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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 2006 |
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"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 in |
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Twenty-two-year GAL member Linda Manzer started with a dulcimer kit in 1968. She has become a well-known maker of flattop and archtop guitars. She is also active in forest conservation issues.
http://www.manzer.com/web/
this info updated 1999 |
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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 |
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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 |
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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.
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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 |
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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
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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 |
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Graham McDonald has been building musical instruments for almost 30 years, specializing in instruments of the mandolin family. He has written two books on instrument construction, The Bouzouki Book, published in 2004 and The Mandolin Project, getting its first public outing at the Convention this year. He is a longtime GAL member, an American Lutherie author, and a past GAL Convention lecturer.
www.mcdonaldstrings.com/
this info updated 2008 |
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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 |
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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 |
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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 |
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After studying with Richard Schneider and Jeffrey Elliott in the early '70s, eleven-year GAL member John Mello has built, restored, repaired, and sold guitars in the San Francisco Bay Area for thirty-two years, including a fifteen-year hiatus during which he eschewed instrument construction in favor of paying a mortgage and raising two now-grown children, occasionally burping out a steel string or classical guitar to marginally qualify for the "luthier" moniker on his shop sign. For the past seven years he has irrationally but joyfully resumed guitar making.
www.johnfmello.com/
this info updated 2007
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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 |
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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 |
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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 |
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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 |
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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 |
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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 |
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Collector,historian and multi-instrumentalist Gregg Miner has been unofficially crowned the ``Harp Guitar Pope.'' Creator of first 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 2006 |
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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.
www.minnieweatherbasses.com/
this info updated 2001 |
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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 |
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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 |
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John Monteleone has been greatly influenced by Italian men, beginning with his father Mario Monteleone. He also worked closeley with Jimmy D'Aquisto in the '70s and with Mario Maccaferri in the '80s. He has been a GAL member twenty-seven of the last thirty-two years.
www.monteleone.net/
this info updated 2007 |
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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 |
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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 |
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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 |
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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
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Long-time member Don Musser is a logger, a luthier, a wood dealer, and an author.
this info updated 1999 |
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First-time GAL author Javad Naini has a background in engineering and is a player of traditional Persian music.
this info updated 2007 |
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Mike Nealon makes steel-string and resonator guitars.
this info updated 2001 |
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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 |
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Philip Neuman and his wife Gayle are heads of the Early Music Guild of Oregon (www.emgo.org), a nonprofit organization founded in 1978. They perform frequently, teach, and make period instruments with names like rackett, krummhorn, and schreierpfeife.
this info updated 2006 |
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Welcome first-time author Eric Nicholson!
This info updated 2001 |
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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 |
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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 |
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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 |
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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 |
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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.
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Don Overstreet, an occasional contributor to the GAL and member for fourteen 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 2005 |
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When asked for biographical info Robert Painter simply said, ``Tell them the usual lies.'' Which we don't and won't do. So we'll include better information after Bob submits his next how-to article, "Saving the Universe and Other Odd Jobs."
this info updated 2005 |
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Dr. Janos Pap is a professor at the F. Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest, Hungary.
www.lfze.hu/hp/nyitolap/index.html
this info updated 2000 |
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Alberto Paredes was born in 1941 in Bogotá, Colombia, where he currently resides. Along with his formal studies in engineering he took up string musical instrument construction as his hobby in 1959. In 1977 he became a member of the Guild of American Luthiers. He has built more than 700 instruments: guitars, bandolas, tiples, mandolinas, cuatros, violins and special instruments like viola da gambas among others.
this info updated 2008 |
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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 |
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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 |
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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 |
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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 |
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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 |
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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 |
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Welcome new author and seventeen-year GAL member Chad Phillips!
this info updated 2003 |
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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 |
