A guide to the website

This site can go in different directions for folks interested in various aspects of bowed and fretted instruments, history, maintenance, repair and so on. Not to mention music and other such things. For example:
❖ My work with bowed instruments		❖ My work with plectrum and other instruments

❖ Some of my thoughts on bowed instrument care		❖ How I learned, and a bit about my background

Repair techniques and tips		I recommend that you visit www.frets.com, a marvelous and enormous site put together by my old friend Frank Ford, over in Palo Alto. Much of what I have here on my site is merely ancillary to what he has on his site.
Violin related: Violin and bowed instrument care A page about cutting nuts And a page about the files I use to do that with Here's a piece about spruce Herewith, a couple of approaches to repairing broken scrolls and necks on bowed instruments, mainly basses and cellos. This is banjo-specific, but it explains the general concept of afterlength An historical review of important violinmakers A bit about plywood in acoustic instruments What is grain runout, you ask? violin bridge wood grain orientation	Fretted instrument related: Here's more than you cared to know about spruce A chart with the main available fretwires in the US Tuner maintenance - reviving old ones and new ones too Saddle angle, intonation and compensation in steelstring guitars Mandolin (and guitar) gear direction About cutting nuts And the files I use to do that with On how the 14-fret guitar evolved from the 12-fret ancestors Scales, bridge placement, and so on and so forth About packing, shipping, and flying with guitars About certain Gotoh mandolin gears On replacing Gibson bridges with adjustable saddles How to finesse bridgepins How cam clamps on old Gibson pickguards are supposed to work On fitting and adjusting mandolin and archtop guitar bridges This is banjo-specific, but it explains the general concept of afterlength A bit about laminated wood in acoustic instruments On neck straightening with heat (with caveats!) About some resophonic mandolins I made some years back What is grain runout, you ask?
The SCGC Model H This link leads to a cluster of pages about one of my favorite guitars.		Selmer guitars Those marvelous Franco-Italian things that get used for Gypsy Swing and more.

For many years, my main man in Paris has been François Charle. He has a marvelous operation going there called R&F Charle, comprising a shop offering lutherie and restoration, a lot of very cool instruments, and an astonishing amount of information.

A link to Djangobooks.com, which I think is the best single place to get information about the burgeoning gypsy jazz scene, with forums, ads, reviews, you name it.

A vanished site about possibly the most influential luthier of the 20th century, Luigi Mozzani.

Mozzani's
shop, 1906, with cutaway guitars!

How-to stuff, cont'd

How to make your own flatpicks and the wonders of garish plastic picks

Questions?

I often receive inquiries from folks wondering where they can learn guitarmaking, violinmaking and so on. When I began, there was virtually nothing available, so it was often a case of the blind leading the blind. Now we have an embarrassment of riches, in terms of books, videos, journals, luthier's guilds, schools, seminars and so forth. Probably the most significant advance in information is the internet.

Online Forums which really work:

Frets.net — hosted by Frank Ford
Mandolin Café — civilized and populated by a great many real experts
The Unofficial Martin Guitar Forum — vast and sometimes messy, but civilized too
Maestronet — for the violin crowd

To participate, you will need to register for each of these, of course. These are really the only public ones I find useful.

Organizations you should know about

There are three luthier's organizations I belong to and heartily endorse. One is approximately west coast, a non-profit, tax-exempt educational organization, another is approximately east coast and touts itself as a "Professional Luthier Organization," though many people - professional and otherwise - belong to both. The third one focuses entirely on bowed instruments, and now encloses the Catgut Acoustical Society. Each has occasional conventions, and produces journals.

Guild of American Luthiers GAL 8222 South Park Avenue Tacoma, WA 98408 Publication: American Lutherie http://www.luth.org	Association of Stringed Instrument Artisans ASIA asiartisans.org Publication: Guitarmaker
	The Violin Society of America VSA 48 Academy Street Poughkeepsie, NY 12601 Publication: Journal of the Violin Society Email: membership@vsa.to http://www.vsa.to/

The GAL site has a great list of schools and resources for
learning various aspects of lutherie here: www.luth.org/resources/schools

These are a few of my favorite luthiers, including some shops

Drop me a line or something: click here