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February 14, 2011
After having made a batch of purfling based on the stuff the Larson brothers had used, my mind had turned back to the Larsons and more specifically to my Ermida model, which is a copy of their Stahl Style 6. My Larson obsession renewed, I had to get an Ermida out of my system. I had not built an Ermida in six years, during which time I’ve learned a few things and I wanted to put some of them into […]
January 19, 2011
My friend Tony Klassen is a guitar collector turned builder. Tony has been collecting rare and fine instruments for about 30 years and he has a very intimate knowledge of some of the greatest instruments that have been made in this country. A number of years ago Tony started building guitars. Due to his insight into the old classics, he had a pretty good leg up on the competition. His company is Ark New Era Guitars. Check him out if […]
January 3, 2011
A few years ago, a friend in Italy turned me onto the guitars of Luigi Mozzani. Mozanni was a virtuoso guitar player who eventually began making guitars, harp guitars and mandolins. There is alot of great information on Mozzani and his instruments on Gregg Miner’s fabulous site, harguitars.net. Here is a link to the article on Mozzani. One of the shapes that seemed to be very inspirational to Mozzani kept popping out […]
November 15, 2010
My apologies for being delinquent on the blog updates. It’s been a busy summer and things are just now starting to calm down. My family and I spend our summers gardening and enjoying the outdoors. One of our goals has been to put up as much food as possible for the long winter. We kept three gardens this year one in the backyard, behind the shop, one at a community garden, and a large one out at a friends farm, […]
July 26, 2010
For the past two and a half years I’ve been training an apprentice, Cyrus Brown-LaGrange. I met Cyrus almost twenty years ago, back when I used to play music on the street. His mother worked at the Farmers Market and he used to come by and listen to us play. Before long I was giving him music lessons in exchange for home cooked meals. Since then he has become a very close family friend. A few years back, Cyrus and […]
March 22, 2010
For the most part, I try to build my guitars like the old ones, but standards and expectations have changed a lot since the old days and I think that in order to sell guitars, the workmanship has to be a lot cleaner than it was in the old days. Not that I judge my guitars by the same standards as some of the small and medium shops of the day. When I look at a lot of the stuff […]
January 12, 2010
I’m always excited when I hear that my friend Craig Ventresco has released a new recording as he is one of my all time favorite guitar players. Imagine my excitement to hear that his latest CD, “Craig Ventresco Plays the Guitar”, features a guitar I made for him a year ago. Finally a chance to hear him put it through the paces! Craig is probably best known for playing guitar on the soundtrack to the film Crumb. He should be […]