Tag Archives: Westbrook¸ James

James Westbrook

The Guitar Museum

GAL convention lecturer, AL author, and five-year member, Dr. James Westbrook is a British-based organologist who is particularly interested in guitar construction. He is a part-time luthier and restorer, and a consultant and specialist for Brompton’s (a London auction house that specializes in musical instruments). He is a frequent lecturer and consultant on various topics related to guitars and their history. James is currently a member of the music faculty research staff at the University of Cambridge, and holds a Wolfson College (Cambridge) research fellowship for the purpose of investigating the life and work of David Rubio.

▪ bio current as of 2015

In Memoriam: Jim Forderer

2016
AL#128 p.65               read this article
James Westbrook   John Doan                                                                                       

▪ Guild members knew Jim Forderer as the guy who brought an RV full of important antique guitars to the GAL Conventions and let us play them. Disabilities advocates and Neil Young fans knew him as the co-founder of The Bridge School. Sometimes the angels don’t look like angels. Maybe all the time.

The Creation of the American X Braced Guitar: A British Perspective

2015
AL#121 p.4               
James Westbrook                                                                                           

▪ The emergence of the X-braced steel string as the quintessential American guitar was the big pop-music story of the 20th century, as well as the cultural foundation for the American Lutherie Boom a few decades later. The Martin company made the first American X-braced guitars in the 1840s.

Construction Methods of Early Spanish Guitarreros

2014
AL#118 p.38               
James Westbrook                                                                                           

▪ So the “Spanish method” is to build a guitar face-down and put the back on last, right? Well, maybe not. Some older Spanish guitars appear to have had the tops put on last, based on clues like glue drips and the fitting of back braces. Also, tiny filled holes indicate that they may have been nailed into molds during construction.

Meet the Collectors: Forderer and Westbrook

2008
AL#94 p.18               
Cyndy Burton   Jim Forderer   James Westbrook                                                                                   

▪ As presented in this interview, Jim Forderer and Jim Westbrook are both collectors of guitars of the 19th century, a time period which included the development of the classical guitar. But most of their examples are about the evolution of that instrument and not about the finished post-Torres species. They are unique individuals with strange and wonderful tastes in guitars. With 17 photos and a dendrochronological analysis of the top of a very early Martin guitar.

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

Questions: Cypress Spanish Guitar

2007
AL#91 p.69               
R.E. Brune   James Westbrook                                                                                       

▪ What does one do with a historical instrument that has been badly treated?, in this case a Cypress Spanish guitar made by Santos Hernandez in 1919, given a glossy paint job, then stripped and sanded in the 1970s.

Questions: Crownless Frets

2007
AL#89 p.67               
James Westbrook   R.M. Mottola                                                                                       

▪ A source for fret wire in repairing an old guitar in which the frets are thin flat bars on their sides with barbs at the bottom.