Roman Barnas is the Head Instructor of the Violin Department at the North Bennet Street School, Boston.  He was born in Zakopane, Poland and entered the Secondary School of Fine Arts in Zakopane at the age of 14, when he first began making violins. He went on to the Paderewski Academy of Music in Poznan, Poland, where he studied music and violinmaking for five more years. Roman came to the U.S. in 1996 to work at Psariano’s Violins in Troy, Michigan. He studied violin making in with Boyd Poulsen and violin restoration with Hans Nebel. He plays violin, accordian and double bass.

www.nbss.org

this info updated 2007

Seven-year GAL member Pete Barthell trained as a mechanical engineer at Michigan State, Northwestern, and University of Michigan, then spent forty-one years in electrical manufacturing. He built his first guitar in 1976. It flew apart. He's now working on classical #140 in the rural wilds of the Olympic Peninsula.

www.barthellguitars.com/

this info updated 2008

Six-year Guild member Michael Bashkin builds and repairs guitars full-time in Fort Collins, CO. Before lutherie he was a soil scientist for the U.S. Forest Service. Before that he hiked the Continental Divide Trail from Mexico to Canada for apparently no good reason.

www.bashkinguitars.com/

this info updated 2002

Mark Bass is a freelance writer living in Atlanta whose forty-hour-a-week hobby is building Bouchet-braced classic guitars.

this info updated 1998

Alexander Batov is an established maker and restorer of early plucked and bowed instruments.

www.vihuelademano.com/

this info updated 2006

Fred Battershell makes a great variety of instruments including dulcimers, viols, psalteries, hurdy gurdies, and crwths. He has been a member for twenty-five of the last twenty-eight years, and has written a number of reviews for our pages.

this info updated 1987

Scott Baxendale has been there, done that, picked himself up and done it again.  He currently builds and repairs guitars with his son John.

www.baxendaleguitars.com/

this info updated 2007

Four-year GAL member Bill Beadie spends most of his days figuring out how to make it safe to breathe the air in industrial settings. On the side, he studies guitar making with John Greven, :the best guitar maker ever."

this info updated 2005

Ten-year GAL member Allan Beardsell is a former student of Sergei DeJonge who builds steel string, nylon string, and electric guitars, plus the odd mandolin.  And the even odder historical guitar.  He wasted his teens and twenties as a musician, and turned to guitar making as a way to get guitars cheap.  Realizing his mistake, he started selling them to support the habit.  He is the current provincial fencing champion in mens Epee, and plays in a kick-ass rock band, the DeadBeatles.

this info updated 2007

Twelve-year Guild member Tobias Berg built his first guitar in the same year that he joined the GAL. A year later he left his native country of Sweden to study classical guitar making in Canada, England, and the USA, finally settling in Germany. When he is not building guitars, he enjoys a walk in the woods with his wife and tending his Bonsai trees outside the workshop.

www.berg-guitars.de/

this info updated 2006

Twenty-eight-year member and retired electrician Ted Beringer saw a Fender being played in 1950, decided he could build that, and kept doing it. In 1982 Johnny Smith came to Billings, and his music inspired Ted to build archtops. He also builds flattops, nylon strings, and mandolins, all with an unconventional flair.

this info updated 2003

Ted passed away in 2006, read his memoriam.

Four-year GAL member Mark Berry has been making furniture for over twenty-five years, and guitars for the last six. Mark has trained with Harry Fleishman as a number of other fine luthiers. He plays guitar with Sol Flamenco, a local flamenco troupe.

www.markberryguitars.com/

this info updated 2007

Seven-year member and first-time author Manny Bettencourt is a full-time electric guitar and amplifier repairman with degrees in music an delectronics.

this info updated 1991

We welcome firt time author Ed Beylerian!

this info updated 1990

Twelve-year GAL member Alain Bieber was born in Paris and worked on large transportation projects in France and Europe as a civil engineer for forty years. He worked on a PhD in Berkeley, CA for three years in spite of musical (and other) distractions. A lifelong committed and ungifted guitar player, he started lutherie in 1996 at his retirement as a consolation. He says that it works.

this info updated 2011

Welcome first-time author Åke Björnstad!

this info updated 1992

Tom Blackshear started building guitars 50 years ago along with playing the flamenco guitar, and he has never lost his love for the romantic charms of Spain. He takes a leadership role in Internet chat groups, and shares his knowledge freely, along with his guitar building schedule. Tom has been a GAL member for twenty-four of the last twenty-nine years.

tguitars.home.texas.net/index.htm

this info updated 2008

Formerly employed as a colonial Williamsburg gunsmith, Nicholas Blanton has been building adn playing hammered dulcimers since 1977, full time since '81. he founded the short-lived Trapezoid Instruments in '83 with Sam Rizzetta and Paul Reisler.

home.earthlink.net/~updf/nbi/

this info updated 1992

Twelve-year GAL member Jim Blilie builds steel string and classical guitars, plus a few violins, resonator guitars, ukes, and mandocellos. He has been a structural/mechanical engineer for over twenty-five years, working for Boeing, the FAA, Northwest Airlines, and Guidant Corporation. He also enjoys muscle-powered fun in the outdoors with his family, and good food, wine, and beer.

www.barbarossa-guitars.com/

this info updated 2009

First time author Roberto Blinder is a twenty-seven-year Guild member and a master watchmaker.

this info updated 1990

Five-year GAL member Brian Boedigheimer teaches guitar repair at Minnesota State College - Southeast Technical in Red Wing, MN. Unusual among guitar makers, he loves instrument finishing Ä all kinds. He also plays terrible golf, but loves it, too.

www.redwingmusicrepair.org

this info updated 2006

Seven-year GAL member Ralph Bonte was born and is still living in Bruges (Belgium) where he works in a psychiatric hospital. He builds and repairs guitars, and lately has a special fondness for Weissenborns and ukes. He’s the lead singer of the Belgian blues band Hideaway and founder of the gospel choir Soul Spirit. In June 2010 Ralph won the coveted lutherie prize “de Gouden bootschaaf” (“the Golden fingerplane”.)

www.arrenbieguitars.be/

this info updated 2010

Fourteen-year GAL member Paul Bordeaux got his start in lutherie in 1981 with only a Les Paul guitar and his dad's tools, then worked at Carruthers Guitars in the late '80s. He specializes in custom inlays and designs for builders, but also for players around the world. That's his son Josh in the photo.

www.bordeauxinlay.com/

this info updated 2008

Ten-year member Julius Borges is a sometime employee at Bourgeois Guitars, and is currently building guitars for Schoenburg. He likes to fly fish and has a wife and two kids and no time for anything else.

www.borgesguitars.com/

this info updated 1997

Eight-year member Brett Borton is a first-time authro, although you have seen his cartoons in past issues of American Lutherie.

this info updated 1989

Brett passed away in 1993

Violinmaker George Borun is a central figure in the Southern California Association of Violin Makers.

www.scavm.com/

this info updated 1993

Welcome three-year member and first-time author J.E. Boser!

this info updated 1993

www.pantheonguitars.com/

this info updated 2011

Chris Brandt is the owner/operator of Portland's long-running guitar repair shop, The Twelfth Fret.

the12thfret.com/

this info updated 1991

 Twenty-two-year GAL member Wes Brandt makes and repairs guitars, gambas and mandolins in Portland, Oregon.

www.brandtviols.com/
www.brandtguitars.com/

this info updated 2008

Welcome first-time author Mark Brantley!

this info updated 2004

After studying German literature and journalism in college, Tobias Braun soon turned his attention to making classical guitars. A three-week course with José Luis Romanillos in 1984 was a turning point, and he studied with Romanillos three more times over the next eight years. He lives and works in the Vienna Woods.

this info updated 2008

Michael Breid, a Guild member thirteen of the last twenty-four years, lives in the Ozark mountains where he has been repairing stringed instruments since 1968. He's been a staff musician at a local musical stage show for the last twenty years, and likes to fly fish and feed the wild deer, foxes, and raccoons that visit him frequently.

this info updated 2004

Violin builder, Irish music and dance enthusiast, and backpacker Duane Brewer was among the first students in the violin-building program at Boston's North Bennet Street School. After six years in Paul Schuback's shop he is on his own, living and building near the beautiful Blue Mountains in northeast Oregon.

this info updated 2001

Mike Brittain began working with wood in 1970. He was a GAL member from 1978 through 1984, during which time he built guitars late into the night as a hobby while running a cabinet shop and raising a family. After selling the growing cabinet panel processing business in 2000, he happily returned to guitar making and GAL membership with a more relaxed feeling of devotion.

this info updated 2008

John Bromka and his wife Sondra are minstrels going by the name of Bells & Motley Consort.

www.bellsandmotley.com/

this info updated 1992

Welcome first-time author and new member Bob Brook!

www.rnbrookwoodworking.com/Luthier/Luthier%20home.htm

this info updated 2008

Thirty-one-year member Todd Brotherton life's loves are his wife Peg, dogs, fine woodwork - furniture making and lutherie, great Northern Italian espresso, vintage BMW motorcycles and woodworking machinery, rural life in the mountains.............. and the Guild, of course.

www.toddbrotherton.com/

this info updated 2008

Twenty-one-year member Lawrence K. Brown has been a full-time professional maker of lutes and guitars since 1978, and is a former member of the Board of Directors of the Lute Society of America. Don't confuse him with Lawrence D. Brown, a longtime GAL member and author and also, by odd coincidence, a lute maker.

www.lkbrownviolins.com/

this info updated 1997

Kendall Brubaker just graduated from Purdue with a degree in Mechanical Engineering Technology.  He learned to make classical guitars in Mark French's class and is interested in making thin body acoustic-electrics.  Apparently fearing commitment, he has accepted a job with an investment fund and hopes to continue making guitars as a hobby.

www.kendallbrubaker.com/

this info updated 2007

Richard Bruné was on the Guild’s very first membership list in 1972. He’s a GAL founding member, a former Guild president and board member, the organizer of our 1975 convention, a frequent author, and a lecturer at several past conventions. He is also a classic guitar maker and dealer, flamenco artist, and a recent grandpa.

www.rebrune.com/

this info updated 2011

www.mebrune.com/

this info updated 2006

Erstwhile GAL member G. Howard Bryan restores harps at H. Bryan & Co. Harpmakers (www.hbryan.com). He's also a retired Marine officer and engineer who worked in the pharmaceutical and nuclear power industries.

www.hbryan.com/

this info updated 2004

Since completing his doctorate in classical guitar performance, sixteen-year GAL member James Buckland has become happily married, a homeowner, and a naturalized U.S. citizen. He’s immersed in guitar as a performer, professor, and luthier. Jim also runs, makes guns and beer, and attempts to improve his Olympic free-pistol technique.

www.presby.edu/music/BucklandJames.html

this info updated 2011

Frank Bulgar is a member of BASSIC and a maker of electric and archtop guitars.

this info updated 1994

When not making guitars and museum-quality jigs, seventeen-year GAL member Géza Burghardt and his wife Tini like to canoe the wild Canadian waters. Géza used to build canoes back in Hungary.

this info updated 2011

Brian Burns came under the influence of engineers at a tender age. He does a lot of number crunching during the building process, but insists that it's the player's Thrill-O-Meter reading that determines the success of an instrument. He makes classical and flamenco guitars and teaches guitar making in scenic Fort Bragg, California.

www.lessonsinlutherie.com/

this info updated 2006

Chris Burt lives, works, and plays on the North Olympic Peninsula, where he's serious about taking life less seriously. When he's not enjoying the beauty of making and playing mandolins, he's hanging out with his wife, cat, horses, or the neighbors' dogs. He can often be found riding Mai, his Icelandic mare, somewhere along the Straits of Juan de Fuca.

this info updated 2006

Twenty-eight-year member Cyndy Burton is a classic guitar maker, a contributing editor for American Lutherie, and a past convention lecturer. She's especially interested in French polish and other environmentally-friendly finishes.

this info update 2007

As a teenager, Ron Bushman built an object that looked like a guitar from 1/8” mahogany plywood and a 4x4 from his dad’s garage. He went on to build a number of legitimate classical and flamenco guitars during the 60’s. For the next 25 years he put aside building to pursue career and family. During his successful mechanical engineering career, Ron was awarded over 125 patents for machinery and processes in the food processing industry. In the mid 90’s, he attended several ASL classes to refresh and refine his skills. Last year, he retired from the engineering career to devote much more time to his passion for building.

this info updated 2007

Twenty-four-year member Greg Byers has been building classical guitars ever since he discovered they didn't just come from stores. He lives and works in a home he built for himself, one filled with a musical family.

www.byersguitars.com/

this info updated 2009

Nine-year GAL member Bruce Calder unfortunately lets his day job get in the way of making guitars. He is hoping to increase his output from one every two years to two every one year.

this info updated 2005

Graham Caldersmith started out studying the reentry dynamics of spacecraft, but ended up studying the acoustic dynamics of guitars and violins. He has been a member of GAL since 1982, and lectured at the 1982 and 1998 conventions. His recent focus has been on developing a classical guitar family and refining the sound of violins made in Australian tonewoods.

www.caldersmithguitars.com/

this info updated 2010

American Lutherie contributing editor John Calkin continues to search for life's meaning in rural Virginia. "I thought I had it figured out, but the Tao backtracked on me and got away," he roports.

www.jcalkinguitars.com/
www.johncalkin.com/

this info updated 2007

Fred Campbell is a familiar face a GAL conventions, and has been a member for over fourteen years. With over 35 years experience in lutherie, Fred is considered a Master Finisher and Luthier. Doing business as F.W. Campbell & Sons in San Jose, California, Fred had clients from around the globe seeking his guitar finishing services and consultation. He is currently working with Tom Ribbecke at RGC in Healdsburg, California.

this info updated 2009

Mark Campellone has been involved with repairing, designing and building guitars since 1978. He has been building traditional style acoustic archtop guitars exclusively since 1991 and has earned a reputation as one the prominent builders in his field.

www.mcampellone.com

this info updated 2007

Like The Duke in the movie The Shootist, Steve Card is willin’. He’s willin’ to try things others will not, so he’s willin’ to make musical instruments. He succeeds more often than not, through persistence and blissful ignorance. He loves and thanks his teachers, but is not attached to their methods. He has no Facebook page (he’s in the Witless Protection Program), so an e-mail address will have to do.

www.mrriosoguitars.com

this info updated 2010

Fernando Cardoso makes guitars and violins in a beautiful, centuries-old section of Brazil's original capital city, Salvador.

this info updated 2001

Seven-year Guild member Dorothy Carlson is a maker and repairer of violin family instruments with Hammond Ashley Associates.

www.hammondashley.com/

this info updated 1992

Thirty-two-year GAL member Fred Carlson grew up in rural Vermont, living for twenty years on a commune of woodworkers and musicians; making instruments seemed like the thing to do. Thirty-five years later on the other side of the continent, it still does. He's currently building 39-string Harp Sympitars, and grafting fruit trees in his copious free time.

www.beyondthetrees.com/

this info updated 2008

Bonnie Carol has built, written about, and performed upon mountain and hammered dulcimers for three and a half decades. She has recently teamed up with luthier Max Krimmel (www.MaxKrimmel.com) to expand her dulcimer building work. One of her choice gigs is as organizer of Moons and Tunes wilderness rafting trips where all participants bring instruments and jam down the river. She and Max also play African marimba and Max built their set of eight marimbas from the small sopranino to the huge fan bass (www.maxkrimmel.com/Marimba/MarimbaMain.htm)

www.bonniecarol.com/
bonniecarol.com/hirebonnie.html#ZebraMarimba

this info updated 2008

Please welcome first-time author Curt Carpenter, a maker of solidbody guitars and he has been a Guild member for eighteen of the last twenty years.

this info updated 1992

Randal Carr is a two-year Guild member.

this info updated 1994

Thirty-year Guild member Alan Carruth has many GAL writing and speaking credits. He is a lutherie teacher and a maker of many types of instruments.

www.alcarruthluthier.com/

this info updated 2009

Walter Carter is the former historian for the Gibson Company and author of seven books on vintage guitars and guitar companies.

this info updated 2010

Keith Cary is a six-year Guild Member.

this info updated 1994

Thirty-three-year Guild member Fred Casey built his first dulcimer back in 1978 and studied with Božo Podunovac in 1980. Fred has lately been building a lot of ukuleles and has become an enthusiastic practitioner of Hawaiian slack-key guitar.

www.cfcaseyguitars.com/

this info updated 2011

Twenty-year GAL member Kerry Char repairs and restores fine acoustic instruments and still finds time to build classical, flamenco, and steel string guitars, not to mention Weissenborns and ukes. He has a special interest in and reputation for his work on harp guitars Ä restoring them, and building replicas of wonderful old Dyers and Knutsons.

www.charguitars.com

this info updated 2008

French guitar expert François Charle is a new Guild member.

www.rfcharle.com/

this info updated 1992

Seven-year GAL member Ralph S. Charles III devoted his career to forestry. He's a first-time GAL author.

this info updated 2005

Sergio Huerta Chávez began formal study of guitar, cello, and vocal music at a young age. He then entered the Escuela de Lauderia and studied the construction of viola, cello, and viola da gamba there for five years, graduating in 1992 and opening his own shop in 1993.

this info updated 2001

Swiss luthier Ermanno Chiavi, a guitar maker since 1985 and a Guild member since 1995, has developed unconventional guitars in various sizes, tunings, and string counts. With the Zurich University for Technology, he is researching the acoustics of classical guitars. Ermanno has been teaching classes for many years, including repair and construction courses.

www.chiaviguitars.com/

this info updated 2005

Ten-year Guild member John Chipura is a first time author.

this info updated 1990

Bradley Clark was once an art student with a strong interest in science and engineering. He found himself re-engineering Australia's Maton Guitar's production and indeed their business. He feels that many aspects of guitar making can be simplified, given advances in technology. His late father would have said "Give it a go, you mug." At Cole Clark Guitars, he has.

www.coleclarkguitars.com/

this info updated 2005

(Sometime GAL member) Old-school Spanish guitar maker and GAL convention lecturer Eugene Clark does a little teaching at home, and is always willing to reply to questions.  He is not sure how many guitars he has made, but he is certain of thirteen grandchildren.

this info updated 2005

Jim Clay has been building on a hobby level since 1978 when his wife Susan gave him a plank of padouk and Irving Sloane's book for a wedding present. A self-confessed ``tool junkie,'' Jim has recently started "Jim Clay Custom Banjos" and is making openback banjos in Calgary, Alberta. When he told Judy Threet that he was making banjos, her  tongue in cheek response was " Banjos?, that's not lutherie, all that hardware, that's plumbing !!"  Jim plays guitar, banjo, mandolin, and dulcimer, and he has two wonderful kids, Julia, and Thomas.

www.members.shaw.ca/jimclay/

this info updated 2000

Bishop Cochran, a ten year Guild member, is now a guitarist and songwriter living in Spain.   He has been a designer of guitars and amps, and he is the  designer and manufacturer of the first plunge router base for the Dremel tools.  He has designed many tools for both Allied Lutherie and LMI. His router bases are currently listed at Allied Lutherie  and sold through the shop in Portland, Oregon and Bishop's website.

www.bishopcochran.com/

this info updated 2008

Lutenist, amateur luthier, and ten-year GAL member Ben Cohen started building wind and percussion instruments from plumbing supplies while in college, inspired by Bart Hopkin’s brilliant quarterly journal Experimental Musical Instruments (www.windworld.com). Ben runs a klezmer band, plays in a Jewgrass band and a Baroque trio, and keeps his day job.

this info updated 2010

Fifteen-year GAL member Dave Cohen built his first mandolin in 1973 while a graduate student at Florida State U. He taught college chemistry and did research in Richmond, Virginia from 1974 to 2003. He returned to lutherie in 1997, and in 1999 began a collaboration with Dr. Tom Rossing, researching the physics of mandolin family instruments.

www.cohenmando.com/

this info updated 2010

Erick Coleman started as a repair student of Dan Erlewine. Soon after, he was hired by Stewart-MacDonald as their technical advisor. With Stew-Mac, he handles technical and quality control issues, co-writes the Trade Secrets articles with Dan and is part of the R&D team. He also operates his own shop, United Lutherie, in an old Oddfellows lodge in Jacksonville, Ohio along with luthier Gene Imbody.

www.guitarrepairman.com/

this info updated 2009

The elusive Bill Collings is a shy and gentle creature of the Texas desert. He was spotted at GAL conventions in 1977 and 1978, although the astute luthiologist will note that at that time he was wearing the longer plumage of the starving artist/craftsman.

www.collingsguitars.com/home.htm

this info updated 2008

Mandolin Magazine columnist, Fine Woodworking author, regular American Lutherie contributor, and a GAL member for a total of twelve years, James Condino has been building instruments for over thirty years. He’s also a serious outdoorsman who guides whitewater expeditions and takes fine guitars and mandolins to volcanic summits.

jazzmando.com/field_testing.shtml
www.condino.com/

this info updated 2011

Michael Cone built his first classical guitar forty-two years ago and became a member of the Guild at its inception. He is currently engaged in the development of analysis systems that optimize structures that vibrate, including musical instruments, though vuvuzelas may prove too challenging.

www.coneguitar.com/

this info updated 2010

Nine-year Guild member Marc Connelly is an amateur luthier who has built about five guitars a year since 1998 with the help of GAL reference materials and the network of kindred spirits that is the GAL membership. Marc is a thirty-year veteran advertising agency art director, sits on the Board of Directors for the Hydroplane & Raceboat Museum, and is a principal member of the deck crew/restoration crew of the 1982 Atlas Van Lines and the Slo Mo V.

this info 2005

Thirteen-year member and established classical guitar maker Stephan Connor recalls that when he first got the fever to build a guitar, Richard Brun‚ recommended he join the GAL. He soon received a back issue reviewing lutherie schools which led him to study with David Freeman of Timeless instruments. Seems the Guild was “instrumental” to his career.

www.connorguitars.com/

this info updated 2008

Ray Cowell, sixty-two, started his working life in the coal mines and retired after twenty-five years of running his own paint-industry business. He made his first electric guitar in the early ’70s, and in retirement he discovered the ukulele. He asked for uke-building help via the Internet. Luthier Tom Johnson lives close by, and answered. Now they are firm friends.

this info updated 2011

Richard Craven is a eleven-year Guild Member.

this info updated 1994

Twelve-year GAL member Bruce Creps started his tonewood business in 1999, incidental to what he thought would be a new career in lutherie.  He still hopes to dabble when he and his wife finish building their small passive-solar house.  Bruce transports shipments under 100 lbs. via bicycle trailer, and deducts bicycle costs as a business expense.

www.notablewoods.com

this info updated 2007

William R. Cumpiano, a professional luthier for forty years, coauthored the bestselling textbook Guitarmaking: Tradition & Technology. He is a founder of the Association of Stringed Instrument Artisans and the Puerto Rican Cuatro Project, and a contributor to Acoustic Guitar and Guitar Player magazines as well as the defunct Journal of Guitar Acoustics. His current studio, Becker & Cumpiano Stringed Instruments is located in Northampton, Massachusetts, where he makes guitars individually, teaches, and researches Latin American stringed instruments.

www.cumpiano.com

this info updated 2006

Joseph Curtin completed his first violin in 1978 under the guidance of Hungarian maker Otto Erdesz. He subsequently worked as a maker in Toronto, Paris, and Cremona. In 1985 he moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he and Gregg T. Alf established the firm of Curtin & Alf. Curtin opened his own studios in 1997. He has worked with French research scientist Charles Besnainou in developing high-quality instruments using graphite composites. He is currently building a series of prototype “ultra-light” violins and violas that explore the possibilities for the instruments’ further ergonomic, acoustical, and aesthetic evolution. He is also collaborating with physicist Gabriel Weinreich in developing an electric violin that uses real-time digital filters to reproduce the sound of specific Old Italian instruments. Over the past four years, Curtin developed and brought to market the Impact Hammer Rig – a sophisticated tool for measuring violin sound in a workshop setting. Along with researcher Fan Tao, Curtin is founder and co-director of the VSA Oberlin Acoustics Workshop, and he has lectured on the art and science of violin making at universities and professional associations throughout America and Europe.

www.josephcurtinstudios.com/

this info updated 2008

John Curtis is a partner in Luthier's Mercantile, a founding member of WARP, and a world traveler on behalf of the world's dwindling supplies of tropical hardwoods.

this info updated 1993