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
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.