Twenty-one-year GAL member Juan Oscar Azaret is a native of Cuba who immigrated to the USA in the early ’60s. He holds degrees in electrical engineering and worked for over three decades for Bell Labs (and subsequent spin-offs and acquisitions). He has built and played classical guitars and is now a professional luthier and part-time teacher of electrical engineering. He serves on the board of the Boston Classical Guitar Society.
▪ bio current as of 2019
2020
AL#140 p.60 read this article
Juan-Oscar Azaret
▪ Pioneering guitar maker, guitar designer, acoustics researcher, and author Graham Caldersmith has passed away. If you knew him, perhaps from his attendance at GAL Conventions, read this affectionate remembrance. If you didn’t, read it to find out what we’ve lost. Mentions Carleen Hutchins, Jim Williams, Greg Smallman.
2019
AL#137 p.66
Juan-Oscar Azaret
▪ This new book is a thoroughly illustrated step-by-step method for making classical guitars, using mostly inexpensive small power tools. It also takes a luthier’s look at a dozen different instruments by well-known hand-makers. Yes, it is only in Spanish. But even if you do not read Spanish, our reviewer says you will probably still get a lot out of it. The author of the book, Luis Alberto Paredes Rodriguez, is a long-time Guild member, a GAL Convention presenter, and an AL author. He takes a close look at twelve different guitar designs, by Voboam; Stradivari; Grobert; Lacote; Panormo; Torres; Esteso; Hauser; Ramírez; Fleta; Schneider/Kasha; Romanillos; and Smallman. He goes so far as to build one of each.
2018
AL#135 p.45
Juan-Oscar Azaret
▪ Tap on a guitar. Or listen to just the first fraction of a second as you pluck a note. Those tiny samples contain a wealth of information. Our brains already form an impression of the guitar’s sound, long before the first second has elapsed. Computers can reveal the math behind the music and help us understand and visualize what is happening. Good basic info about the FFT, that is, the Fast Fourier Transform, and how the information in a guitar tap can be viewed in the time domain or the frequency domain.
2018
AL#133 p.66
Juan-Oscar Azaret
▪ This big new book, written in Italian, is available in English. It’s got some math in it. (Insert your own joke here about still being in an incomprehensible language.) Our reviewer finds a lot of value in it, which he explains in some detail.
2017
AL#132 p.44
Juan-Oscar Azaret Graham Caldersmith
▪ Graham Caldersmith’s articles in GAL publications go back a full thirty-five years, earlier than American Lutherie magazine itself. He’s located in a tiny town in the hinterlands of New South Wales, Australia. He uses his scientific training to develop innovative classical guitars, and has long been a leader in the effort to develop a family of guitars of different sizes and musical ranges. Our globetrotting reporter asks about his latest thoughts and methods, which include carbon-reinforced lattice bracing.
2017
AL#130 p.64
Juan-Oscar Azaret
▪ Clever automatic control of a home’s central heating and air conditioning can yield effective humidity control without the use of dehumidifying equipment.
2015
AL#122 p.48
Juan-Oscar Azaret
▪ Three sister guitars were constructed to study the sonic effects of the very different Kasha, Fleta, and Romanillos bracing designs.