Mark French

Twenty-year GAL member Mark French has been making guitars since about 1990. He is a professor at Purdue, where he runs the Guitar Lab. He was trained as an aerospace engineer and worked several different places before fetching up at Purdue in 2004. In addition to making his own instruments, he teaches a guitar design and manufacturing class and writes books. So far, he’s done three books on guitars and one on nonlinear optimization. Surprisingly, the movie rights for all four are still available.

▪ bio current as of 2023

By the same author:
  1. Measuring the Breaking Strength of Steel Guitar Strings
  2. Let’s Catch Up With Richard Bruné and Marshall Bruné
  3. Reducing Frequency Error in Electric Guitars
  4. Using Soundhole Inserts to Vary the Lower Resonant Frequencies of an Acoustic Guitar
  5. An Easy Fretboard-Tapering Jig
  6. Helmholtz Resonance in Acoustic Guitars
  7. It Worked for Me: Sizing Plastic Thumb Picks
  8. It Worked for Me: Humidifier from Ball-Point Pen
  9. Measuring Mechanical Properties of Neck Blanks
  10. The Musical Instrument Museum — A Must-See for Luthiers
  11. The Charles Fox Guitar-Building Method, Part Six
  12. Guitar Making as a Teaching Tool
  13. Letter: Response to: Seeking plans for Scaled-Down Classical Guitars
  14. Letter: Charles Fox Neck Angle Sander
  15. Letter: Sealer for MDF Jigs
  16. The Charles Fox Guitar-Building Method, Part Five
  17. Measuring Resonant Frequencies of an Acoustic Guitar
  18. The Charles Fox Guitar-Building Method, Part Four
  19. The $75 Guitar Challenge
  20. The Charles Fox Guitar-Building Method, Part Three
  21. Guitar Making with an X-Carve CNC Router
  22. The Charles Fox Guitar-Building Method, Part Two
  23. The Charles Fox Guitar-Building Method, Part One
  24. Flamenco on the Front Range
  25. CNC Routers for Luthiers
  26. Mechanical Impedance
  27. A Guitar Is Born: Attending Charles Fox’s Hands-On Guitar Making Course
  28. Guitar Making: The Luthier’s Bench and the Factory
  29. A DRO Fret Slotter
  30. Making Long-Radius Curve Templates
  31. Meet the Maker: Mark French
  32. A Better Approximation to the Rule of 18
  33. A Simple Modification to Reduce Frequency Errors in Guitars
  34. Questions: Writing a Book on Guitar Building
  35. An Automated Fret Slotting Machine
  36. Making a Truly Flat Sanding Bar
  37. It Worked for Me: Knobs
  38. It Worked for Me: String Dampening
  39. Questions: Wood beam
  40. An Optical Sensor For Detecting String Motion
  41. Reducing Build Variation In Arched Plates
  42. Inharmonicity of Guitar Strings
  43. Letter to the Editor: Typo in AL#100 in his article
  44. Questions: North American Wood
  45. Taylor Today
  46. Build Variation in a Group of Acoustic Guitars
  47. A Different Way of Defining Body Shapes