Author Archives: luthsearch

Dave Zogg

David Zogg has been a guitarist since 1962, an amateur luthier since 1987, and a full-time pro doing repair and restoration since 1993. He was previously a designer of industrial robots and the like.

▪ bio current as of 2000

Jose Zamora

After a successful career in the banking industry, José “Pepito” Reyes began building guitars and cuatros in 1986. Three years later he was infected with a passion for the Puerto Rican tiple, and since that time he has dedicated himself (with huge success) to the rescue and promotion of this lovely little instrument. He builds tiples in the mountains of central Puerto Rico.

▪ bio current as of 2006

David Zachman

David Zachman is a graduate student at Purdue University, specializing in mechanical design and robotics. He is an avid fan of guitar-centric music and is an amateur musician. While taking a class with Prof. Mark French, he helped design a linkage to approximate curves for guitar soundboards.

▪ bio current as of 2018

Peter Yelda

Thirty-eight year Guild member Peter Yelda makes and repairs guitars. He is an NEA recipient in guitar making and a six-year Artist In Residence with the California Arts Council. See the film about him on Youtube called A Fair Exchange. He cofounded the Blue Note guitar shop in San Luis Obispo. He exhibited at the 1978 and 1980 GAL Conventions and has not punched a time clock since he joined the Guild.

▪ bio current as of 2015

Michael Yeats

Michael Yeats has been an instrument maker since 1975. He started his career as an apprentice lute maker, and has made and repaired instruments ranging from concertinas and guitars to pipe organs. He focused on bows in 1987, moving to New York City, where he worked for fifteen years, making, repairing, and restoring bows for musicians from all over the world. He is now making bows in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. In addition to bow making, Michael enjoys a good mystery, and a great fountain pen.

▪ bio current as of 2021

Brian Yarosh

Castor Instruments

Twenty-two-year GAL member Brian Yarosh began his lutherie journey as a student of Harry Fleishman back in 2000 and has never stopped building. He currently constructs custom steel string and classical guitars in his basement workshop. Brian is often seen at the local Colorado luthier get-togethers (and GAL Conventions).

▪ bio current as of 2022

Rossco Wright

Thirty-year member Rossco Wright has been involved in stringed instrument repair and other guitar-related businesses for twenty years. In his current endeavor he builds and sells cool practice/travel guitars with partner Frank Nakatsuma. In his spare time he enjoys fly fishing and playing jazz guitar.

▪ bio current as of 1994

David Wren

Wren Guitar Works

David Wren stayed behind in Toronto when the rest of the Larrivée crew moved west in the ’70s. It worked out OK. He’s made a name for himself as a maker of fine steel string guitars. When not making his own guitars, he can be found photographing those of his friends.

▪ bio current as of 2015

David Worthy

Worthy Guitars

Finding Irving Sloane’s Classic Guitar Construction in his late teens started it all for seven-year GAL member David Worthy. Not being a fan of the dreaded nought, most of his efforts have been focused on small-bodied fingerstyle guitars. For the past ten years he has been trying to swap his “real” job as a touring theater production manager for a quieter life in the workshop.

▪ bio current as of 2006

Marc Worsfold

Marc Worsfold studied instrument repair at Merton College in Surrey and violinmaking at the London College of Furniture. He has been building acoustic and electric guitars since 1975.

▪ bio current as of 1994

Brian Woods

Four-year Guild member Brian Woods is an engineer in the auto-parts industry who enjoys guitar making as a hobby. As such, fixtures for low volume production (and low cost!) are a key interest, and he says he has benefited from numerous ideas and inspirations from fellow GAL members.

▪ bio current as of 2006

Alfred Woll

Alfred Woll

Eight-year GAL member Alfred Woll is a native of southern Germany who played the violin, mandolin, and guitar as a teenager. In 1977 he took apart a damaged mandolin, repaired it, and assembled it again. Two years later he set up his own workshop and built his first classical guitar. He did repairs and restorations and built all sorts of stringed instruments before deciding to specialize in the mandolin and completing his master’s certificate as a mandolin builder.

Jim Wimmer

James Wimmer

Twenty-five-year GAL member James Wimmer performed in an old-time string band in Germany in the 1970s. Subsequently, he worked in the violin shops of Wolfgang Uebel and Rainer Knobel for three years before returning to Santa Barbara, California, where he has been making violin-family instruments since 1986. He also teaches a violin repair and restoration course in Chennai, India.

▪ bio current as of 2017

Laurie Williams

Laurie Williams Guitars

Laurie Williams has been building instruments of indigenous timbers for over fifteen years in his one man workshop nestled between giant Kauri forests and the pristine beaches of New Zealand’s Far North. An upcoming documentary film The Song of the Kauri featuring Laurie’s use of kauri is due for international release in 2008.

▪ bio current as of 2008

January Williams

As a teenager, longtime GAL member January Williams went around the world in 1963, made a violin as an exchange student in Japan, and sailed west, stopping in Barcelona to visit the Fleta shop and take in some flamenco. A serious armchair luthier since, his garage full of tools and attic full of wood have in recent years coalesced into a lutherie shop. January and his sweetheart Susan are also known as “Mr. and Mrs. Finger” at the GAL auctions.

▪ bio current as of 2022

Byron Will

Byron John Will

Byron Will has been involved with the Guild as well as building harpsichords since 1975. His lifelong interest in photography took a digital turn in 2000. He is currently teaching digital photography and Photoshop at Portland Community College in Portland, OR.

▪ bio current as of 2005

David Wiebe

David Wiebe

David Wiebe studied his craft at the school for violin making in Mittenwald, Germany in the early ’70s. He returned to his home state of Nebraska where he worked for about thirty years before moving to his current location in Woodstock, New York in 2002. David works in the tradition of the Italian Masters, making violins, violas, cellos, and occasionally basses to special order, mostly on his personal model.

▪ bio current as of 2011

Woodley White

White Guitars

Twenty-eight-year Guild member Woodley White retired from his day job as a Presbyterian minister in Portland, Oregon, and moved to Hawaii to enjoy the simple life and build acoustic and classical guitars, harp guitars, and ukuleles. Life at the southern end of the Big Island on an active volcano provides fresh fruit, sunshine, island breezes, starry nights, great music, and lots of aloha.

▪ bio current as of 2022

Ted White

Ted White taught marine biology at the University of Guelph and engineering at Malaspina University College. He co-founded Coldwater Fisheries Ltd, Canada’s largest Rainbow Trout producer, was a board member of the Aquaculture Association of Canada, and co-founded Future SEA Technologies Inc.; a company dedicated to creation of innovative aquaculture technology. He has played several instruments since childhood and has been a wood worker nearly as long. Early efforts at instrument making included building six-hole flutes. As a traditional fiddler he became interested in building violins in the early nineties. While largely self-taught, he has attended numerous workshops in order to improve his making. This effort has developed into a fascination with how such an apparently simple thing could be so complex in its behaviour. Working with Jim Ham he built the world’s first balsawood cello. He is a regular attendee at the Oberlin Acoustics Workshop and has an acoustics research setup in his workshop. His latest efforts have been to understand the acoustics of the mandolin working with Mike Kemnitzer. Ted is a long-time member of the GAL, Violin Society of America, and the former Catgut Acoustical Society. He is a member of the VSA’s Board of Directors and the society’s current Secretary.

▪ bio current as of 2017

James Westbrook

The Guitar Museum

GAL convention lecturer, AL author, and five-year member, Dr. James Westbrook is a British-based organologist who is particularly interested in guitar construction. He is a part-time luthier and restorer, and a consultant and specialist for Brompton’s (a London auction house that specializes in musical instruments). He is a frequent lecturer and consultant on various topics related to guitars and their history. James is currently a member of the music faculty research staff at the University of Cambridge, and holds a Wolfson College (Cambridge) research fellowship for the purpose of investigating the life and work of David Rubio.

▪ bio current as of 2015

Stan Werbin

Elderly Instruments

Thirty-six-year member Stan Werbin is not a luthier himself, but has been privileged to employ a number of excellent makers and repair persons. In his 40th year as the owner of Elderly Instruments, Stan is an expert on vintage fretted instruments of all sorts. Before opening Elderly he studied biology at Queens College in New York and biological chemistry at the University of Michigan.

▪ bio current as of 2011

Sylvan Wells

Wells Guitars

Sylvan Wells was a practicing trial lawyer until 2003, building acoustic guitars as a diversion. His article on “String Spacing for Guitars” was published by American Lutherie way back in 1978, when it was still the GAL Quarterly. He now lives in Massachusetts and builds guitars under the Bay State brand.

▪ bio current as of 2011

David Warther

David Warther is a full-time ivory carver for a nonprofit museum in Ohio’s Amish community. He is a supplier of bone, legal pre-ban ivory, and mammoth ivory to restorers at the Smithsonian and Colonial Williamsburg as well as to luthiers and other artisans. He has helped wildlife conservation efforts by providing expert testimony in Federal court against smugglers, and has worked as an informant to federal wildlife agents against traffickers in illegal ivory overseas and in the USA.

▪ bio current as of 2012

Terence Warbey

Fourteen-year GAL member Terence Warbey built his first guitar at age eleven. He has been steadily improving since then and has made about four hundred and fifty guitars so far. Although he makes his primary income as a silversmith/goldsmith, he builds about four instruments annually. He performs regularly as a musician and loves the info sharing that he finds in the Guild.

2021

Jacky Walraet

Jacky Walraet

Jacky Walraet started building guitars in 1987 while studying at the renowned Centre for Musical Instrument Building (Cmb) in Belgium. Having completed courses in guitar and violin making, he has been teaching at the Cmb since 1990. Jacky specializes in the making of archtop and steel string guitars and is a founding member of the LGR Project.

▪ bio current as of 2015

John L. Walker

Dr. John L. Walker holds a Doctor of Musical Arts degree and has served as principal oboe of the Orquesta Sinf¢nica de Guadalajara, the USAF Heritage of America Band, and the Orquesta Sinf¢nica Nacional del Ecuador. He has published articles in both English and Spanish about Latin American and Ecuadorian music in a number of music journals.

▪ bio current as of 2003

Erick Waldron

Waldron Music

Kevin, Jon, and Erick Waldron, and David Miller are as wet behind the lutherie ears as fish. These old woodmen-turned-luthiers have a rich background in woodcraft and fine furniture. Kevin, the senior administrator, taught vocational woodworking, then progressed to computer drafting and many “cutting edge” machining advances over two decades. Their education, they say, is “from Middle Tennessee by all accounts and is varied from electrical engineering to Biblical studies.” Lutherie turned from hobby to business almost overnight, but they remain a family business: father, sons, and son-in-law.

▪ bio current as of 2010

Gernot Wagner

Gernot Wagner has been building instruments for thirty years and has been a GAL member for twenty years. He started with lutes, but now concentrates on a scientific approach to making classical guitars, including the use of sandwich tops with Nomex honeycomb. “I like constructing gadgetry,” says Gernot, “but that’s an occupational disease I suppose.”

▪ bio current as of 2004

Jason Villa

Jason Villa began repairing and building instruments at the age of fifteen and went on to work for Ernie Ball Music Man Guitars until 2001. After a few years as an elementary school teacher, he took his current position as Product Specialist at Kala Ukulele Company in Petaluma, California. There he leads his team building and setting up ukuleles and U-Basses.

▪ bio current as of 2015

Peter Vile

Peter Vile has been building lutes and guitars since retiring in 1992 from IBM Netherlands, where his work as a systems engineer involved design on an architectural level combined with a strong interest in details. This two-level approach he feels, also applies to lutherie because it requires understanding the theoretical aspects as well as acquiring manual skills.

▪ bio current as of 2008

Alfredo Velazquez

Alfredo Velázquez made his first guitar at age twenty-one, but he found his father’s workshop irresistible as soon as he could walk, and has spent much of his adult life at the workbench alongside Manuel. He builds guitars in the tradition taught to him by his father, but with, inevitably, his own characteristic sound.

▪ bio current as of 2012

Joe Veillette

Veillette Guitars

Born in Brooklyn, Joe Veillette has been a builder since learning from Michael Gurian in 1972, an experience that quickly led him away from the field of architecture which he’d trained for. He’s built acoustic and electric guitars, basses, mandolins, and the occasional tres. He’s done a lot of experimenting over the years with different scale lengths, tuning ranges, and double and triple string courses. He’s also been performing steadily in a wide variety of musical genres. Having recently realized that he’s probably ADD, he’s no longer feeling guilty about his tendency to spread himself too thin.

▪ bio current as of 2010

Scott van Linge

Van Linge Guitars

Veteran AL author, convention presenter, and thirteen-year member Scott van Linge has been revoicing guitars for twenty-five years, following the work of Jon Lundberg. He built his first guitar in 1999, and has finally finished #16, after reaffirming the rule about not fixing something not broke.

▪ bio current as of 2008

Udi Vachterman

Ehud “Udi” Vachterman is an army man, student, world traveler, and music lover. He learned lutherie in Argentina, where he read recycled copies of American Lutherie. He keeps on building and keeps on learning in Israel.

▪ bio current as of 2005

Sheldon Urlik

Six-year GAL member Sheldon Urlik is a businessman and former Air Force fighter pilot. His passion is classical and flamenco guitars: collecting them, playing them, and listening to them.

▪ bio current as of 2000

Wilfried Ulrich

Ulricus

Six-year GAL member Wilfried Ulrich has been a high-school art and shop teacher for twenty-eight years. He began making instruments in 1977 after seeing a televised course in making a fretted dulcimer by John Pearse. He has made Medieval fiddles, viols, harps, and dulcimers, but hurdy-gurdies are his favorite.

▪ bio current as of 2004

Glenn Uhler

Thirteen-year Guild member Glenn Uhler was born and raised about five miles from the Martin Guitar factory, but has been distracted from lutherie by the restoration of a flooded sailboat.

▪ bio current as of 2007

Rick Turner

Read Rick Turner’s memoriam

Former GAL columnist Rick Turner’s pioneering work with the Grateful Dead and Alembic qualify him as a Founding Father of American Electric Lutherie. Make that a founding uncle. He’s a bit young to be a brother of Les Paul or Leo Fender. He continues his quest with Renaissance and Turner guitars which feature his innovative concepts in the amplification of acoustic instruments, and is starting a new buisiness with Seymour Duncan Pickups to be called Duncan-Turner Acoustic Research.

▪ bio current as of 2002

Harold Turner

Twenty-one-year member Harold Turner traces instrument building in his family back five generations to his Quaker forebears who moved to North Carolina from Maryland. A luthier since 1970, he teaches and demonstrates lutherie at the Hagood Mill Historical Site and Folk Life Center in Pickens County, South Carolina.

▪ bio current as of 2008

Jan Tulacek

19th Century Guitars

Jan Tulacek is a luthier focusing his interest on 19th-century guitars. He makes copies or replicas of early Romantic guitars, repairs them, and plays them. He is a graduate of the Music Academy in Prague and still performs as a member of the Prague Guitar Quartet.

▪ bio current as of 2010

Peter Tsiorba

Tsiorba Guitars

Growing up in Uzbekistan, nineteen-year GAL member Peter Tsiorba attended a music school studying piano. In the 1990s, an encounter with a fine but battered Manuel Contreras flamenco guitar awakened his desire to make a guitar. Today he is a full-time luthier focusing on building classical and flamenco guitars, as well as the restoration and repair of modern and antique instruments. In his shop you can always catch the aromas of freshly planed wood, shellac, and hide glue.

▪ bio current as of 2023

Benz Tschannen

Tschannen Guitars

Swiss-born musician/teacher-turned-luthier Benz Tschannen was a Guild member in the ’80s, but got sidetracked starting a family, building a house, and a few other things. He joined up again in 2002, built a new shop in 2003, and is now building concert classical guitars full time.

▪ bio current as of 2008

Peter TRUE

Peter True Guitars

After a career in architecture and design education, eight-year GAL member Peter True trained in guitar making at Merton College (south London, not Oxford). He taught for a while at Merton and now offers his own courses, mainly for ukulele building. He has attended two Romanillos summer guitar-making sessions.

▪ bio current as of 2011

Aquiles Torres

Born in Caracas, Venezuela, Aquiles Torres originally wanted to be a painter. Then a school choir gave him the opportunity to visit other countries and learning about their cultures and music. He then worked as a graphic designer before a course in instrument construction brought him to lutherie, the perfect blending of art, music, and craft.

▪ bio current as of 2008

Rudolf Tomusic

A member of the GAL since 1997, Rudolf Tomusic was born in 1943 in Zagreb, Croatia. An engine fitter by trade, he has built guitars since 1978, originally under the tutelage of Mijo Bockaj his “big teacher and friend.” (See Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume One, p. 402.) He went on to study with Ernest Köröskeny, Helmut Hanika, Josip Krog, Dragan Musulin, Dieter Hopf, Mirko Hotko (Zagreb), and Carl Hermann Schäfer, alias ” Nicolaus Wolf.” At the music school of Wolfsburg he has taught musical instrument construction for adults for eight years. He has built a number of instruments and repaired many, in the process making about 150 drawings of various guitars. He does not build tamburas.

▪ bio current as of 2013

Harry Tomita

Harry Tomita was born in Honolulu, Hawaii and learned to play his $10 Martin ukulele in the mid-1940s. After a stint in Korea he graduated from UC Berkeley with a BSEE. Now retired, he has decided to resume his interest in playing. The cost of instruments drove him to build his own ukulele and that has been his hobby ever since.

▪ bio current as of 2012

Otis A. Tomas

Fiddle Tree

Otis Tomas has been making instruments at his home on Cape Breton Island for over 30 years. Though specializing in violins, over the years his production has included custom made flat top and arch top guitars, mandolins, harps, and other instruments.

▪ bio current as of 1990

Clive Titmuss

Early Music Studio

Gerald Sheppard has been a GAL member since 1998. When he was fifteen, in 1965, he told his parents he wanted either a guitar or a motorcycle for Christmas. Lucky for him, they bought him an inexpensive Strat copy. Gerald has been repairing, refinishing, and building guitars for twenty years, building exclusively since 1993. He prides himself in knowing how to get something nearly perfect, then goofing it up.

▪ bio current as of 2000

Eugene Thordahl

After retiring from Peter Cooper Corporations, Eugene Thordahl continues his life-long career in the hide glue and gelatin business by supplying quality adhesives and technical information to a wide range of users, including luthiers.

▪ bio current as of 2018

Tom Thiel

Northwind Tonewood

Twenty-four-year GAL member Tom Thiel built instruments and other wooden things in the 1970s when he jumped ship from academia. He was side-tracked by making high-end loudspeakers in the ’80s and ’90s. Now he splits his time between lutherie and supplying reclaimed, unusual, and otherwise crazy tonewood to high-end luthiers through his company Northwind Timber & Tonewood.

▪ bio current as of 2017

John Thayer

Six-year GAL member John Thayer’s lutherie adventure began with building electric guitars at the age of sixteen. He attended the Roberto-Venn School of Luthiery and stayed on as an assistant. Next, John worked under Ervin Somogyi who instructed him in soundboard voicing and French polish. Since 2004 he has run his own business building and repairing instruments.

▪ bio current as of 2008

Bob Taylor

Taylor Guitars

Bob Taylor failed at his first attempt to make a guitar, but hey, he was only nine. At sixteen he succeeded in completing his first guitar, and started Taylor Guitars at the age of nineteen. Most of you know the story of Taylor. What you might be interested to know is that Bob, like most of you, has made many hundreds of guitars with his hands and a scant supply of tools. Whether you make one guitar a month, one a day, or three hundred a day, Bob knows what you’re going through. Bob believes in using tools and techniques to make the guitar building process successful, and is always happy to talk about those methods.

▪ bio current as of 2009

Fan Tao

Eleven-year GAL member Fan Tao directs R&D at D’Addario. He conducts violin acoustics research, is an accomplished string player, and holds degrees from Caltech and Princeton. He’s a trustee of the CAS, a director of the VSA, and codirector of the VSA-Oberlin Acoustics Workshop.

▪ bio current as of 2018

Bruce Tai

Although he has never made any varnish or violins, Bruce Tai has published about the chemical analysis of Cremonese varnishes, summarizing others’ findings. He’s a chemistry PhD who will soon become a chemistry professor at National Taiwan University and hopes to start varnish experiments there. He is currently a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School studying Alzheimer’s disease. A native of Taiwan, his given name is Hwan-Ching; he took Bruce as a nickname while spending a childhood year in the USA.

▪ bio current as of 2011

Todd Taggart

Allied Lutherie

Todd Taggart, has been a Guild member forever, and sees to it that good woods, tools, and lutherie information are always available to the likes of you and me. He knows how to throw a good party, too, as evidenced by the ’96 and ’97 Healdsburg shows.

▪ bio current as of 2008

Mike Tagawa

After four decades of repairing stringed instruments, and driving bus for King County Metro for three of those decades, nineteen-plus-year Guild member Mike Tagawa still hasn’t decided which is more fun, interesting, or dangerous.

▪ bio current as of 2006

Andrea Tacchi

Thirteen-year GAL member Andrea Tacchi was born into a Florentine family with a rich artisan heritage as jewelry makers and wood carvers. He has met and learned from master luthiers including Romanillos, Mattingly, Bouchet, Friederich, Fleta, and Kohno. He has been a professional guitar maker since 1977.

▪ bio current as of 2012

Paul Szmanda

Twenty-year GAL member Paul Szmanda’s lifelong passion is playing and being inspired by fine stringed instruments. He greatly appreciates the people who create them and the materials they work with. To support his guitar habit, he finds time to do dentistry.

▪ bio current as of 2014

Mark Swanson

Swanson Guitars

Seven-year GAL member Mark Swanson has lived in Grand Rapids, Michigan for all of his fifty-two years, and has been a professional musician since 1976. Tinkering with his instruments, along with extended periods of staring at the moon, led to becoming a luthier and repairman. Mark also serves on the staff of the Musical Instrument Makers Forum.

▪ bio current as of 2007

John Svizzero

Boston area luthier John Svizzero has been building and repairing guitars for over twenty years. He specializes in archtop acoustic guitars and luthier guitar parts. He is an active member of New England Luthiers.

▪ bio current as of 2009

Craig Sullivan

Stetson Guitars

After attending Massachusetts College of Art, Craig Sullivan spent most of his working career in advertising. He was bitten by the instrument-building bug back in the late ’60s, when the only book on the subject was Irving Sloane’s Classic Guitar Construction. After building several classical and steel string guitars, he put it all aside to help raise his children, tend to his career, and build two additions to his home. He returned to his love of building acoustic instruments and has been doing so for the past twenty years. He is a long-time member of New England Luthiers. Craig passed away in 2018

▪ bio current as of 2018

Linda Stuckey

Contributing Editor Linda Stuckey is a word nerd with basic skills in woodworking and music. She has a background in publishing and is the former Associate Editor of Recording Engineer/Producer magazine. (And she was in a band with Melissa Etheridge when they were twelve-year-olds!) She lives and works in Puyallup, Washington.

Peggy Stuart

Peggy Stuart has been a GAL member since 1978 (forty-five consecutive years) and has been a regular GAL Convention attendee since then. She built her first guitar in 1973. An AL author and photographer, she is now retired from her day job in higher education, and travels widely in her RV, painting landscapes and photographing nature.

▪ bio current as of 2022

Henry Strobel

Henry Strobel is a retired engineer who operates a violin shop in Aumsville, OR. A six-year Guild member, Henry has been building, repairing, researching, and writing about violins since he finished his first instrument in 1969.

▪ bio current as of 1994

Jim Stratton

Jim Stratton got his undergraduate degree from Eastern Illinois University where he specialized in industrial automation. He went on to Purdue, where he got his MS in Mechanical Engineering Technology. Not having suffered enough, he is now pursuing a PhD.

▪ bio current as of 2013

Henry Stocek

When Henry Stocek decided to refurbish his vintage D-28 he didn’t realize that a suitable replacement pickguard would cost $10,000 and four years of his life. Of course, he also got a new company as part of the deal. He’s becoming famous as the celluloid guy. His wife wishes he were becoming famous for almost anything else.

▪ bio current as of 2000

Nathan Stinnette

Four-year member Nathan Stinnette works full time at Huss and Dalton Guitars in Virginia, remodels his house on the weekends, plays mandolin and banjo in two old-time string bands, and is trying to learn the fiddle. In his spare time he sits around and tries to remember what it was like to have spare time.

▪ bio current as of 2003

Sebastian Stenzel

Sebastian Stenzel

Sebastian Stenzel made his first guitar at age fourteen. After excursions into Chinese Medicine and carpentry, he served his apprenticeship with a local guitar maker. In 1996 he established his own workshop, and in 1998 he was awarded the Masterprize of the Bavarian Government for his outstanding performance on the Master of Crafts Examination. His instruments are distributed in the United States exclusively by Guitar Salon International.

▪ bio current as of 2001

Erik Stenn

Marine microbial ecologist Erik Stenn cultures microaglae for a shrimp farm in his day job. At night he becomes husband, father, luthier, and player of banjos and guitars. He is building guitars and hopes to make violins in the future. Erik’s dream is to build perfect instruments for his children as they explore music.

▪ bio current as of 2001

Christian Steinert

John Christian Steinert has been making guitars and related parts since 2001. Prior to that, he had worked as a materials supply consultant in Oregon and in Saudi Arabia, as an engineer in Louisiana and Taiwan, and as an R&D supervisor in New Jersey with AT&T and Bell Labs. He has degrees in biology, chemistry, and mechanical engineering from the University of Miami and Oregon State University.

▪ bio current as of 2009

Robert Steinegger

Steinegger Guitars

Robert Steinegger has been a GAL member for at least thirty-six years. He developed an interest in guitars while in high school, and while attending school in Utah, he met Phil Everly of the Everly Brothers. In 1981, Phil commissioned him to build the “Ike Everly Model” guitar, which he produced until 2001.

▪ bio current as of 2013

Ned Steinberger

NS Design

Ned Steinberger is a creator of innovative musical instruments and is most notable for his design of guitars and basses without a traditional headstock. He also has a line of electric classical instruments through his company called NS Design.

▪ bio current as of 2008

Rodney Stedall

Rodney Stedall

Sixteen-year GAL member Rodney Stedall emigrated from South Africa, where he coordinated the Guild of South African Luthiers, to New Zealand, a place where the majority of greenhouse gases come from cows and sheep belching! He’s a full-time optometrist and builds guitars in his spare time.

▪ bio current as of 2018

J.A.T. Stanfield

Having learned classical guitar as a kid and having developed an interest in woodwork in his early twenties, two-year Guild member J.A.T. Stanfield found his vocation uniting the two through lutherie. After living in Madrid, Spain, for a while, he currently builds at his home workshop in Oxford, England. He also spends his time trying to apply the delicacy of instrument making skills to the considerably larger project of period property restoration.

▪ bio current as of 2019

Al Stancel

In Memoriam: Al Stancel

Past author Al Stancel has had his own lutherie shop since retiring from a career as an acoustics and recording expert for Ampex and RCA in 1975. He adds that he is the “first person in history to walk with one above-knee prosthesis and no right leg with two Canadian canes (not yet walked on water.)”. All passed away in 1999, read his memoriam.

▪ bio current as of 1991

Phillip Stafford

Phillip Stafford is a life-long furniture builder. He’s a new GAL member, a thirty year member of the Craftsman’s Guild of Mississippi, and a member of the Tennessee Artist Craftsman’s Association. He purchased his first ukulele three years ago and became addicted to the “jumping flea.” About to purchase an expensive koa uke, he decided he could build one instead, and started Moonshine Ukuleles. Phillip owns Advantek Machinery, a distributor of high tech CNC machinery. His favorite pastimes are sailing, building and playing ukuleles, and drinking homemade wine, not necessarily in that order.

▪ bio current as of 2012

Ken Sribnick

Twenty-two-year member Ken Sribnick made his first synthesizer in 1968 and began repairing guitars in a Greenwich Village apartment. After meeting his luthier wife, Gayle, at the 1986 GAL convention, he worked at Tom Anderson’s Guitar Works in California. Now in Dallas, Ken designs acoustics avocationally and pursues a forty-five-year quest to play Bach, Blind Blake, and Blarney Stone on guitar.

▪ bio current as of 1998

Steve Spodaryk

Spodaryk Guitars

An avid woodworker since his childhood, Steve Spodaryk began building instruments professionally in 2002. He has been fortunate enough to work with, learn from, and collaborate with many talented builders and players. His interests range from traditional Romantic-era parlor guitars to modern fingerstyle guitars and engineered materials. He has racked up ten years of GAL membership and is also a cofounder of the New England Luthiers group.

▪ bio current as of 2012

Robert J. Spear

Singing Woods Violin

Robert J. (Bob) Spear has been in violin work since 1971. He retired from commercial work in the ’90s to focus on research and building. Bob is a strong supporter of the New Violin Family and has nearly completed his second octet. He lives near scenic Ithaca, New York, with his wife, Deena, and two embarrassingly friendly dogs, Poka and Tupplett.

▪ bio current as of 2012

Michael Spalt

Spalt Instruments

Michael Spalt tried painting, photography, and screen writing in an attempt to escape his passion for building guitars. Ultimately he gave in and decided to luth full time, and in 1997 he started Spalt Instruments in Los Angeles. Now settled in Vienna, Austria, he looks forward to trying some new avenues and maybe some more traditional instruments as well.

▪ bio current as of 2011

Byron Spain

The Lefty Luthier

Byron Spain built his first mandolin in 1962, a left-handed F-5, when he could not find one in Seattle. Having a master’s degree in mechanical engineering with post-graduate studies in vibration and sound, he spent thirty-four years at Boeing. Along the way he built stringed instruments of all types as both a hobby and therapy. Upon retiring, he converted his busy hobby into a small business.

▪ bio current as of 2013

Ervin Somogyi

Ervin Somogyi

Ervin Somogyi is a respected guitar maker and lutherie teacher. He’s been everywhere and done everything. He has lost everything and come back for more. He has numerous credits as a GAL author and convention presenter, and is the author of The Responsive Guitar.

▪ bio current as of 2014

William G. Snavely

Seven-year member William Snavely has been making solid-bodied instruments for more than thirty years, for no discernible reason. He’s been a university professor, a bass player, a pastry chef, and a clothing designer — in a word, a misfit. Currently, he is building a house with his son and hoping to contribute to the musical careers of four of his children.

▪ bio current as of 2004

Steve Smith

Steve Smith is president and chief scientist of Smith and Co. The company manufactures specialty epoxies and polyurethanes for applications in the marine and construction industries. He is also doing research and development of specialty materials under contract to several companies in other industries.

▪ bio current as of 2015

Neil Smith

Neil Smith’s Vegas Guitars Custom Shop

Gold-certified Fender tech Neil Smith grew up playing and tinkering with guitars. After seventeen years on the road backing such greats as Bo Diddley, Little Anthony, and the Chiffons, he went to college and earned degrees in social work. But he returned to his first loves: guitar repair and building. He has built guitars for first-call guitarists in shows like Cirque Du Soliel, Blue Man Group, and Jersey Boys.

▪ bio current as of 2010

George A. Smith

George Smith

Eighteen-year GAL member George A. Smith lives and works in his 1886 home in Portland, Oregon, where he concentrates on classical guitars with support from his cat Heathcliff who contributes an occasional hair to the French polish finish, greatly enhancing the treble response.

▪ bio current as of 2006

Ed Smith

Seven-year GAL member Ed Smith, 77, is a retired Canadian immigration officer who makes one guitar a year as a winter project. His goal is to build a guitar that equals the sound and playability of his two fine old Martins. That may never happen, but each guitar that he has built has been better than the last. He thanks all American Lutherie authors for their generosity, as well as those who have contributed to his knowledge through YouTube.

▪ bio current as of 2018

David Smith

Twenty-three-year Guild member David Smith’s first lutherie experience was in 1976 after graduating with a degree in music. A kind local lute maker guided him in the making of an 8-course lute, which he then performed on. A forty-year interruption came in the form of a degree in electrical engineering, advanced work in computer science, having a family, and starting a company. Numerous false starts on guitar making have led to an intensive year of benefitting from the kindness of luthiers and the GAL.

▪ bio current as of 2014

Aaron Smiley

Aaron Smiley graduated from the Bryan Galloup School of Lutherie in 2013. From there he took a repair technician position at the Guitar Center in his old hometown of Beaumont, Texas. After three years, Aaron accepted a position at Stewart-MacDonald as a technical advisor/product specialist and now spends his spare time in Dan Erlewine’s shop helping him with repairs and absorbing as much information as possible.

▪ bio current as of 2017

Edgar B. Singleton

Edgar B. Singleton is a retired physics professor who has been making instruments, mostly of the violin family, as an avocation since 1982. He has been a member of the Catgut Acoustical Society and is an admirer of Carleen Hutchins and the CAS “school” of violin making and analysis.

▪ bio current as of 2010

Jon Simpson

Jsimpson Guitars

Jon Simpson began playing guitar at age twelve and took up woodworking in his early twenties. Those two paths crossed in 2006 when he sketched his first body pattern, made the first mold, and was officially bitten by the lutherie bug. He keeps his chops up on the weekends while working a day job as an animator (in Iowa, even; who knew?), and aspires to build guitars full-time within the next few years.

▪ bio current as of 2011

John W. Silzel

John Silzel

John Silzel holds four patents and leads two lives. By day he is a professor at Biola University, having earned a PhD by analyzing the air on remote Pacific islands. By night (once his kids are in bed) he builds electric violins and develops MIDI software. Once an honest classical violinist with his own tuxedo, Dr. Silzel now plays rock and jazz with electric guitarists and other unsavory types. His mother is dismayed.

▪ bio current as of 2011

Nasser Shirazi

Long-time GAL member Nasser Shirazi was born in 1939 in Tehran, Iran, and came to the United States in 1960. He soon earned a degree in civil engineering, and retired in 2004 as Assistant City Manager for Pittsburg, California. Mr. Shirazi has published two books on classical Persian instruments: Setar Construction (2001) and Building the Kamanche (2007).

▪ bio current as of 2014

Tom Shinness

Tom Shinness

Besides being a professional musician and amateur luthier (accent on the love), Tom Shinness is also a proponent of whole foods, exercise, and positive mentality as a means of achieving greater musical creativity and as a way to build greater endurance to tackle the challenges of life on the road.

▪ bio current as of 2006

Chuck Shifflett

Nineteen-year Guild member Chuck Shifflett studied lutherie for two years with Michael Dunn in Vancouver B.C. Now in High River, Alberta, he lives with his very patient wife and two great teen aged kids. He makes a living these days mostly repairing and doing some building.

▪ bio current as of 2008

Robert Sherman

Robert Sherman Guitars

Robert Sherman began playing guitar at age ten. While enrolled at Berklee College he held a job at Fishman and studied lutherie under Eric Miller, which in turn led to jobs in cabinetmaking and at Zeta Music Systems building guitars. Since 1992 he has been building and repairing acoustic and electric stringed instruments in the San Francisco Bay area.

▪ bio current as of 2012

Gerald Sheppard

Gerald Sheppard Guitars

Gerald Sheppard has been a GAL member since 1998. When he was fifteen, in 1965, he told his parents he wanted either a guitar or a motorcycle for Christmas. Lucky for him, they bought him an inexpensive Strat copy. Gerald has been repairing, refinishing, and building guitars for twenty years, building exclusively since 1993. He prides himself in knowing how to get something nearly perfect, then goofing it up.

▪ bio current as of 2000

Tim Shaw

Longtime GAL member Tim Shaw designed and marketed the Sunrise pickup in the 1970s, built artist instruments and prototypes for Gibson in the ’80s, and is now Director of Project Management/Guitar Design for Fender. He lectured at GAL Conventions in 1977, 1979, 1986, and 2006.

▪ bio current as of 2013

Ron Sharp

Ron Sharp was raised in Pocahontas County, West Virginia, where he still runs the woods harvesting downed red spruce for his guitar tops. He learned the lutherie craft from Wayne Henderson.

▪ bio current as of 2011

Bruce Sexauer

Sexauer Guitars

Bruce Sexauer has been building guitars since before the First Book (Hats off to Irving Sloane!). Forty-five years later Bruce is working in the shop he designed and built in his backyard, where he specializes in cutting-edge traditional steel string guitars and the occasional violin. He just can’t stop himself.

▪ bio current as of 2013

Stephen Sedgwick

Stephen Sedgwick

Nine-year GAL member Stephen Sedgwick started guitar making in 1994. He works alone to build harp guitars and other such things in the renovated office on what use to be a pig farm, which has now been taken over by artists. Ferraris, Porsches, and other speedy exotics race on a track next door. Simply smashing!

▪ bio current as of 2013

Lamar Scomp

Lamar Scomp is a multi-wannabe in search of gurus. He’s also capable of perfectly proper English speech but is too fond of his hillbilly heritage to use it except when confronted with bankers or government officials.

▪ bio current as of 2009

Flip Scipio

First time author and fifteen year GAL member Flip Scipio splits his lutherie time between shops in New York and Massachusetts. When he’s not working on guitars he works in the garden and rides his bicycle.

▪ bio current as of 2022

Paul Schuback

Schuback Violin Shop, Inc

When not building violins and cellos, Paul Schuback has amused himself by serving in Portland civic politics, riding his BMW motorcycle, and restoring old cars. His latest love is a 1956 British Land Rover with a factory-original fire engine conversion that he and his son picked up in Ireland.

▪ bio current as of 2001

John Schofield

Rockbridge Music

John Schofield has made 160 mandolins and two major audiokinetic sculptures (a la George Rhoads). He has made a lot of tools like a pantograph and fret saw and f-hole machine along with wood stoves and farm tools. He has 164 acres of land with a cabin and a lake and a pond, on a famous trout stream, and two caves… and someday he’d like to make a few more instruments. He has a backhoe and a sawmill and can stay busy every day. Plays the fiddle and the banjo in a decent bluegrass band and has even tried performing with his wife. He hunts deer but does not always find them, and fishes badly too. He works in sewage but that made his kids mad when he’d say that… they prefer the term environmental engineer. (Penn State 1968-75)

▪ bio current as of 2008

Arnold Schnitzer

AES Fine Instruments

Arnold Schnitzer was a young and successful working musician in the New York City area. When he found himself with the grown-up responsibilities of a wife and child, he decided to settle down and get a real job. Amusingly, that real job was hand-making string basses. He has been a GAL member for fifteen years, on and off.

▪ bio current as of 2015

Paul Schmidt

Art of Music

Paul Schmidt is probably best known to luthiers as the author of Acquired of the Angels: The Lives and Works of Master Guitar Makers John D’Angelico and James L. D’Aquisto and Art That Sings: The Life and Times of Luthier Steve Klein. He is a past AL author, convention speaker, and convention concertizer; and also holds advanced degrees in music and theology.

▪ bio current as of 2017

Peter Schaefer

Nine-year member Peter Schaefer plays banjo and resophonic guitar in a bluegrass trio. After four years of training as a goldsmith, he went work in the data center of the Hilti Co. in Liechtenstein, and has been there for twenty-five years.

▪ bio current as of 1997

David Santo

David Santo, former builder and partner in Gurian Guitars, was a consultant for Earthwood, Dan Armstrong, and many others. He is the inventor of innovative designs such as the 44-fret Ionic Guitar. He now lives in New York state with his family and continues to be an inventor, contractor, and luthier.

▪ bio current as of 1999

Carl Samuels

Who put the bop in the bop shu-bop shu-bop? Carl Samuels, that’s who! He taught guitar making to John Roberts, founder of the Roberto-Venn school, thereby becoming a granddaddy of the American lutherie boom.

▪ bio current as of 2014

Taku Sakashta

Read Taku Sakashta’s memoriam

Like Ichiro Suzuki, five-year GAL member Taku Sakashta has moved to the United States and brought a Japanese sensibility for fine craft. Born in Kobe, Japan, he has taught guitar building in a Japanese technical school, and has built custom guitars for artists around the Pacific Rim. Taku passed away in 2010

▪ bio current as of 2001

Dennis Russell

Nine-year member Dennis Russell is a retired Navy aviation mechanic. He built his first instrument in 1994 and has now built several mandolins and three guitars. He plays flat-pick guitar, mandolin, and old-time fiddle, as well as growing tomatoes and roses.

▪ bio current as of 2004

Paul Ruppa

Paul Ruppa is a musician and mandolin historian with degrees in Scandinavian Studies and Music History. Since he bought a Vega cylinder-back mandocello in 1973 (for $175), his interest in America’s mandolin history has grown and “kind of became an obsession.” He has been a member of the century-old Milwaukee Mandolin Orchestra since 1981, and has directed the MMO on Garrison Keillor”s “A Prairie Home Companion. “Currently, when not looking for more information about the origin of America’s appreciation of the mandolin, he is realizing a dream by leading an ambitious recording project. His goal is to produce a musical tribute to what he calls “the American Mandolin Orchestra Era.” For the project, Ruppa has formed an ensemble of first-rate, local musicians to play vintage mandolin arrangements on antique Vega instruments. The repertoire selected for the project is all linked to Wisconsin’s unique mandolin orchestra heritage. Ruppa says “It sounds crazy, but it might just work.”

▪ bio current as of 2017

Charles Rufino

Charles Rufino Violinmaker

Charles Rufino has been immersed in the art of the violin maker since 1974, studying at the Newark School of Violin Making in England and working under “Nigo” Nigogosian of New York and Carl Becker of Chicago before opening his own shop in 1984. He is a full member of the American Federation of Violin and Bow Makers and the International Society of Violin and Bow Makers. Like Bach, he enjoys playing the viola in several community orchestras so that he can be “in the middle of the harmony.

▪ bio current as of 2015

Rick Rubin

Thirty-three-year GAL member Rick Rubin has been involved in instrument repair since 1976. In retirement, Rick plans to inflict more guitars, Irish bouzoukis, and octave mandolins on the world, while using up the stash of wood he’s sat on all these years. He’s also a member of an Irish trad band called Floating Crowbar, where he plays guitar, banjo, mandolin, and a little whistle and flute.

▪ bio current as of 2022

Merv Rowley

Mountain Dulcimer 1-3-5

Merv Rowley is a retired engineer whose career was spent in industry, research, and education. For the past twenty years he has been sole proprietor of Roselle Dulcimers, building mountain dulcimers, hammered dulcimers, and the occasional banjo or German Alpine zither. He has authored several articles on innovations in dulcimer design and construction and remains active as a custom builder, teacher and volunteer performer.

▪ bio current as of 1999

Peter Rosenbladt

Rosenbladt Guitars

Peter Rosenbladt grew up in Germany and came to the U.S. in 1968 to study computer engineering at UC Berkeley. He stayed, and worked his entire professional career in Silicon Valley. Building musical instruments sounded like a wonderful challenge because of the combination of physics, engineering, craftsmanship and art. He has been at it since 2003 and has been amazed by the world-class level of American lutherie.

▪ bio current as of 2015

Todd Rose

Todd Rose Guitars

17-year GAL member Todd Rose has been married for the same number of years and is the lucky father of two amazing daughters. In his central NY county (and the U.S. as a whole), one in five children don’t have enough to eat. Finding this heartbreaking and intolerable, Todd and his wife, Suzy, have recently turned their homestead into a not-for-profit initiative called Morningsong Community Service Farm, to produce fresh food for donation to local food pantries and meal programs, while also serving as a resource for people seeking to learn about homestead farming and related subjects. Since he turned his attention to this project, Todd’s adventures in lutherie have become a part-time pursuit. He still plays and repairs guitars and ukes and such, and still has unbuilt instruments on the drawing board, but how many of these he will get around to building remains unknown. He’s okay with that.

▪ bio current as of 2016

Jose Romanillos

Read Jose Romanillos’s memoriam

Thirty-year GAL member José Luis Romanillos celebrated his 85th birthday in June 2017. He, and his wife and partner of fifty-nine years, Marian Harris Winspear, claim to have retired in 1995 when they moved back to Spain after bringing up their three sons, mostly in England. Apparently, retirement means building instruments, teaching lutherie, and researching, updating, and writing books. José and Marian continue to inspire us while setting the bar impossibly high.

▪ bio current as of 2018

John Roeder

First-time author John Roeder has been playing zither in cafes and restaurants for ten years, and building zithers for seven years. He considers himself a good musician, but strictly an amateur luthier.

▪ bio current as of 1997

Rob Rodgers

Rodgers Tuning Machines

Rob Rodgers makes Rodgers tuners, the precision tuning machines known to luthiers and musicians around the world. After completing his own engineering qualifications, Rob teamed up with his dad, David Rodgers. Rob with his wife Sue, now living near Halifax, Nova Scotia continue to streamline the business using 21st-century equipment, but still find time to appreciate the beautiful Canadian landscape. During the summer months they enjoy cycling and kayaking and continue a lifelong interest in the martial arts throughout the year.

▪ bio current as of 2012

Jason Rodgers

Jayemar Guitars

17 year Guild member Jason Rodgers, a middle school band and choir teacher by day, builds electric guitars and pickups in the evenings and weekends out of his small garage shop. He enjoys using locally sourced woods, preferably reclaimed or recycled, and simple finishes. Jason readily admits that he is part of the era of internet-educated guitar makers, and owes much gratitude to his friends at the Musical Instrument Makers Forum www.mimf.com

▪ bio current as of 2016

David Rodgers

Rodgers Tuning Machines

David Rodgers make Rodgers tuners, the precision tuning machines known to luthiers and musicians around the world. David left his position as chief design engineer for a large company in the mid-1970s in response to a growing demand for the improved machine head design he’d developed in his home workshop. Recently David has found time to restore his functional steam-driven locomotives and 200´ track that circles his back yard.

▪ bio current as of 2012

Jim Roden

Professional forester Jim Roden uses his spare time to build dulcimers, garden, tend his orchard, and pick out tunes on his instruments in the quiet of his front room.

▪ bio current as of 1994