David Macias is a thirty-one-year Guild member, a Flamenco guitarist, and a maker of Flamenco and classic guitars.

maciasguitars.com/

this info updated 1987

Head tool guru at Stew-Mac, twenty-nine year member Don MacRostie is responsible for many of the fine tools and products that luthiers use. He is also the builder of Red Diamond mandolins.

redd.macrostie.org/

this info updated 2008

Nineteen-year Guild member Dave Maize began making guitars in 1975. For the last six years he has built acoustic bass guitars. He sells instrument wood and enjoys playing music and backpacking.

www.maizeguitars.com/

this info updated 1998

“Uncle” George Majkowski is a retired electronics and computer engineer, a flamenco guitarist, and a student of and collaborator with deceased Kasha guitar builder extrordinaire, Richard Schneider.

this info updated 1999

George passed away 2002, read his memoriam.

Violinmaker George Manno is a frequent past author.

this info updated 1990

Twenty-seven year Guild member Linda Manzer has been building flattop and archtop guitars since 1974. Early in her career she studied with master luthiers Jean Larrivée and the late James D’Aquisto. Her guitars have been displayed in the Smithsonian, Canada's Museum of Civilization, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

www.manzer.com/guitars/

this info updated 2008

Edward Margerum is an unemployed chemist and scholar who is now vicariously living a lutherie career through his daughter Alice, a Guild member currently studying early fretted instrument construction at City of London Polytechnic, formerly London College of Furniture.

this info updated 1992

Four-year GAL member Lloyd Marsden got his initial education in practical woodworking growing up on a wheat and cattle ranch. A degree in mechanical engineering lead to work in mining equipment design. He built his first guitar using books by Young and Sloane. More recently he has studied with Harry Fleishman. ``My wife patiently supports my hobby,'' he reports.

this info updated 2004

Pat Marshall makes violins and bass viols.

this info updated 1989

Twenty-nine year GAL member C.F. Martin IV is the scion of America's foremost guitar-making family, with over one million instruments to its credit and artist endorsements from here to the moon and back. Twice.

www.martinguitar.com

this info updated 2007

While growing up in a heritage that combined fine arts on his mother's side and naval architecture on his father's side, Doug Martin's interests also branched to model aircraft and stringed musical instruments. Already experienced in woodwork, Doug began making violin family instruments in 1957 at age 13. He has been experimenting with violins since the late 1960s while making a living in small–boat design and building.

www.echorowing.com/index.html

this info updated 2007

Manuel Bernal Martínez is a professor of music at the Javeriana University and Fine Arts Faculty in Bogotá, Colombia, specializing in regional and popular Colombian music and instruments. He began working with GAL member Luis Alberto Paredes in 1990 to develop a superior model of the Colombian Andean bandola, and in 2003 they began to develop a bandola family of instruments. Manuel performed at the 2008 GAL Convention as a member of the bandola quartet Perendengue.

this info updated 2008

Michihiro Matsuda was born in Japan. After graduating from the Robert-Venn School of Lutherie, he moved to the San Francisco Bay Area for an apprenticeship with master luthier Ervin Somogyi. Following his apprenticeship, He studied guitar repair with renowned instrument repairman Frank Ford. Pairing traditional woodworking skills with an innovative sense of design, he builds around ten guitars each year.

www.matsudaguitars.com/

this info updated 2008

Twelve-year Guild member Kathy Matsushita has been busy in the free time away from her high school English classes making mostly guitars, but also a harp, a dulcimer, a mandolin, a fiddle, and what-have-you. Sharing her knowledge through her websites that chronicle her successes and challenges as an amateur luthier has brought a wealth of information and inspiration to others. And she's well trained in can opening by Maggie and Emily.

home.comcast.net/~kathymatsushita

this info updated 2003

Michael McCarten has been an artist/craftsman since childhood, being inspired by his artist grandmother and his carpenter grandfather. He has been working on stringed instruments since 1979, and at an increasingly higher level since happily joining the GAL in 1997. He is a proud person who is humbled and exhilarated by the diverse group of high caliber people willing to share their knowledge of lutherie.

www.mccartenltd.com/

this info updated 2010

Five-year GAL member John McCarthy is a certified aircraft mechanic as well as a classically-trained violinist and guitarist and a former professor of painting and fabric doping.

this info updated 2004

Guitar maker and perennial convention attendee Bill McCaw is an eighteen-year member.

this info updated 1989

And now, luthiers and gentlemen, the last debutante author on our alphabetical list, presenting new member Rick McCollum!

this info updated 1992

Fourteen-year GAL member Graham McDonald has attended three GAL conventions (despite living on the opposite side of the globe) and has been a presenter at two of them. He's the author of a book on a building Irish bouzoukis and another on building mandolins.

www.mcdonaldstrings.com/

this info updated 2009

Paul McGill was a way-rad downhill skier until he became entraped in lutherie work. Sure, he's making beautiful instruments for big-name players, but now instead of the wind whistling through his hair he hears the wind whistling through the dust collector ducts. But it doesn't whistle very loud, because he did such a good job building the system.

www.mcgillguitars.com/

this info updated 1999

First-time Guild author Bruce McGuire was an apprentice of the late Art Overholtzer, and is a luthier and a lutherie teacher.

this info updated 1993

Dublin, Ireland native and five-year Guild member Jim McLean moved to Canada when he was sixteen, in 1971. Today he is married, teaches grade school, and builds acoustic guitars and Irish bouzoukis.

this info updated 2001

Woodcutter Steve McMinn is has been a Guild member seventeen of the last twenty years and a past convention panelist.

this info updated 1993

Nine-year member Ellis McMullin decided to do something "constructive" when his wife gave him a classical guitar made by Del Langejans for his sixtieth birthday. He mentioned to Del that he thought he could make one. Del's replied, "When you finish it, let me take a look."' Ellis did just that, and now makes guitars! Thank you, Del, for your suggestions and time.

this info updated 2006

Welcome first-time author and four-year member Robert Mead!

this info updated 1996

Sixteen-year GAL member Ted Megas eventually combined his backgrounds as a guitar player and a furniture maker by becoming a guitar maker. He chose to specialize in archtop because it was the guitar that he enjoyed most and that offered the greatest challenge.

www.megasguitars.com/

this info updated 2010

After studying with Richard Schneider and Jeffrey Elliott in the ’70s, eleven-year member John Mello has built, restored, repaired, and sold guitars in the San Francisco area for thirty-two years, during fifteen of which he eschewed guitar construction in favor of a mortgage and raising two now-grown children

www.johnfmello.com/

this info updated 2009

Seven-year GAL member David Melly found his way to the Bay Area after graduating from the Roberto-Venn School of Luthiery. Although recently sited behind a table at the Healdsburg Guitar Festival with a Samvadhi, he
normally makes steel-string acoustic guitars.

this info updated 1999

Originally from the UK, five-year member Veronica Merryfield made a headless fretless bass at age seventeen. She builds to commission, and prefers unusual designs that solve playability issues for players with physical limitations. Veronica has a day job in software to subsidize her lutherie habit.

this info updated 2009

Eight-year GAL member Luis Alberto Feu de Mesquita's ancestry goes back to Andalusia. He started building and repairing guitars as a teenager, and trained with Sergei de Jonge in his fifties.

this info updated 2009

Electrical engineering didn't make it for Benoît Meulle-Stef, so he turned to lutherie, and eventually set up shop in Belgium. There, at BMS Guitars, he does repair and retail, and builds electrics, resophonics, contra guitars, and unique multistring acoustics. It's the only job he's ever had. Ben has been a GAL member for two years.

www.bmsguitars.com/

this info updated 2006

Eric Meyer (aka Rico) turns fine fittings mostly for violin family instruments. He apprenticed with Jeffrey Elliott way back in the '70s and was founder/owner of the Twelfth Fret Guitar Shop in the late '80s. Presently, he finds time to golf, fish, and hang out with Irish musicians.

www.vanzandtviolins.com/FineTuning.htm

this info updated 2008

Brian Michael started working in Gryphon's repair department in 2002 after graduating from Roberto-Venn. He has built twenty solidbodies in his garage and makes noise in local bands. He grew up in New Hampshire and still considers himself a Yankee.

www.gryphonstrings.com/

this info updated 2009

Tim Miklaucic is the owner of Guitar Salon International in Santa Monica and founder and Chairman of GUITARadio.com, a multimedia publishing company dedicated to all forms of the guitar and guitar music. He also travels more than he'd like, but spends as much time as possible with his wife and their beautiful young daughter.

www.guitarsalon.com/
www.tornavozmusic.com/

this info updated 2000

Luca Milani started his career as guitar maker as soon as he got his degree in clinical psychology. He lives in Greece now and shares job and bills with his wife Marzia. During his thirty-three years he has collected more than thirty recipes to make espresso.

www.milaniguitars.com/milaniguitars/index.htm

this info updated 2008

Seven-year member John Miles spent 35 years as an engineer developing infrared detectors. In 1961 he read Carleen Hutchins' Scientific American araticle and decided to make fiolins after retiring. He has, and he does.

this info updated 1994

Bernard Millant's family has been in the violin business in France since the 18th century. He learned his trade in workshops in Mirecourt, New York, and at his father's side in Paris. Today his expertise, especially on bows, is sought after by musicians, makers, and dealers around the world.

this info updated 2006

Sixteen-year GAL member Larry Mills moonlights as a computer analyst and anti-war activist.  His art is influenced by Ervin Somogyi, James Joyce, Leo Kottke, and Harry Potter.  Larry is fond of carving headstocks into vines, knots, and other funny shapes.

this info updated 2008

Collector, historian, and multi-instrumentalist Gregg Miner has been unofficially crowned the “Harp Guitar Pope.” Creator of the Knutsen Archives, and subsequently, Harpguitars.net and Harp Guitar Music, his passion for the instrument borders on the pathological.

www.harpguitars.net
www.harpguitarmusic.com

this info updated 2010

Besides being a luthier, new Guild member David Minnieweather is a musician. In fact, this pastor's son, his three sisters, two brothers, and his parents could form a fine gospel group without any outside help.

David passed away in 2009

www.minnieweatherbasses.com/

this info updated 2009

Nathan D. Missel teaches botany at Clemson University. Mr. Missel is currently conducting research with ponding techniques to enhance acoustic characteristics of tonewood. He is a self-trained luthier and amateur machinist.

this info updated 1998

Walter Mitchell, Jr. is a retired publisher whose hobbies include boating and bicycling as well as making doll houses and model airplanes. He has been luthing for about two years, and his son David is also a beginning luthier and GAL member.

this info updated 1997

Six-year GAL member Tatsuo Miyachi is an engineer who has been playing guitar for forty years. He has been pipe-dreaming several strange guitar-building ideas but he has not yet made any of them real.

this info updated 2008

Mike Moger has been retooling his shop and building guitars for six years following his class on classical guitar construction with Harry Fleishman and Fabio Ragghianti. He built mostly furniture before guitars, and continues to build as a hobby, using hand tools rather than machinery. He has sold real estate for twenty-three years.

this info updated 2008

www.monteleone.net/

this info updated 2008

Ray Mooers is the founder and co-owner of Dusty Strings Company which makes harps and hammered dulcimers. He has been a Guild member for twenty-eight years.

www.dustystrings.com/

this info updated 2008

Ed Moore has been a Guild member sixteen of the last twenty-one years.

this info updated 1994

Six-year member John C. Moore, a chemical engineer by day, has made one guitar from a kit and is currently making no. 2 from scratch. He pursues guitar making for its unique combination of music, science, woodworking, tool collecting, and mistake correcting. While the glue is drying, he can most likely be found practicing crosspicking or on his Harley.

this info updated 2004

This is the second instrument plan drawn by 5-year Guild member John Morgan.

this info updated 1989

Luthier and lutherie instructor George Morris has taught and inspired hundreds of students. He prefers to stay with individual construction techniques using minimal resources as opposed to making multiple instruments of the same design. George holds small classes at his live-in school in Vermont.

this info updated 2003

Back when he had what his testy creditors so callously refer to as "a real job," R.M. Mottola was an engineer.  He now spends his time turning expensive wood into heaps of expensive sawdust, out of which emerges the occasional musical instrument.

www.liutaiomottola.com/

this info updated 2007

Jim Mouradian entered the world of lutherie backwards; his first project was to scratch-build a bass for Chris Squire of the band Yes. His background in hot rods, audio, and physics provided wxperiences to draw upon. He and his son Jon enjoy running a repair shop together.

www.cambridgemusic.com/

this info updated 2007

Six-year GAL member Andrew Mowry gained his love of wood while roaming the forests of southern Vermont as a youth. Although his formal education is in geology and geography, he was gradually drawn back to woodworking. He has now been a full-time luthier for about five years, building mostly mandolin-family instruments.

mowrystrings.com/

this info updated 2009

Three-year Guild member Phillip Murray began in lutherie eighteen years ago and has been a full time builder and repairman for eleven years. He and his wife Gina have a son, Hugh, age 1. Phillip plays in a church folk group every Sunday to about two thousand people. He is also edits the newsletter of the Dublin Chapter of the Irish Woodturners Guild.

this info updated 1997

Long-time member Don Musser is a logger, a luthier, a wood dealer, and an author.

this info updated 1999

First-time GAL author Javad Naini has a background in engineering and is a player of traditional Persian music.

this info updated 2007

Mike Nealon makes steel-string and resonator guitars.

this info updated 2001

Tom Nelligan is a Senior Applications Engineer with Olympus NDT in Waltham, MA. He has worked in the field of industrial ultrasonic testing since 1978, and specializes in ultrasonic thickness gauging and flaw detection. He is also an amateur guitarist.

www.olympusndt.com/en/

this info updated 2007

Six-year GAL member Greg Nelson has had a passion for working wood his entire life. He took up building stringed instruments in the late ’90s after years of cabinet and furniture making, architectural millwork, and antique restoration. His passion is steel string guitars, but he is currently building a fiddle out of nontraditional materials and is working up the nerve to try his hand at a cello.

this info updated 2010

Philip Neuman and his wife Gayle are heads of the Early Music Guild of Oregon, a nonprofit organization founded in 1978. They perform frequently, teach, and make period instruments with names like rackett, krummhorn, and schreierpfeife.  In addition to medieval and renaissance music, they also perform ancient Greek music on instruments they built including kithara, lyre, pandoura, and aulos.  Philip drew the illustrations for the recent book “How Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony” by Ross Duffin (Norton).

www.emgo.org/

this info updated 2009

Fifteen-year member Steve Newberry was a founding member of the postwar New York Society of Classic Guitar. As a guitarist he performed on radio, TV, and Broadway. He studied both music and math at numerous institutions of higher learning. Since retiring as a software consultant and technical writer in 1988 he has done considerable experimental lutherie and is a founding member of NCAL.

this updated 2001

Welcome first-time author Eric Nicholson!

This info updated 2001

Suzy Norris is a violin maker and a twenty-six-year Guild member.

www.beyondthetrees.com/

this info updated 1987

Twenty-seven year Guild member Ralph Novak started his lutherie career over thirty years ago in New York City. He has been a GAL author and convention speaker. Read all about him and his innovative work in this issue.

this info updated 2008

Sebastián Núñez was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1956 and moved to The Netherlands in 1978, where he worked with harpsichord builder Willem Kroesbergen for six years. He has researched, restored, and built lutes, vihuelas, and early guitars, and he is a founder and former director of the Dutch Lute Society.

www.earlymusicalinstruments.info

this info updated 2006

Three-year Guild member Ernest Nussbaum wrote about his Travielo, a highly transportable ‘cello, in AL #5.

practiceviolins.com/

this info updated 1987

Tim O'Dea is a carpenter by trade and has been making guitars for about five years. He is a surfer living near the Pacific coast of New South Wales.

this info updated 1998

Lloyd Scott Oglesby is a retired chemist whose background gives him interests and insights in areas from glues and varnishes to fireworks.

this info updated 1988

Welcome first-time author and two-year member Terrence O'Hearn!

this info updated 2008

Stan Olah is a chief of police, a farmer and nurseryman, and a budding violin maker. He's enthusiastic about all his jobs, but he'll talk your ears off about fiddles (and since he's a cop, you'll like it). He turns to George Fortune for fiddle advice and good stories, and he's a good storyteller himself.

this info updated 1998

Tim Olsen is the founding editor of American Lutherie.  He started making guitars at age 12, went pro at age 17, and was all done by age 26. That was 27 years ago. He is a tubist and a bipedalist currently working on a virtual global circumambulation. He likes gospel hymns and that crazy fusion music from the early '70s.

www.luth.org/forms/tim-mail.htm

this info updated 2007

Don Overstreet, an occasional contributor to the GAL and member for seventeen years, is a violin maker in Portland, Oregon. By day a restorer and repairer of instruments and bows at the Kerr Violin Shop, he makes violins at home to keep those skills and tools sharp.

this info updated 2008

After graduating from the Newark School of Violin Making in 1979, Koen Padding worked at Machold Rare Violins on the restoration team gathered around Roger Hargrave. He returned to the Netherlands in 1988 as technical director of the family's ink factory, and founded Magister Varnish Products in 1997.

www.classicalvarnish.com/

this info updated 2009

Alberto Paredes Rodríguez was born and raised in Bogotá, Colombia. Along with studies in engineering he took up instrument construction as a hobby in 1959. In 1977 he became a GAL member, and has been a member for twenty-three of the ensuing years. He has built more than seven hundred guitars, bandolas, tiples, mandolinas, cuatros, violins, and gambas.

www.albertoparedesr.com/

this info updated 2008

Anamaría Paredes holds a doctorate in veterinary medicine from the National University of Colombia. She is the daughter of luthier Luis Alberto Paredes Rodríguez, and is the principal coordinator of the administrative activities of this family business.

www.albertoparedesr.com

this info updated 2007

First time author Yves Parent shares with us his knowledge as a chemist.

this info updated 1988

Twelve-year GAL member John Park has played the Spanish guitar since the early '60s but resisted building them until the late '70s. He builds blancas and a few classics in the time-honored way and plays to them while the glue dries. Hobbies include classical humming and mountain biking, which he does simultaneously.

this info updated 2009

Shelley Park has a day job to help support her nights-and-weekends lutherie habit. She works in a guitar-making shop.

www.parkguitars.com/

this info updated 1998

New author Michael Parsons makes and repairs several kinds of string instruments.

this info updated 1987

Veteran musician Ralph Patt played with famous big bands, did studio and broadcast work, and generally jazzed it up in the '50s, '60s, and early '70s. Since then he has been working on nuclear-waste issues for the U.S. Department of Energy, but he hasn't let it get in the way of his music.

www.ralphpatt.com/

this info updated 2002

Nineteen-year Guild member James E Patterson is a well-known lutherie author and a retired printer with an interesting hobby: he likes to go on "photo and video binges, mostly of travels in Southeast Asian countries."

this info updated 1997

Guitar and amp manufacturer Hartley Peavey is a four-year Guild member.

this info updated 1990

After becoming Laureate of the Sixth World Festival of Youth and Students, Anatolii Ivanovich Peresada attended and taught at the Institutes of Culture in Moscow and Leningrad. He currently teaches at the Krasnodar Institute of Culture. In 1985 he published a book, Orchestras of Russian Folk Instruments.

this info updated 1989

Six-year member Alan Perlman has been writing glowing reviews of things in hopes of getting free stuff for years. That having not quite worked out, he continues to build and restore guitars. He builds recognizable classical and steel string guitars, but loves the challenge of a one-off design.  Over the many years he has run sawmills, carved all sorts of wooden whales, and studied the kora in Gambia and the Indian bass sitar.  He has acquired a bit of a reputation for telling not the best jokes, but he keeps trying.  He currently lives in San Francisco near the ocean and owns stock in several dehumidifier companies.

www.perlmanguitars.com

this info updated 2007

Guild staffer Jonathon Peterson says that if you like the total sog scene — wind, rain, moss, fungus, rotting leaves, huge puddles, wet roads, and cold mud stuck to yur tires and shoes — visit Tacoma in the winter.

this info updated 2002

Four-year GAL member Neil Peterson was a custom cabinetmaker for twenty-five years. He got the lutherie bug really bad while studying with George Morris, and has been dreaming of full-time instrument building for about the last ten years. Neil is currently working on guitars #30-33, and enjoys building in mesquite and reclaimed longleaf pine, both native to his home state of Texas.

www.hillcountrylutherie.com/

this info updated 2007

First time author Gabriel Petric is a university professor.

this info updated 1990

Bruce Petros has been building and repairing guitars since 1972, except for a six-year break to build tracker-action pipe organs and a two-storey shop and home. Even so, he has racked up eighteen years of GAL membership. His son Matthew has been working with him full time since 2000, and they make about thirty guitars a year.

www.petrosguitars.com/

this info updated 2008

Welcome new author and seventeen-year Guild member Chad Phillips!

this info updated 2003

He's an inventor and researcher who has worked in the aviation industry and the manufacturing of brass instruments, but Norman Pickering is probably best known to luthiers as the inventor of the Pickering phono cartridge and as a prolific investigator into the physics of violins and bows.

this info updated 2008

Eight-year member and first-time author Craig Pierpont's interest in lutherie began in the '60s while in high school. At that time he realized that the only way to acquire all the instruments in which he was interested would be to build them himself. He quit his day job in the '80s eventually becoming a full-time harp builder. Declining to use power tools, he builds his instruments completely by hand. That may be the reason that many of the other instruments on his original list remain built only in his mind.

www.anotherera.com/

this info updated 2000

Ivo Pires makes and repairs anything musical. He is a six-year Guild member.

Ivo passed away in 2009

this info updated 1990

Bob Pittman has been repairing things as far back as he can remember. When his teenage son took his new electric guitar apart, he followed the calling into the world of lutherie and fixed it. Now he spends his spare time repairing acoustic and electric instruments. When time allows, he makes krar kits for aspiring musicians to assemble and play in his home workshop in the Boston area.

www.pittmanguitarrepair.com/

this info updated 2010

Stewart Pollens is Associate Conservator of the Department of Musical Instruments at the Metropolitan.

www.stewartpollens.com/

this info updated 1989

Bart Potter was born in Honolulu in 1951 and continues to live there with his family. He apprenticed at the Guitar and Lute workshop in Honolulu from 1974 to 1975 and on its untimely closing, continued making guitars and `ukulele in his home workshop until 1980. At that time he transitioned from lutherie to his current profession of  sawmill-owner and producer of tonewood and veneers from Hawaii-grown trees. He was among the founders of the Hawaii Forest Industry Association in 1989, served on its board for 19 years, contributed extensively to the "green" aspects of the prospectus of the HFIA-produced annual statewide woodworking show "Hawaii's Woodshow" and continues to support HFIA as a member. In 1992 he served on committees defining the focus of Senator Daniel Akaka's Tropical Forest Recovery Act, which ultimately provided the genesis for the 2007 creation by the Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources and the Unites States Forest Service of the Hawaii Tropical Experimental Forest (HETF). The establishment of the HETF guarantees a land base for ongoing research on the Hawaiian forest.

bpotterhi@hotmail.com

this info updated 2008

Brad Price has left the Twelfth Fret. He explored a job in market research analysis, but found it to be too weird. Once an artist, always an artist. He is currently earning his bread by playing guitar with the country torch-song band Walking After Midnight and by doing vintage amp restorations.

this info updated 1993

Gordon Pritchard is a luthier in St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands. While classical/flamenco guitars are his first love and the reason he became a luthier, he also builds custom guitars to order.

www.gordonsguitarsite.com/

this info updated 2008