RIGHT: This small jumbo Ergo Noir has
a floating jazz-style pickguard.
BELOW: Fox’s blue Stag Leap electric
features a radically shaped, deeply
carved swamp ash body with a flamed
hard-rock maple neck.
Lutherie, you’re working with
more builders all the time.
Was teaching always part of
your mission?
I was a teacher before I was a
guitar maker. Education has
always been important to me.
I founded the first school for
guitar makers in North America
in;Vermont;in;1973;during;a
leave of absence from my position as head of the high-school
art department in Hanover,
New Hampshire. Since then,
I’ve introduced the craft to
many hundreds of individuals
and taken experienced builders
further on their path. Along
the way, I developed the basic
learning model and teaching
formats used by other guitar-making classes and schools, of
which there are so many today
in North America. Since clos-ing a demanding full-time version of my school in California
in 2002 and downsizing to
my Portland, Oregon, home
workshop, I specialize in intensive, short-term, full-immersion
classes designed for busy working adults—beginners and experienced guitar makers for whom
long-term study isn’t an option.
I enjoy the high energy and
focus of working this way, and
one- and two-week classes are
easier to schedule into the rest
of my guitar-making life.
How did you establish the
American School of Lutherie?
The current version of the
school that I began so long ago
dates from 1993, when I moved
to Healdsburg, California. It
grew into a full-time program
of short- and long-term classes,
a teaching staff, and a roster
of guest instructors like John
Monteleone, Jeff Traugott,
Frank Ford, Don MacRostie,
Jeff Elliott, Dana Bourgeois,
Rick Turner, and others. But
running the business was all
consuming and eventually left
no time for my own guitar
making. In 2002, my wife and
business partner, Denise, and
I relocated to Portland and
downsized ASL to a program
of small, intimate classes taught
by myself here in my home
workshop. I still work full-time,
but the current mix of teaching
and building my own guitars
is more balanced—and it feels
almost like retirement to me.
You have several classes for a
multitude of experience levels,
right? Can you tell us a little
about your Hands-On Acoustic
Guitar Making course?
It’s a short-term, intensive
workshop in which you’ll work
long hours every day building a
no-compromise, performance-
quality guitar. You’ll build an
acoustic steel-string or classical
instrument in two weeks, and
a solidbody electric guitar in
seven days. These are not kit-
assembly classes. Every step is
explained and demonstrated as
you work from the raw materi-
als, learning every step of the
guitar-making process—from
parts making to final setup. On
the last day of class, you’ll be
playing your new guitar. The
class is designed to be the best
possible foundation for contin-
ued self-learning.
The Advanced Design
Features class sounds intriguing. What’s covered in that?
It’s a five-day seminar that
focuses on new design features
that a growing number of
luthiers offer as options and
even standard features. The
attraction and value of double
tops, sound ports, arm rests, and
wedge-shaped bodies is clear
to most luthiers and players
who’ve experienced them, but
the theory and the how-to of
these new elements isn’t always
obvious. Advanced Design
Features is an opportunity for
experienced builders to bring
their work up to speed in this
area. Seminar topics include
double tops, arm rests, sound
ports, access panels, adjustable
necks, removable necks, spiral
fretboards, laminated rims,
rigid linings, compound and
scalloped cutaways, elevated
fretboards, wedge-shaped bodies, semi-hemispheric fret ends,
headless necks, off-center soundholes, removable bridges, double
cutaways, synthetic bridge and
saddle materials, multiple scales,
