Official Luthiers Forum!

If you are in the Los Angeles / Orange County area, we have guitarmaking classes starting in January after the NAMM show.

Steel string classes are taught by Eric Nichols, a guitarmaker for nearly 20 years and a former Guitarmaking instructor at Orange Coast College.

Classic guitarmaking classes are taught by Monica Esparza, who has studied with Jose Romanillos in his masterclasses in Siguenza, Spain.

Check out the website under "Classes"

 

That would be www.simscal.com

 

 

[QUOTE=Kent Chasson] This assumes of course that, like the potato chip commercial, you can't stop with one. Has anyone only built one guitar and been done?

[/QUOTE]

Kent, I know a guy who built two and then quit building. But... he's not dead yet, nor retired.

Ever heard of the elusive Ivory-Billed Cuckoo sighting in Arkansas? This is the guy, our resident expert with the Game and Fish Commission.

I checked his wrist, amazingly, he still has a pulse.

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http://www.dickeyguitars.com

I went through Frank Finnochio's school which was a one week course. During the week, I built a guitar. The tips and tricks I picked up during that week leapfrogged my career by years. I highly reccomend taking a class or going to a school.

By the way, I tried the stewmac kits first. I'm not too proud of any of those. The reason is mostly because I missed alot of details (like keeping everything on center) and the guitars were WAY overbraced too.

You can build a good sounding and looking guitar with a kit. I'm sure everybody here will help you along too. Pictures of your problems help us to understand what is frustration you and also helps us give tips to make your guitar sound as good as it looks.

 

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Reguards,

Ken H

If it's practical, time and money wise, I would go with a class, provided it is a good class. But, if you had asked me before I took a class, I would have probably answered differently. It seemed like too much time and money to invest. It really isn't that hard to build a guitar. It's just hard, or takes a lot of skill and knowledge, to build a good one.

I'm a little too impatient to spend much time reading the books, or even the internet. I would be out sawing wood before the end of the chapter.

A couple of months ago I took Charles Fox's class Contemporary Guitar Making. It clarified the whole process and provided the answers to questions I hadn't thought of yet. For me, there was nothing like seeing how a task is done with the opportunity to ask questions and have things repeated and explained to help me learn and remember.

The Fox class I took was not a build a guitar class. It was about building and covered the whole process, but a guitar wasn't built. In fact, Charles said that in his build a guitar class he doesn't have time to go over the process in as much detail as his Contemporary Guitar class. They are too busy building to do much explaining.

I choose the demonstartion class because I did not want to spend time and money doing the 90% of the building that I am already comfortable with. The course was a bargain for me because it focused more on an expert's approach and allowed a lot of time to focus on the areas the students wanted to learn more about.

An example for me was his method of joining the neck to the body. His simple method of using a butt joint and a couple of jigs to set the neck angle made perfect sense compared to the methods I had picked up from the books.

People learn differently. What works for me, or anyone else, might not be the best approach for you. The Fox course was right on target for me and was the right mix of time and money for what I was able to learn.

Joe Volin