| American Lutherie Authors | |
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David Macias is a thirty-one-year Guild member, a Flamenco guitarist, and a maker of Flamenco and classic guitars. this info updated 1987 |
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Head tool guru at Stew-Mac, thirty-eight-year member Don MacRostie is responsible for many of the fine tools and products that luthiers use. He is also the builder of Red Diamond Mandolins. this info updated 2015 |
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Gary Magliari is a senior designer at Consolidated Edison with a work portfolio ranging from avionics to Manhattan’s underground gas and electric facilities. He first picked up a guitar in 1964 and has played in many bands. More recently he has applied his engineering skills to the age-old problem of intonation. this info updated 2013 |
Thirteen-year GAL member Mike Mahar is a software engineer who took up lutherie as a hobby around the year 2000. He builds a guitar or mandolin every year or so in his spare time. A major interest is the scientific analysis of instruments to try to determine how physical properties affect the sound. He’s currently working on a computer program that incorporates instrument design tools as well as tone generators and spectrum analyzers. this info updated 2014 |
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Beverly Maher is the owner of The Guitar Salon, a unique one-woman operation located in an historic brownstone in Greenwich Village. She has been playing, buying, selling, and loving instruments all her life. Beverly has been called many names, from “Guitar Lady” to “Soul of the Guitar in NYC. this infor updated 2014 |
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Nineteen-year Guild member Dave Maize began making guitars in 1975. For the last six years he has built acoustic bass guitars. He sells instrument wood and enjoys playing music and backpacking. this info updated 1998 |
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“Uncle” George Majkowski is a retired electronics and computer engineer, a flamenco guitarist, and a student of and collaborator with deceased Kasha guitar builder extrordinaire, Richard Schneider. this info updated 1999 George passed away 2002, read his memoriam. |
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Violinmaker George Manno is a frequent past author. this info updated 1990 |
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Linda Manzer began her lutherie career as an apprentice to Jean Larrivée in the early ’70s, and has been a GAL member for a total of thirty years. She is a very highly regarded builder, which is particularly odd when you consider that she still hasn’t figured out how many necks a guitar has. this info updated 2015 |
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Twenty-four-year GAL member Stephen Marchione spent his earliest years in Texas, then Italy, then Texas again. He went to New York City to make it as a guitarist, but ended up becoming a luthier. Now he’s back in Texas and at the top of his game. this info updated 2014 |
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Gabriel Marcotte also works for Marc Lupien of XXL guitars. He builds his own line of electric guitars under the name Markött Guitars. this info updated 2012 |
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Edward Margerum is an unemployed chemist and scholar who is now vicariously living a lutherie career through his daughter Alice, a Guild member currently studying early fretted instrument construction at City of London Polytechnic, formerly London College of Furniture. this info updated 1992 |
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Antonio Marín Montero was born in Granada in 1933. His family had no history with the guitar, and Antonio began his working life in marquetry workshops. He follows the technique and template of French luthier Robert Bouchet. Today his fame has reached five continents and he makes twenty guitars per year. this info updated 2014 |
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Four-year GAL member Lloyd Marsden got his initial education in practical woodworking growing up on a wheat and cattle ranch. A degree in mechanical engineering lead to work in mining equipment design. He built his first guitar using books by Young and Sloane. More recently he has studied with Harry Fleishman. ``My wife patiently supports my hobby,'' he reports. this info updated 2004 |
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Pat Marshall makes violins and bass viols. this info updated 1989 |
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Twenty-nine year GAL member C.F. Martin IV is the scion of America's foremost guitar-making family, with over one million instruments to its credit and artist endorsements from here to the moon and back. Twice. this info updated 2007 |
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While growing up in a heritage that combined fine arts on his mother's side and naval architecture on his father's side, Doug Martin's interests also branched to model aircraft and stringed musical instruments. Already experienced in woodwork, Doug began making violin family instruments in 1957 at age 13. He has been experimenting with violins since the late 1960s while making a living in small–boat design and building.
this info updated 2007 |
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Manuel Bernal Martínez is a professor of music at the Javeriana University and Fine Arts Faculty in Bogotá, Colombia, specializing in regional and popular Colombian music and instruments. He began working with GAL member Luis Alberto Paredes in 1990 to develop a superior model of the Colombian Andean bandola, and in 2003 they began to develop a bandola family of instruments. Manuel performed at the 2008 GAL Convention as a member of the bandola quartet Perendengue. this info updated 2008 |
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Michihiro Matsuda was born in Japan. After graduating from the Robert-Venn School of Lutherie, he moved to the San Francisco Bay Area for an apprenticeship with master luthier Ervin Somogyi. Following his apprenticeship, He studied guitar repair with renowned instrument repairman Frank Ford. Pairing traditional woodworking skills with an innovative sense of design, he builds around ten guitars each year. this info updated 2008 |
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Twelve-year Guild member Kathy Matsushita has been busy in the free time away from her high school English classes making mostly guitars, but also a harp, a dulcimer, a mandolin, a fiddle, and what-have-you. Sharing her knowledge through her websites that chronicle her successes and challenges as an amateur luthier has brought a wealth of information and inspiration to others. And she's well trained in can opening by Maggie and Emily. this info updated 2003 |
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Michael McCarten has been an artist/craftsman since childhood, being inspired by his artist grandmother and his carpenter grandfather. He has been working on stringed instruments since 1979, and at an increasingly higher level since happily joining the GAL in 1997. He is a proud person who is humbled and exhilarated by the diverse group of high caliber people willing to share their knowledge of lutherie. this info updated 2010 |
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Five-year GAL member John McCarthy is a certified aircraft mechanic as well as a classically-trained violinist and guitarist and a former professor of painting and fabric doping. this info updated 2004 |
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Guitar maker and perennial convention attendee Bill McCaw is an eighteen-year member. this info updated 1989 |
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And now, luthiers and gentlemen, the last debutante author on our alphabetical list, presenting new member Rick McCollum! this info updated 1992 |
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Graham McDonald is a mandolin builder who has published two books on instrument making and one on mandolin history. He has been a member of the GAL (off and on) for thirty years. Despite living on the other side of the globe, he has attended four GAL Conventions and been a presenter at two of them. And he is on deck to present at the 2017 GAL Convention. this info updated 2017 |
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Paul McGill was a way-rad downhill skier until he became entraped in lutherie work. Sure, he's making beautiful instruments for big-name players, but now instead of the wind whistling through his hair he hears the wind whistling through the dust collector ducts. But it doesn't whistle very loud, because he did such a good job building the system. this info updated 1999 |
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Mike McGovern has been in retail music sales for sixteen years, ten of those at Stew-Mac. He likes working on instruments in his spare time, but easily gets distracted and ends up playing them instead. He lives in Athens, Ohio with his wife and three young children. this info updated 2011 |
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First-time Guild author Bruce McGuire was an apprentice of the late Art Overholtzer, and is a luthier and a lutherie teacher. this info updated 1993 |
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Ken McKay’s formal education in working wood was to study classical woodcarving where he learned to recognize a sweet line. He now specializes in replicating electric guitars and is hoping to make his next double bass someday soon. He has other lofty goals, too. this info updated 2013 |
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Dublin, Ireland native and five-year Guild member Jim McLean moved to Canada when he was sixteen, in 1971. Today he is married, teaches grade school, and builds acoustic guitars and Irish bouzoukis. this info updated 2001 |
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Woodcutter Steve McMinn is has been a Guild member seventeen of the last twenty years and a past convention panelist. this info updated 1993 |
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Nine-year member Ellis McMullin decided to do something "constructive" when his wife gave him a classical guitar made by Del Langejans for his sixtieth birthday. He mentioned to Del that he thought he could make one. Del's replied, "When you finish it, let me take a look."' Ellis did just that, and now makes guitars! Thank you, Del, for your suggestions and time. this info updated 2006 |
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Paul McNulty dates his lutherie beginnings to purchasing a Renaissance lute in 1981 from the brilliant David Brown of Baltimore, and peering at it for several years in slack-jawed wonder, when not playing Dowland slowly upon it. Never comprehending lute technology, but being prompted by it nonetheless, he has made 150 fortepianos of different types since 1986. McNulty’s shop ethic, learned by slyly remembering Brown’s occasional remarks, eschews sandpaper, using scrapers instead as much as possible, but stops short at gathering reeds from primeval swamps for their gentle abrasive properties. this info updated 2012 |
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Welcome first-time author and four-year member Robert Mead! this info updated 1996 |
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Seventeen-year GAL member Ted Megas combined his backgrounds as a guitar player and a furniture maker by becoming a guitar maker. He chose to specialize in archtop because it was the guitar that he enjoyed most and that offered the greatest challenge. this info updated 2010 |
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Eric Meier got his start in lutherie back in 2007. He continuously explored new and unusual woods to use for his psalteries, and this interest gradually grew into an online project that's known today as The Wood Database. In addition to authoring a book on psaltery-making (A Psimple Psaltery), he has recently published the content of his wood website as a reference book entitled "WOOD! Identifying and Using Hundreds of Woods Worldwide." this info updated 2016 |
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Since studying with Richard Schneider and Jeffrey Elliott in the ’70s, eighteen-year member John Mello has built, restored, repaired, and sold guitars in the San Francisco area for thirty-eight years, during fifteen of which he eschewed guitar construction in favor of a mortgage and raising two, now-grown children. this info updated 2014 |
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Seven-year GAL member David Melly found his way to the Bay Area after graduating from the Roberto-Venn School of Luthiery. Although recently sited behind a table at the Healdsburg Guitar Festival with a Samvadhi, he normally makes steel-string acoustic guitars. this info updated 1999 |
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Nine-year GAL member Josep Melo fell in love with all kinds of guitar music and guitars before his teen years. He trained formally as an artist and industrial designer, and opened his own design studio in 1975 at age of twenty-three. He was able to make friends with and order guitars from some of his guitar-making heros, including James D’Aquisto, Steve Klein, and José Romanillos, and now builds his own guitars that honor their work while exhibiting his own distinctive, modern Catalan aesthetic. this info updated 2018 |
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Fifteen-year GAL member Rich Mermer has been building custom instruments since 1983. He builds by the grace of God and his lovely wife Sue. Remember, behind every struggling luthier is a successful spouse or partner! Waiting to join in the fun are his sons Rylan Koa (age 6) and Nathan Sitka (age 4). this info updated 1999 |
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From the UK and now on the Canada's wet coast, Veronica Merryfield made her first headless fretless bass at age seventeen and just kept going. These days she builds to commission, preferring unusual designs that solve playability issues for players with physical limitations or making basses. Veronica has a day job in electronics and software to subsidize her lutherie habit. veronica@merryfield.ca this info updated 2012 |
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Eight-year GAL member Luis Alberto Feu de Mesquita's ancestry goes back to Andalusia. He started building and repairing guitars as a teenager, and trained with Sergei de Jonge in his fifties. this info updated 2009 |
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Electrical engineering didn't make it for Benoît Meulle-Stef, so he turned to lutherie, and eventually set up shop in Belgium. There, at BMS Guitars, he does repair and retail, and builds electrics, resophonics, contra guitars, and unique multistring acoustics. It's the only job he's ever had. Ben has been a GAL member for two years. this info updated 2006 |
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Eric Meyer (aka Rico) turns fine fittings mostly for violin family instruments. He apprenticed with Jeffrey Elliott way back in the ’70s and was founder/owner of the Twelfth Fret Guitar Shop in the late ’80s. Presently, he finds time to golf, fish, and hang out with Irish musicians. http://www.meyerfittings.com/ this info updated 2011 |
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Brian Michael started repairing instruments at Gryphon Stringed Instruments in 2002 and still loves it today. He makes custom electric guitars under the name Michael Guitars, and plays guitar in San Jose band Careless Hearts. www.gryphonstrings.com/ this info updated 2015 |
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Anne Middleton is Outreach Coordinator for the Forest Campaign at the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) in Washington, DC, where she focuses EIA’s efforts to represent legal wood trade on Capitol Hill. She has published documents and articles on the U.S. Lacey Act, and has worked in the field in Eastern Europe, Tanzania, and the USA on a variety of wildlife conservation issues. this info updated 2010 |
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Tim Miklaucic is the owner of Guitar Salon International in Santa Monica and founder and Chairman of GUITARadio.com, a multimedia publishing company dedicated to all forms of the guitar and guitar music. He also travels more than he'd like, but spends as much time as possible with his wife and their beautiful young daughter. www.guitarsalon.com/ this info updated 2000 |
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Luca Milani started his career as guitar maker as soon as he got his degree in clinical psychology. He lives in Greece now and shares job and bills with his wife Marzia. During his thirty-three years he has collected more than thirty recipes to make espresso. www.milaniguitars.com/milaniguitars/index.htm this link doesn't work http://www.milaniguitars.com/ this info updated 2008 |
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Seven-year member John Miles spent 35 years as an engineer developing infrared detectors. In 1961 he read Carleen Hutchins' Scientific American araticle and decided to make fiolins after retiring. He has, and he does. this info updated 1994 |
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Bernard Millant's family has been in the violin business in France since the 18th century. He learned his trade in workshops in Mirecourt, New York, and at his father's side in Paris. Today his expertise, especially on bows, is sought after by musicians, makers, and dealers around the world. this info updated 2006 |
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David Miller works with his father-in-law Kevin Waldron, and his brothers-in-law Erick and Jon Waldron in the family lutherie business. this info updated 2010 |
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First-time AL author and twelve-year GAL member, Gregory Miller, pursued his love of woodworking instilled by a high school shop teacher all the way to a degree in Interior Architecture and Design at Kansas State University. In 1998, after ten years of professional practice with a Portland, Oregon, interior design firm, he made the leap to designing and building high-end custom furniture full-time. Then, while visiting the 2003 Northwest Handmade Musical Instrument Exhibit, he was bitten by the lutherie bug and has been obsessed ever since. this info updated 2015 |
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Robert Miller received his BA in music education from Kean University in 1982. He studied violin with Norma Auth of Maplewood, New Jersey, Newton Mansfield of Manhattan, and the late Odin Guenther of Heidelberg, Germany. He enjoys his free time reading, playing (electric) guitar, piano, or violin. He has worked for many years as an instructor of Special Education. this info updated 2015 |
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Sixteen-year GAL member Larry Mills moonlights as a computer analyst and anti-war activist. His art is influenced by Ervin Somogyi, James Joyce, Leo Kottke, and Harry Potter. Larry is fond of carving headstocks into vines, knots, and other funny shapes. www.lmillsluthier.com/home.html this info updated 2008 |
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Collector, historian, and multi-instrumentalist Gregg Miner has been unofficially crowned the “Harp Guitar Pope.” Creator of the Knutsen Archives, and subsequently, Harpguitars.net and Harp Guitar Music, his passion for the instrument borders on the pathological. www.harpguitars.net this info updated 2010 |
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Besides being a luthier, new Guild member David Minnieweather is a musician. In fact, this pastor's son, his three sisters, two brothers, and his parents could form a fine gospel group without any outside help. David passed away in 2009, read his memoriam. this info updated 2009 |
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David Miracle is a student of Lamar Scomp. this info updated 2011 |
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Nathan D. Missel teaches botany at Clemson University. Mr. Missel is currently conducting research with ponding techniques to enhance acoustic characteristics of tonewood. He is a self-trained luthier and amateur machinist. this info updated 1998 |
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Walter Mitchell, Jr., is a retired publisher whose hobbies include boating and bicycling as well as making doll houses and model airplanes. He has been luthing for about two years, and his son David is also a beginning luthier and GAL member. this info updated 1997 |
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Six-year GAL member Tatsuo Miyachi is an engineer who has been playing guitar for forty years. He has been pipe-dreaming several strange guitar-building ideas but he has not yet made any of them real. this info updated 2008 |
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Mike Moger has been retooling his shop and building guitars for six years following his class on classical guitar construction with Harry Fleishman and Fabio Ragghianti. He built mostly furniture before guitars, and continues to build as a hobby, using hand tools rather than machinery. He has sold real estate for twenty-three years. this info updated 2008 |
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Like lutherie itself, John Monteleone has been greatly influenced by Italian men, working with Jimmy D’Aquisto in the ’70s and Mario Maccaferri in the ’80s. He was recently featured in an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. And he’s been a GAL member for a total of thirty-six years. this info updated 2014 |
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Ray Mooers is the founder and co-owner of Dusty Strings Company which makes harps and hammered dulcimers. He has been a Guild member for twenty-eight years. this info updated 2008 |
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Seven-year Guild member Chuck Moore builds Moore Bettah Ukuleles in the Hawaiian jungle using only solar power, and has to drive into town to receive mail or make a phone call. He has also been a potter and a scrimshander. His ukes often feature eye-popping koa and exquisite inlay work with Hawaiian and South Seas motifs. this info updated 2014 |
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Ed Moore has been a Guild member sixteen of the last twenty-one years. this info updated 1994 |
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Six-year member John C. Moore, a chemical engineer by day, has made one guitar from a kit and is currently making no. 2 from scratch. He pursues guitar making for its unique combination of music, science, woodworking, tool collecting, and mistake correcting. While the glue is drying, he can most likely be found practicing crosspicking or on his Harley. this info updated 2004 |
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This is the second instrument plan drawn by 5-year Guild member John Morgan. this info updated 1989 |
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Luthier and lutherie instructor George Morris has taught and inspired hundreds of students. He prefers to stay with individual construction techniques using minimal resources as opposed to making multiple instruments of the same design. George holds small classes at his live-in school in Vermont. this info updated 2003 |
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Back when he had what his testy creditors so callously refer to as "a real job," R.M. Mottola was an engineer. He now spends his time turning expensive wood into heaps of expensive sawdust, out of which emerges the occasional musical instrument. this info updated 2007 |
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Jim Mouradian entered the world of lutherie backwards; his first project was to scratch-build a bass for Chris Squire of the band Yes. His background in hot rods, audio, and physics provided wxperiences to draw upon. He and his son Jon enjoy running a repair shop together. this info updated 2007 |
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Fourteen-year GAL member Andrew Mowry gained his love of wood while roaming the forests of southern Vermont as a youth. Although his formal education is in geology and geography, he has been a full-time luthier since 2004, building mostly mandolin-family instruments. this info updated 2017 |
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Longtime GAL member Stuart Murphy is a past author and convention attendee. this info updated 2013 |
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Three-year Guild member Phillip Murray began in lutherie eighteen years ago and has been a full time builder and repairman for eleven years. He and his wife Gina have a son, Hugh, age 1. Phillip plays in a church folk group every Sunday to about two thousand people. He is also edits the newsletter of the Dublin Chapter of the Irish Woodturners Guild. this info updated 1997 |
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Long-time member Don Musser is a logger, a luthier, a wood dealer, and an author. this info updated 1999 |
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Twenty two year GAL member Todd Mylet studied lutherie in Minnesota at Redwing Tech in 1995 and has been building and repairing various and sundry fretted instruments since. He plies his trade at Portland Fret Works with three other luthiers. When not luthing, he enjoys baking bread, surfing, and making his wife and two teenage daughters yawn by waxing on about the idiosyncrasies of the neck he is resetting. this info updated 2015 |
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First-time GAL author Javad Naini has a background in engineering and is a player of traditional Persian music. this info updated 2007 Javad passed away in 2009 |
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Mike Nealon makes steel-string and resonator guitars. this info updated 2011 |
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Tom Nelligan is a Senior Applications Engineer with Olympus NDT in Waltham, MA. He has worked in the field of industrial ultrasonic testing since 1978, and specializes in ultrasonic thickness gauging and flaw detection. He is also an amateur guitarist. this info updated 2007 |
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Eleven-year GAL member Greg Nelson took up building stringed instruments in the late ’90s after years of cabinet and furniture making, architectural millwork, and antique restoration. His passion is steel string guitars, but he is currently building a fiddle and working up the nerve to try a cello. this info updated 2015 |
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Paul Neri has been repairing and restoring instruments for more than half of his sixty-two years. He is the author of The Acoustic Guitar Repair Detective, a repair diagnoses book published by Hal Leonard. He was formerly with the bluegrass trio Spacegrass, the duo The Acoustic Suburbanites, the Spanish guitar duo Las Guitarras, and later the bluegrass quintet Ragweed. He now occasionally performs solo Spanish guitar and is a member of The Kerry Boys, an Irish music group where he plays banjo. this info updated 2017 |
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Philip Neuman and his wife Gayle are heads of the Early Music Guild of Oregon, a nonprofit organization founded in 1978. They perform frequently, teach, and make period instruments with names like rackett, krummhorn, and schreierpfeife. In addition to medieval and renaissance music, they also perform ancient Greek music on instruments they built including kithara, lyre, pandoura, and aulos. Philip drew the illustrations for the recent book “How Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony” by Ross Duffin (Norton). this info updated 2009 |
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Fifteen-year member Steve Newberry was a founding member of the postwar New York Society of Classic Guitar. As a guitarist he performed on radio, TV, and Broadway. He studied both music and math at numerous institutions of higher learning. Since retiring as a software consultant and technical writer in 1988 he has done considerable experimental lutherie and is a founding member of NCAL. Steve passed away in 2014, read his memoriam this updated 2001 |
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Shaun Newman began playing the classical guitar in 1968 whilst living in Germany. He made his first classical guitar over fifteen years ago and has also made harps, dulcimers (hammered and fretted), mandolins, mediaeval fiddles, psalteries, and ukuleles. He retired three years ago from his busy role as a company director working with an agency supporting unemployed young people. this info updated 2010 |
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Welcome first-time author Eric Nicholson! this info updated 2001 |
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Ten-year Guild member Jean Francois Noel is a professional motorcycle mechanic who for the last ten years has made a custom guitar or two each year, as well as doing a lot of lutherie experimentation for his own satisfaction. this info updated 2012 |
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Paul Norman studied with Alan Carruth for about seven years and has been building guitars on his own for about ten years, specializing in wood-bodied resonator guitars. this info updated 2013 |
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Suzy Norris is a violin maker and a twenty-six-year Guild member. this info updated 1987 |
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Thirty-five year Guild member Ralph Novak started his lutherie career over forty years ago in New York City. He has been a GAL author and convention speaker. He runs Novax Guitars and makes his trademarked Fanned-Fret guitars. this info updated 2015 |
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Professional guitarist turned luthier Todd Novak is currently working for Marc Silber Guitars and does freelance repairs in the Berkeley, CA area. He is also a ukulele enthusiast, and has begun building soprano ukes along with restored and vintage stringed instruments. this info updated 1999 |
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Sebastián Núñez was a tinkering teenager in a Buenos Aires garage band until he followed his girlfriend to the Netherlands. There he fell in with a historic-house-restoring, Harley-riding, early-music luthier. He read every early-music magazine in the Utrecht University library while commuting to work. Now he’s an old master, making and restoring lutes, Romantic guitars, and harpsichords. www.earlymusicalinstruments.info this info updated 2017 |
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Three-year Guild member Ernest Nussbaum wrote about his Travielo, a highly transportable ‘cello, in American Lutherie #5. this info updated 1987 |
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Eleven-year GAL member Robbie O’Brien was born in Germany to American parents, and grew up in Atlanta. He became interested in the guitar as a young medical student in Brazil. Now he’s been teaching lutherie for over twenty-five years. this info updated 2015 |
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Tim O'Dea is a carpenter by trade and has been making guitars for about five years. He is a surfer living near the Pacific coast of New South Wales. this info updated 1998 |
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Lloyd Scott Oglesby is a retired chemist whose background gives him interests and insights in areas from glues and varnishes to fireworks. this info updated 1988 |
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Welcome first-time author and two-year member Terrence O'Hearn! this info updated 2008 |
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Stan Olah is a chief of police, a farmer and nurseryman, and a budding violin maker. He's enthusiastic about all his jobs, but he'll talk your ears off about fiddles (and since he's a cop, you'll like it). He turns to George Fortune for fiddle advice and good stories, and he's a good storyteller himself. this info updated 1998 |
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Tim Olsen is the founding editor of American Lutherie. He started making guitars at age 12, went pro at age 17, and was all done by age 26. That was 27 years ago. He is a tubist and a bipedalist currently working on a virtual global circumambulation. He likes gospel hymns and that crazy fusion music from the early '70s. this info updated 2007 |
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Tomas Orellana built his first instrument in his college dorm room. He played the Venezuelan cuatro as a child and later studied the different types of Venezuelan bandolas. Outside his shop, he is a CAD designer, aerospace engineer, and pilot with an MS in mechanical engineering. this info updated 2015 |
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Twenty-two-year GAL member Don Overstreet is a past convention presenter and an occasional contributor to American Lutherie. His regular gig is setting up, repairing, and restoring instruments of the violin family at David Kerr’s Violin Shop. He intends to get back to those unfinished violins in the workshop at home any day now. this info updated 2013 |
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After graduating from the Newark School of Violin Making in 1979, Koen Padding worked at Machold Rare Violins on the restoration team gathered around Roger Hargrave. He returned to the Netherlands in 1988 as technical director of the family's ink factory, and founded Magister Varnish Products in 1997. this info updated 2009 Koen passed away in 2012 |
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When asked for biographical info Robert Painter simply said, “Tell them the usual lies.” Which we don't and won't do. So we'll include better information after Bob submits his next how-to article, “Saving the Universe and Other Odd Jobs.” this info updated 2005 |
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Chris Pantazelos builds and repairs guitars and all kinds of stringed instruments from the Middle East, including replicas of ancient Greek instruments. He has had great success with all wood lattice bracing for classical guitars, and he continues to develop this construction. this info updated 2008 |
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Dr. Janos Pap is a professor at the F. Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest, Hungary. www.lfze.hu/hp/nyitolap/index.html this info updated 2000 |
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Twenty-seven-year GAL member Alberto Paredes Rodríguez was born and raised in Bogotá, Colombia. Along with studies in engineering, he took up instrument construction as a hobby in 1959, and in 1977 he became a GAL member. He has built more than a thousand instruments including guitars, bandolas, tiples, mandolinas, cuatros, violins, and gambas. He is the author of La Guitarra Clásica Moderna: Historia, diseño y construcción, a Spanish-language lutherie book. this info updated 2018 |
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Anamaría Paredes holds a doctorate in veterinary medicine from the National University of Colombia. She is the daughter of luthier Luis Alberto Paredes Rodríguez, and is the principal coordinator of the administrative activities of this family business. this info updated 2007 |
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First time author Yves Parent shares with us his knowledge as a chemist. this info updated 1988 |
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Twelve-year GAL member John Park has played the Spanish guitar since the early '60s but resisted building them until the late '70s. He builds blancas and a few classics in the time-honored way and plays to them while the glue dries. Hobbies include classical humming and mountain biking, which he does simultaneously. this info updated 2012 |
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Shelley Park has a day job to help support her nights-and-weekends lutherie habit. She works in a guitar-making shop. this info updated 1998 |
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New author Michael Parsons makes and repairs several kinds of string instruments. this info updated 1987 |
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Ben Patron, at the culmination of a varied career that included work as a lift truck driver, cannery worker, inventor, motorcycle customizer and restorer, artist, and vintage instrument dealer, continues to explore the extreme boundaries of lutherie in his shop in the foothills of the Sierra. In his spare time, he performs on guitar and provides motivational talks at local Rotary Clubs and other venues. Supporting him in his sometimes whacky adventures is his wife Cherie, a super woman who can sing and ride and dance on roller skates, and is disobedient too — another plus. this info updated 2010 |
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Veteran musician Ralph Patt played with famous big bands, did studio and broadcast work, and generally jazzed it up in the '50s, '60s, and early '70s. Since then he has been working on nuclear-waste issues for the U.S. Department of Energy, but he hasn't let it get in the way of his music. this info updated 2002 |
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Nineteen-year Guild member James E Patterson is a well-known lutherie author and a retired printer with an interesting hobby: he likes to go on "photo and video binges, mostly of travels in Southeast Asian countries." this info updated 1997 |
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Guitar and amp manufacturer Hartley Peavey is a four-year Guild member. this info updated 1990 |
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Four-year GAL member John Pendergast is a uke maker and a new author. this info updated 2013 |
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After becoming Laureate of the Sixth World Festival of Youth and Students, Anatolii Ivanovich Peresada attended and taught at the Institutes of Culture in Moscow and Leningrad. He currently teaches at the Krasnodar Institute of Culture. In 1985 he published a book, Orchestras of Russian Folk Instruments. this info updated 1989 |
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Six-year member Alan Perlman builds recognizable classical and steel string guitar models, but loves the challenge of a one-off design. this info updated 2007 |
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Jonathon Peterson has numerous credits from his twenty years as a GAL staffer, probably the most outstanding of which is his role as photographer, reporter, and facilitator of the Guild's 2002 book Historical Lute Construction by the late Robert Lundberg. this info updated 2012 |
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Four-year GAL member Neil Peterson was a custom cabinetmaker for twenty-five years. He got the lutherie bug really bad while studying with George Morris, and has been dreaming of full-time instrument building for about the last ten years. Neil is currently working on guitars #30-33, and enjoys building in mesquite and reclaimed longleaf pine, both native to his home state of Texas. this info updated 2007 |
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First time author Gabriel Petric is a university professor. this info updated 1990 |
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Bruce Petros has been building guitars since 1972 and has over a quarter-century of GAL membership under his belt. His son Matthew has been building alongside him full time since the year 2000, and together they build about thirty guitars per year. this info updated 2013 |
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Welcome new author and seventeen-year Guild member Chad Phillips! this info updated 2003 |
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He's an inventor and researcher who has worked in the aviation industry and the manufacturing of brass instruments, but Norman Pickering is probably best known to luthiers as the inventor of the Pickering phono cartridge and as a prolific investigator into the physics of violins and bows. this info updated 2008 |
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Eight-year member and first-time author Craig Pierpont's interest in lutherie began in the '60s while in high school. At that time he realized that the only way to acquire all the instruments in which he was interested would be to build them himself. He quit his day job in the '80s eventually becoming a full-time harp builder. Declining to use power tools, he builds his instruments completely by hand. That may be the reason that many of the other instruments on his original list remain built only in his mind. this info updated 2000 |
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Twenty-two year GAL member Don Pilarz built his first classical guitar in 1982. Born in Montréal, Canada, he earned degrees in music and math there before moving to Genoa, Italy. He builds mainly new classical guitars but enjoys the challenge and satisfaction of studying and restoring fine older classical guitars. After decades of playing classical guitar and lute, he has also taken up playing piano. this info updated 2010 |
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Ivo Pires makes and repairs anything musical. He is a six-year Guild member. this info updated 1990 Ivo passed away in 2009 |
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Bob Pittman has been repairing things as far back as he can remember. When his teenage son took his new electric guitar apart, he followed the calling into the world of lutherie and fixed it. Now he spends his spare time repairing acoustic and electric instruments. When time allows, he makes krar kits for aspiring musicians to assemble and play in his home workshop in the Boston area. this info updated 2010 |
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Six-year GAL member Paul Poliski began the hobby of building guitars and repairing stringed instruments for his musician daughter and son-in-law about fifteen years ago. A recently retired architect, he is now regularly repairing instruments for local shops. His future retirement in Jerome, AZ, will focus on building the “perfect” dreadnought. this info updated 2011 |
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Stewart Pollens is Associate Conservator of the Department of Musical Instruments at the Metropolitan. this info updated 1989 |
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Bart Potter was born in Honolulu in 1951 and continues to live there with his family. He apprenticed at the Guitar and Lute workshop in Honolulu from 1974 to 1975 and on its untimely closing, continued making guitars and `ukulele in his home workshop until 1980. At that time he transitioned from lutherie to his current profession of sawmill-owner and producer of tonewood and veneers from Hawaii-grown trees. He was among the founders of the Hawaii Forest Industry Association in 1989, served on its board for 19 years, contributed extensively to the "green" aspects of the prospectus of the HFIA-produced annual statewide woodworking show "Hawaii's Woodshow" and continues to support HFIA as a member. In 1992 he served on committees defining the focus of Senator Daniel Akaka's Tropical Forest Recovery Act, which ultimately provided the genesis for the 2007 creation by the Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources and the Unites States Forest Service of the Hawaii Tropical Experimental Forest (HETF). The establishment of the HETF guarantees a land base for ongoing research on the Hawaiian forest. bpotterhi@hotmail.com this info updated 2008 |
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Andy Powers is an instrument maker and player, now working with Taylor Guitars. He started building instruments as a boy, and has restored, repaired, and built instruments for a wide and varied cast of colorful characters. www.andypowersinstruments.com/ this info updated 2018 |
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Colin Prévost-Lemire also did an apprenticeship with Stephen Marchione. He builds and repairs classical and steel string acoustic guitars. this info updated 2012 |
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Brad Price has left the Twelfth Fret. He explored a job in market research analysis, but found it to be too weird. Once an artist, always an artist. He is currently earning his bread by playing guitar with the country torch-song band Walking After Midnight and by doing vintage amp restorations. this info updated 1993 |
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Gordon Pritchard is a luthier in St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands. While classical/flamenco guitars are his first love and the reason he became a luthier, he also builds custom guitars to order. this info updated 2008 |
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