Greenf ield Greenf ield
GuitarsGuitars
The Montreal-based boutique builder talks
about his move from repairing museum-quality
Martins and Gibson to building museum-quality
flattops and an incredible harp guitar for
fingerstyle phenom Andy Mckee.
BY GAYLA DRAKE PAUL
Like many builders, Michael Greenfield wandered into the
craft almost unintentionally. While
he was working as a gigging musician in Montreal in the ’80s, he
became frustrated after leaving a
guitar with a violin tech—the only
stringed-instrument tech he could
find in town—and the guitar came
back unplayable. He decided immediately to learn whatever was necessary to do setups and routine repairs,
just to keep his own instruments
in shape. That quickly led to other
guitarists bringing him their instruments, and he soon became a much-sought-after repairer/restorer.
Restoration and repair became
something of a hobby for Greenfield,
and after a stint in the restaurant
business (he’s also a trained chef)
and some consulting work in
the Middle East, he returned to
Montreal to think about what he
really wanted to do with his life. He
had a great desire to make music the
center of his life again, so he took
a side gig doing guitar repairs in a
local music store around the peak of
the vintage-guitar boom.
“Electric guitars were fine,” he
says, “but, all of a sudden, people
started bringing me these museum-
grade, pre-war Gibsons, golden-era
Martins, and some really antique
Martins—and I didn’t feel too com-
fortable working on those. Other
than re-fretting a guitar or making
a saddle, I had very little experience
working on acoustic guitars. So I
took a guitar-making course with
Bryan Galloup in the early ’90s.”
But Greenfield quickly found out
building instruments and repairing
instruments are not the same thing.
“I don’t want to say they don’t have
anything to do with one another,
but they’re really very different.
They employ different skills and
techniques and ways of thinking
about things—although anybody
who makes guitars will do a lot of
repairing, with all our screwups. Like
things get dropped on the floor.” He
pauses for a beat. “I’m not saying
that ever happens, but it might.”
After learning to build guitars,
Greenfield became so enamored with
the idea that he kept at it. Once he
got up to six guitars in a year, he
made the decision to close down the
repair/restoration side of his business
and pursue building exclusively.
