“I closed down the repairs in 2000 and
just slowly built the business to where
it was doing a dozen guitars a year,” he
explains. “That was as many as I could
handle in my old shop.” He moved to a
new shop in 2007, and has since built as
many as 16 guitars per year.
And 16 is a remarkable number, consid-
ering how much customization is involved
in virtually every guitar he makes. “By
choice, I’m not tooled up at all. So every
guitar is pretty much a one-off.” He notes
that many small makers concentrate on
one or two models, and some even con-
tract construction of certain parts and
processes to other builders. “There’s still a
lot of woodworking to be done [for build-
ers who do that], and they’re still carefully
voiced—I’m not talking negatively about
my colleagues,” he says. “They’re a lot
smarter than me, because they can make
as many guitars as I do much, much easier.
My guitars keep getting more and more
complicated to make, and they take longer
and longer.”
So much for the old joke: “How many
luthiers does it take to change a light
bulb?” Answer: “Only one, but he’s got
to make a jig first.” Greenfield laughs,
not exactly ruefully. “It’s a lot of fun, and
it gives me the freedom not to be afraid
when somebody calls with a tall order. Or
not so tall of an order.”
Greenfield has become known as “a
fanned-fret guy,” and depending on the
year, sometimes half or more of his pro-
duction instruments incorporate that
feature. “Even those fretboards are slotted
here, in house, by hand. Most of them
are made differently in order to accom-
modate the needs of the player, based on
their repertoire, their playing style, and the
tunings that they use.” In fact, Greenfield
developed a fanned-fret model specifically
for DADGAD, a tuning near and dear to
many contemporary players’ hearts.
“It’s a really versatile combination of
scale lengths that work well across the
board, so I’m happy with that one.” So
happy, in fact, that he’s actually considering standardizing it. “I sort of hate to...
the problem with the fan fret thing is, if
you change the neck width, everything
changes. Or if you change the string spacing at the bridge, all the angles change. So
I’ve gotten used to working without jigs
and fixtures, and I like it that way.”
