I am a small-shop builder, making quality instruments in the hills of Virginia.  During the past 30 or so years, I have built and repaired many instruments. During that time I’ve been asked a lot of questions, and have done a lot of thinking about lutherie and musical instruments. Here are some of my thoughts:

MY HISTORY

I got out of college, with a biology degree, in the midst of a recession, so I was working part time here and there, and started learning to play the banjo. With time on my hands and the sharp mind of youth, I was learning pretty fast, and soon felt the need for a better banjo than I could afford.

I started playing banjos in stores, noticed that they weren’t all created equal, and wondered why. What made this $500 banjo so much better than that $200 banjo? I analyzed and observed, and started to figure it out.

I studied every stringed instrument I could get my hands on, and read everything I could find about stringed instrument building or repair for about two years. Finally one day, I decided it was time to start. I already had some tools and some experience with wood, so I started buying parts and buying (and borrowing) more tools, and built my first instrument. That first banjo turned out to be pretty good, and friends started getting me to fix their guitars, banjos and other instruments.

One of my picking buddies said he wanted me to build him a mandolin, so I did.
I was working in a cabinet shop when a major instrument manufacturer asked me to come to work there, “and the rest, as they say, is history”.

MATERIALS

I prefer quarter sawn wood because it is more stable, and that results in added strength because there is less stress on glue joints, and the wood itself, because there is less wood movement with changes in humidity.

I don’t feel that any one spruce species is superior to others. I use Red spruce, Sitka, Engelmann, and European spruce, and prefer not to make general statements about which sounds like what, because the individual pieces of wood can be so different.

I prefer hard maple for F-hole mandolins, but the softer maples are fine too, and so are “alternate” wood species.

WEIGHT

For stringed instruments in general, with the exception of banjos, I think lighter is better.

I make every effort to keep weight low in my instruments through design, materials selection, removal of excess wood, and choosing light components when I can. Lightness decisions are made with structural integrity in mind, and any weight reducing operation that might make a weaker or structurally inferior instrument is not considered.

FINISHES

Finishes are best kept thin, but they need to be thick enough to protect the instrument. A thin film of finish does not add much mass, and damping effects are minimal compared to a thick finish, so there is not much difference between a thin lacquer finish and a thin varnish finish in terms of sound. It’s much more time consuming to apply varnish than lacquer, and therefore, varnish is more expensive. It’s more difficult to get a good, smooth finish surface, and the surface is not as tough as lacquer. Varnish can mean many different things, so there is no reliable conclusion to be drawn about instrument characteristics from the knowledge that an instrument is finished in varnish.

I feel that the current “fad” for varnish-finished mandolins is partly a result of marketing by some companies who have a vested interest in convincing the buyer that varnish is superior in tone production, when, in fact, a thin, well applied finish of any kind has very little affect on the sound or tone of an instrument compared to other variables. I use lacquer and varnish finishes, but I make no claim of tone superiority, or even tone difference between the finishes that I use.

GLUES AND ADHESIVES

I use hot hide glue for most structural joints because I think it is the best glue in terms of resistance to “creep” and resistance to heat. It is also the “correct” glue to use in restoration and repair work on older instruments that were constructed with hide glue. A well made glue joint contains a minimal amount of glue, and that results in very little actual difference in the performance of good adhesives or glues in terms of sound and structure. Other glues and adhesives have their places in building and repair, and I try to select the best one to use for each specific job.

I feel that the current “fad” for hide glue construction is partly a result of marketing by some companies who have a vested interest in convincing the buyer that hide glue is superior in tone production, when, in fact, a thin, well made glue joint with any good glue or adhesive has very little affect on the sound or tone of an instrument compared to other variables. I make no claim of superior tone production resultant from the glue that I use.

SMALL BUILDERS VS. PRODUCTION

Small Builders and production builders face different challenges during the building process. Due to the nature of a production setting, where a builder is dealing in volume and parts are worked in batches, mistakes can be made in multiples, so instruments containing mistakes can show up more often in production instruments. A production setting frequently requires compromises in design to smooth out the production process, so the small builder has more opportunity to adapt and optimize his/her designs. Wood is inherently variable, and no two pieces of wood, even if cut from the same tree or board, are the same. Each piece needs to be worked as the individual piece that it is. The small builder has more opportunity to do this. The more wood that is acquired and used by a builder, the more variation the builder must accept in the wood. Due to the production process, production builders are less able to deal with the variability between each piece of wood. It follows that higher production can lead to less consistency in the product because, as variation in materials is increasing, adaptability to variation is decreasing.

Custom designs and special materials are easier for the small builder than the large producer. As a small builder, I am able to assess each part of the instrument, from the top and back to the neck, hardware, and internal parts, so I am able to control each component and try to optimize it for the particular instrument that I am building.

FINGERBOARD RADIUS

As standards, I use a 16 inch radius for guitar fingerboards, 12 inch for banjo fingerboards, and 7 1/4 inch radius for mandolin fingerboards. I can use any radius, within reason, as well as flat, as is the tradition with banjos and mandolins.

I make no claim of superiority of any particular radius over another, or over a flat board. It is strictly personal preference.

TAP TUNING

I don’t do much of it.
My experience and research lead me to believe that free plate resonances are not only hard to control, but are of little use in controling the sound of a finished fretted instrument. I don’t discount the traditions of the violin building community, and tuning specific parts of a mandolin to specific notes may be a way for some builders to gauge their progress in carving, but there are other ways, more reliable in my opinion, that I prefer to use.

I do listen to the wood, and sometimes record notes that I hear, but I don’t strive for specific notes. I’d rather be spending my time on things that I feel result in a better sounding instrument than trying to get pieces of wood to ring at specific, arbitrarily selected notes of the modern tempered scale.

LEARNING LUTHERIE

I learn all I can. I read any book, paper, or article that I have a chance to. I’ve been attending ASIA symposia since 1989, and have learned much from the seminars and discussions. The internet has taught me a lot, as has over 20 years of experience as a luthier, with most of that time as a professional luthier.

CUSTOM WORK

I welcome and enjoy doing custom work, incorporating your ideas into your new instrument. As for what is available, anything goes, with possible exceptions. If I think something is structurally unsound, aesthetically reprehensible, or in extremely poor taste, I won’t build it, inlay it, or put my name on it.