite us. Sevy obviously believed them, and here presents some “easy” formulas for calculating the results of changes in size we might make in our instruments.

Controlling Soundboard Development

2002
AL#69 p.8   BRB6 p.305            
Larry Mills                                                                                           

▪ An introduction to free plate and fixed plate voicing of the guitar top, the latter using a jig to fix the braced plate much as it will be on the guitar, though tapping is used as the driver, not strings. Interesting, and a good presentation of current bracing notions. With 8 photos.

Evolving the Dished Workboard

2001
AL#65 p.22   BRB6 p.210            
John Calkin                                                                                           

▪ The dished workboard can make it easier to make better guitars. Calkin reveals several ways to make them more versatile, more accurate, and more fun to use. With 13 photos.

This article has been nominated as one of the Guild’s best articles published before 2010.

From Firewood to Bracewood

2000
AL#64 p.50   BRB6 p.156            
Nathan Stinnette                                                                                           

▪ Stinnette is the Huss & Dalton Guitar Co. employee in charge of converting split red spruce trees into billets of brace wood, and then into guitar braces. The article describes how the rough chunks of wood are converted into quarter-sawn boards and then how the boards are made into braces. With 15 photos.

Getting Fit

2000
AL#63 p.34   BRB6 p.108            
John Calkin                                                                                           

▪ OK, so you’ve got all the parts for your flattop guitar body prepped for construction. How do you get all the pieces to fit together? The author details the construction methods used at the Huss & Dalton Guitar Co, all of which should prove useful to any small shop.With 21 photos.

Still Voicing, Still Dreaming

2000
AL#61 p.28   BRB6 p.18            
Dana Bourgeois                                                                                           

▪ Ten years after the GAL convention lecture that made him a guru to most of the steelstring clan, Bourgeois has new information to offer about the construction and voicing of the flattop guitar. With 2 photos.

This article has been nominated as one of the Guild’s fifty best articles published before 2010.

On the Selection and Treatment of Bracewoods

1999
AL#60 p.19   BRB5 p.417            
Ervin Somogyi                                                                                           

▪ How important is the grain orientation of your braces? Is quartersawn wood really the stiffest? Somogyi ran a small series of tests that suggest that information we all trust and take for granted may be little more than lutherie mythology. With 3 photos and a chart.

This article has been nominated as one of the Guild’s best articles published before 2010.

Meet the Makers: Jeffrey Huss and Mark Dalton

1997
AL#51 p.42   BRB5 p.104            
John Calkin   Jeff Huss   Mark Dalton                                                                                   

▪ Virginia luthiers Huss and Dalton show off their shop and talk about the business of going into business. They make 7 high-end acoustics per month, and they make it sound easy. With 11 photos.

Time is the Enemy

1997
AL#49 p.40   BRB5 p.26            
Richard Beck                                                                                           

▪ Beck’s theme is to keep the quality but cut the time involved in building acoustic guitars. He shares his jigs for shaping headstocks and arching braces using a router table and heavy aluminum jigs. You may have to get a machine shop in on this job. With 13 photos and a drawing.

Retro Voicing the Flattop Guitar

1996
AL#47 p.6   BRB4 p.332            
Jonathon Peterson                                                                                           

▪ So you’ve got a guitar that ought to sound better than it does. What can you do to it to perk up the punch? Experts Marc Silber, Scott van Linge, Robert Steinegger, Dana Bourgeois, Frank Ford, and T.J. Thompson describe how they shave braces, and show that brace shaving isn’t your only weapon.

This article has been nominated as one of the Guild’s best articles published before 2010.

Lattice Bracing Guitar Tops

1995
AL#43 p.11   BRB4 p.206            
Jim Williams                                                                                           

▪ Williams discusses the building style he has borrowed from Greg Smallman for classical guitars. With 14 photos, plus drawings.

This article has been nominated as one of the Guild’s best articles published before 2010.

Heed Herr Helmholtz (or How I Built My First Guitar Twice)

1994
AL#38 p.44   BRB4 p.48            
Mike Doolin                                                                                           

▪ Anyone willing to dismantle their first guitar deserves a lot of credit, especially if it came out cosmetically pristine the first time. Doolin replaced the top of his first guitar to bring the bass response up to spec. With 9 photos and a lot to think about.

Principles of Guitar Dynamics and Design

1993
AL#36 p.16   BRB3 p.396            
Ervin Somogyi                                                                                           

▪ Somogyi delves into many of the technical considerations of guitar design and construction. With a large number of drawings.

A New Look at Harp Guitars

1993
AL#34 p.24   BRB3 p.334   ALA6 p.30         
Jonathon Peterson                                                                                           

▪ In AL#29 Peterson looked back at the harp guitar. This time he takes a forward look. A number of luthiers find fascination and a new potential in the big beast, and this is the best look at their results to date. With 28 photos and 8 detailed drawings. Also available is GAL full-scale Plan #34, the Klein solidbody electric harp guitar.

This article has been nominated as one of the Guild’s best articles published before 2010.

Commercial Graphite Acoustic Guitars

1992
AL#31 p.30   BRB3 p.224            read this article
John Decker                                                                                           

▪ This alternative to wood is outside the reach of most luthiers. It’s interesting to know how hard some are working to make graphite sound like wood. Graphite might have its own sound to offer, but once again inventors have to deal with what humans are used to, rather than with what they might have if they were more open minded. With 7 photos.

Meet the Maker: Maurice Dupont

1992
AL#30 p.10   BRB3 p.200   ALA4 p.24         
Paul Hostetter   Maurice Dupont                                                                                       

▪ Meet a French guitar maker whose specialty is the recreation of Selmer guitars. Dupont even mills his own spruce. He is one of the more accessible foreign luthiers, and his guitars are available in the States. Mentions Maccaferri, Django Reinhardt.

Harp Guitar: That Extra-String Thing

1992
AL#29 p.20   BRB3 p.178   ALA6 p.10         
Jonathon Peterson                                                                                           

▪ Most people who even knew what one was thought of the harp guitar as a less-than-useless dinosaur. Then came Michael Hedges. Peterson looks back at a strange instrument whose best music might just lie in the future. With 49 photos and a number of good drawings. Mentions Torres, Hauser I, Scherzer, Staufer, Mozzani, Gibson, Knutsen, Martin, and so on.

This article has been nominated as one of the Guild’s fifty best articles published before 2010.

A Talk with Bob Taylor

1991
AL#28 p.34   BRB3 p.126   ALA4 p.10         
Phillip Lea   Bob Taylor                                                                                       

▪ Few people in Guitarland are as outspoken and clear-headed as Bob Taylor. Others might say he’s just opinionated. He believes a good guitar is a good guitar, no matter if it was whittled by Gepeto or cranked out by a dozen computer-guided milling cutters. This article offers a peek into the Taylor factory and a guided tour through one man’s thoughts about the contemporary guitar. With 28 photos.

Thoughts on Steel String Guitar Making

1991
AL#26 p.8   BRB3 p.37   ALA4 p.28         
Jean Larrivee                                                                                           

▪ Larrivee has overseen the creation of 15,000 acoustic guitars and 12,000 electrics. Much of what he has to say pertains as strongly to the one-off builder as it does to another industry giant, and he doesn’t hold back on anything.

Seth Summerfield, Luthier

1991
AL#25 p.48   BRB3 p.24            
Bill Colgan   Greg Bernd                                                                                       

▪ Like many of his generation, eighty-year-old Summerfield led a hard life. He didn’t turn to professional instrument making until he reached what many would call old age, but after that he didn’t waste any time. There’s quite a few Seth Summerfields out there, and their story is always a good one.

Voicing the Steel String Guitar

1990
AL#24 p.16   BRB2 p.470            
Dana Bourgeois                                                                                           

▪ This is perhaps the strongest article ever published in American Lutherie about voicing the top and bracing of the steel string guitar. The fallout from this piece has been very wide spread.

This article has been nominated as one of the Guild’s fifty best articles published before 2010.

Adjustable Compensated Guitar Bridge

1989
AL#17 p.44   BRB2 p.198            
John Morgan                                                                                           

▪ Bridge setup must be done after the bridge is glued to the guitar in Morgan’s system. It also requires many little operations, but the intonation should come out perfect and the saddles remain individually adjustable for height. The finished bridge looks pretty cool, too.

The Cranked Top

1989
AL#17 p.46   BRB2 p.208            
Brett Borton                                                                                           

▪ Have you ever seen a mandolin with an intentional crease or sharp bend to the top behind the bridge? That’s a cranked top. Borton describes how to add a cranked top to the steel string guitar, though he’s not too specific about why we should try it.

Dog Bone Bracing

1988
AL#16 p.52               
John Morgan                                                                                           

▪ Morgan uses braces that seem to taper the wrong way, but reports good results. They also stop short of the lining. He lists other distinctions in his design that complement the new bracing system.

Lost Shirts and Curved Braces

1987
AL#12 p.54   BRB1 p.464            
Harry Fleishman                                                                                           

▪ These three articles augment Tim Olsen’s initial bass offering in American Lutherie #9, and as a collection they still offer the largest fund of information on the creation of the acoustic bass guitar to reach print.

A Port, but No Pins

1987
AL#12 p.56   BRB1 p.468            
William McCaw                                                                                           

▪ These three articles augment Tim Olsen’s initial bass offering in American Lutherie #9, and as a collection they still offer the largest fund of information on the creation of the acoustic bass guitar to reach print.

Tap It and Tune It

1987
AL#12 p.58   BRB1 p.470            
David Freeman                                                                                           

▪ These three articles augment Tim Olsen’s initial bass offering in American Lutherie #9, and as a collection they still offer the largest fund of information on the creation of the acoustic bass guitar to reach print.

High School Dreams

1987
AL#10 p.56   BRB1 p.414            read this article
Dave Schneider                                                                                           

▪ A dream comes true. Schneider relates his growth toward a successful lutherie career. He begins with a high school shop program, travels through various repair and furniture jobs, apprentices as a lute maker, and ends up self-employed.

Building the Flattop Bass

1987
AL#9 p.24   BRB1 p.322            
Tim Olsen                                                                                           

▪ Olsen offers the philosophy, theory, construction details, and plans for a new instrument. The plans are a shrunken version of GAL full scale Plan #13. Though Olsen and a few others began building flattop basses in the 1970s, in a real sense this article is the birth certificate of the instrument. The flattop bass is a flattop guitar on steroids, not to be confused with the bass viol.

This article has been nominated as one of the Guild’s best articles published before 2010.

Klein Design

1982
GALQ Vol.10#2 p.12   LW p.74            
Steve Klein                                                                                           

▪ This is a history of Klein’s unusual steel string guitars, as well as a window into the mind of one of lutherie’s most creative thinkers. Includes 5 photos as well as a plan of the top of the guitar Klein built for Joe Walsh.

This article has been nominated as one of the Guild’s best articles published before 2010.

Improved X Bracing

1981
DS#172   LW p.100            read this article
Don Musser                                                                                           

▪ Get rid of those scalloped braces and the bulge in the top of the guitar in one operation. Musser’s design is asymmetrical and pretty radical from a “vintage” view point, but a number of luthiers have confessed that it has improved their guitars.

Resonance

1980
DS#145   BRB2 p.99            
Roger Siminoff                                                                                           

▪ The author considers X braces as structural elements and tone bars as tone adjusters, and that tone color can be altered by the stiffness of the tone bars and the size of the soundhole. Despite the possibilities, no examples for use are given.