2024
AL#152 p.58
John Huffman
▪ If you are a guitar maker, Ill bet you know the thrill of adapting some cheap gizmo into a specialized tool for the lutherie trade. Huffman quickly jury-rigs an inexpensive fish scale into a useful jig for measuring individual string tension.
2024
AL#152 p.63
Federico Sheppard
▪ Action matters. It matters to the playability and to the sound. And the height of the strings off the soundboard is no accident on a fine guitar. Sheppard takes a very close look at eighty-nine extraordinary examples in one of the worlds great classical and flamenco guitar collections and gives us the deets. Mentions Shel Urlik.
2024
AL#151 p.58
Mark French
▪ Its amazing what you can do with a smart phone these days. Think you would need an anvil, a block-and-tackle, and a bathrom scale to measure the breaking strength of a guitar string? Nope. Theres an app for that. Mentions Fine Chromatic Tuner.
2024
AL#151 p.64
Geoff Needham
▪ A cheap mail-order gizmo for measuring tire tread wear; a pair of nippers; a scrap of plexi; a bottle of superglue. Put them all together and youve got a sweet tool like the cool kids use. Mentions Chris Alsop.
2023
AL#150 p.38
Mark French Devon Pessler Alyssa Fernandez
▪ Ya talk about rabbit holes. Research into guitar intonation just gets deeper and deeper. This article homes in on individual string compensation at the nut, plus small adjustments to the position of the 1st and 2nd frets. Industrial strength data collection. Heed the eggheads.
2022
AL#147 p.28
James Buckland
▪ Baroque guitars were 5-course instruments. That is, they had ten strings in five pairs. Then suddenly here comes the 19th century and guitars had six single strings. Yadda yadda, now its today and everything is normal. The real story is a lot more interesting than that and it actually involves a missing link; the 5-string guitar. Luthier, guitarist, and scholar Buckland lays it all out for us.
2019
AL#138 p.69
Fan Tao
▪ Can you avoid excessive string tension in a long-scale harp guitar?
2019
AL#137 p.32
Gregg Miner
▪ Ready for an Americana-infused, vintage-lutherie, history-detective-style nerdfest? Yes, that old joker Orville Gibson is still full of surprises, even now, a century after his death. We have a lot to learn about string material, tension, intention, and nomenclature. Not to mention marketing and musical snobbery.
2018
AL#133 p.70
Andy Powers
▪ Thoughts about short-scale guitars.
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.
2009
AL#100 p.48 read this article
Mark French
▪ Guitar strings need to be the “wrong” length in order to sound “right.” The gloriously simple math of Pythagoras doesn’t accomplish this. French uses lasers and spreadsheets, more numbers, and Greek letters to attempt to get closer.
2008
AL#93 p.20 ALA6 p.64
Mike Doolin Kerry Char Gary Southwell Fred Carlson
▪ Harp guitars have undergone a renaissance of sorts, in construction alternatives as well as the music that is being invented for them. Players want banks of super treble strings as well as an extended bass range. Luthiers have responded with new designs and different string configurations that make newer harp guitars more user friendly, more graceful, and musically more pertinent. The four members of this panel discussion are among the leading small builders of these interesting mega-guitars. With 53 photos and 2 sketches.
This article has been nominated as one of the Guild’s best articles published before 2010.
1993
AL#36 p.63
John Doan
▪ Obtaining the extended bass strings for a Dyer harp guitar
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.
1992
AL#31 p.56
Tim Olsen
▪ A world-renowned luthier decides to make strings his own way.
1989
AL#20 p.22 BRB2 p.320
James Rickard
▪ Life inside the D’Addario company. With 25 photos and 3 drawings.
This article has been nominated as one of the Guild’s best articles published before 2010.
1987
AL#9 p.36 BRB1 p.334 read this article
H.E. Huttig
▪ Have you ever wondered how cat gut strings were named? This article suggests an answer as it delves into some string facts and fictions.
1986
AL#8 p.35 BRB1 p.463
Francis Kosheleff
▪ Kosheleff changes the treble quality of his classical guitars by using three steel strings run through the standard bridge and then attached to a tailpiece.
1986
AL#5 p.7
Michael Knutson
▪ Knutson makes a correction to his earlier letter about wire strength and string tension printed in AL#4 (which was a response to an article in AL#2).
1985
AL#4 p.3
Michael Knutson
▪ Knutson suggests changes to a string tension formula previously published in AL#2.
1985
AL#2 p.42 BRB1 p.78
Graham McDonald
▪ McDonald gives formulae and graphs to determine appropriate steel string gauges for nonstandard scale lengths.
This article has been nominated as one of the Guild’s best articles published before 2010.