JC's ACOUSTIC INSTRUMENT PAGE

    Hello there. I've been a fulltime instrument maker and repairman since 1980. Prior to that I had only built a few dulcimers, so opening a shop was no doubt a presumptuous and ballsy thing to do. I had been in and out of the family construction business since I was 14 (that was in 1962), despite both a trade school and college education, and I was pretty desperate to escape the role of laborer. When gunsmith Hank Baer offered me a bench in his shop where I could make dulcimers I jumped at it. It was fairly strange because Hank made muzzleloaders in a craft village much like a mini-Williamsburg and no modern tools were allowed in sight during tourist hours. And since few people even knew what a dulcimer was sales were poor and money was really tight. I carved a gunstock, fell back on some roofing, and drew unemployment for additional money. But I made friends with all the craftspeople, met a lot of musicians, and tried to hang in there. I was good enough to be let into the Hunterdon (NJ) Craft Guild, and mingling with other professionals was both buoying and consoling. Here's some of my work from that time period. Color film really had been invented by then but I took these shots for a newspaper spread and they wanted b&w.

This dulcimer was one of my best early instruments. The sides are birch and the back is a quad of birch and walnut. The fretboard is rosewood (I think) over walnut, and the end blocks are walnut. I used to make those spool capos for about $3.00. The inlays are crushed marble and epoxy.

 I could wear you out with dulcimer pictures. I haven't finished one since about 2001, but I remain a fan and think they are the most under-estimated and under-appreciated instrument in American folk music. 

    I think I spent less than a year in Hank Baer's gun shop. Tom Blatz already had an instrument shop across the path from Hank where he did repairs, built a guitar or two, and dealt old fiddles. Tom was a fine musician and craftsman and my first goal was not to step on his toes, business-wise. But Tom didn't like the Colonial atmosphere of Liberty Village, even though none of the craftspeople were charged rent on their shops. He wanted out, and when he left I moved in. He didn't go far, though, and I still didn't want to step on his income. I didn't want to compete with him, either, for though he was younger than me he already had several years in the business. I avoided guitars and fiddles like the plague, but anything else was fair game. Like these instruments:

My early hammered dulcimers sounded so good that I was misled about how easy it was to make one that made fine music. I eventually made 50 of them and discovered that the sound I was after could be pretty elusive. I don't make them any more. However, I discovered that I couldn't sell any instrument that I couldn't demonstrate, so I became a pretty hot mountain dulcimer player and the hammered dulcimer became my first instrument. I taught both and did some playing out. Those were heady days. I often surprised myself.

	This is a bowed psaltery (above) ready for pins and strings, and a close-up of the rosette. The top and back are ash and all the trim is walnut. The sides are maple if I remember correctly.   Left, a birch mandolin with a white pine top. It's trimmed in crushed turqouise and bound in turtleoid. Sounded pretty good, though I've found that white pine often makes a disappointing top wood.

From this point in the early '80s I was into a lot of different instruments. I had been turning down a lot of work because I didn't feel qualified, but often I'd see the same instruments later on repaired by someone else who really botched them up. I figured what the hell? I might as well work on them, do my best, make some money, and save them from some real butcher. The first commission I took was a new body for a Greek bouzouki. A friend of the owner brought it in as a box of junk. I kept the neck and the fancy pickguard and made a small cutaway guitar body for it out of cherry. "My friend cried when I gave it to him," John Hudak told me. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of that piece, but I soon moved on to a bunch of new work. I was already into building electric guitars, but I don't want to scare you yet. Try these:

  Someone gave me a broken down Concertone banjo-mandolin. It had a nice birdseye maple shell and neck so I refinished it. God, those things sound terrible! I added an arm rest and a 5-string tailpiece, then made a new neck for it. The silver inlays were inspired by Hank Baer's flintlocks, but the turquoise was all my idea. For a few months this banjo hung on my shop wall and responded to any noise---loud talk, a cough, a dropped chisel. I was sorry to see it go, but happy that it was going to have a fine home.

This is the same body I used to rebuild the Greek bouzouki. This zook is all mine, a spruce top and cherry back, sides, and neck. Trimmed in turquoise and turtleoid.

Looking back, it's sort of strange that I went to the octave mandolins before trying the regular issue, but once I discovered the mandolin I fell in love with it. I never wanted to build carved-top acoustic instruments, so these are all flattop, old-timey mandos, though they don't look all that old-timey. They sound like it, however.

     I did a whole series of mandolins with angled sides. In the real old days these were called coffin instruments, and throughout the South there were backwoods luthiers who built coffin guitars. Even today you might see a few new ones. Top mando is walnut/redwood. Redwood makes a great top. The fingerboard is ziricote, a wood often incorrectly called Mexican ebony.  The mandolin below right is spalted sycamore (American) with a birdseye maple neck. In fact, I built a whole family of coffin mandolins, as at bottom left. On the left is the mando-cello, the mandola is in the center, and the mandolin is farthest right. I built a pair of coffin guitars, too, just to prove to myself that the shape of a guitar has very little affect on its sound. It doesn't. They're pictured on the Instrumental Wierdness page.

This guy, above, is a little too scary for most mando-folkies.

You've already seen these instruments in the opening, but I thought I'd show them again in color.

  Not that I ever gave up on dulcimers. Dulcimer production has a way of tagging a luthier as a wannabe or a hack, like he'd move on to more important instruments if he was good enough. What a crock! The dulcimers are wonderful and under-appreciated musical tools.

This hammered dulcimer has a zebrawood frame, Brazilian rosewood binding, herringbone trim, and a lace paint job.

          Mountain dulcimer on left is Brazilian rosewood/Sitka spruce, maple/rosewood fingerboard with inlays of crushed turquoise, mother-of-pearl, and ivory. Trimmed in herringbone, bound in ivoroid, with zebrawood end blocks. Dulcimer on right was my playing out dulcimer until the gloomy day I let it go. It has a padouk body with curly maple end blocks and fingerboard. I still miss it.

    A fairly recent and exciting development is the stage acoustic guitar.  As I've built them they only have two requirements (other than coolness).  They have to have enough volume when unplugged to make for a rewarding practice session, and when plugged in they have to have great acoustic tone with a minimum of feedback at high volume.  When the body has enough weight to balance the guitar nicely on a strap they have the wonderful feel of an electric guitar, but without the shoulder-straining extra poundage.  These all have X braced tops like a normal flattop acoustic to focus the tone where I want it.  I've always used Fishman pickups, the Thin-line at first and then the Matrix with a built-in preamp.  When made with an Engelmann spruce or red cedar top the larger versions of these guitars can have surprising tone and volume.  The hardwood tops are prettier though quieter, sound just as good when plugged in, and are less prone to feedback.  Check these out:

 This is the smallest version.  Gibson 24 5/8" scale length.  Poplar body with a cherry/walnut top.  You may recognize this shape as kin to the Ernie Ball EVH electric guitar. At right is the small body again with a tiger maple top, poplar body finished in see-through red, ziricote fingerboard and bridge.

This is a hollowbody reverse strat-style.  It has a soundhole, but when I decided to add the EMG Tele pickup there was only one place for it that didn't cut the X braces---the soundhole---, so I covered the whole works with the pickguard.

This EVH-style body has been morphed from 12" wide to about 14 5/8".  The body is spalted sycamore, the top is spalted maple.  Walnut neck, Honduras rosewood fretboard and ziricote bridge. Note the trick binding.  Battery access (for the preamp) is from the back.

Right, a stage acoustic with wild quilted maple top and real nice walnut back.  Both woods are from the Pacific Northwest.

                    Another stage guitar with the large body, this time with an Engelmann spruce top and a dark sunburst.  This guitar sounds WAY better, acoustically, than it has any right to.  The shallow body should negate such good tone, but the Engelmann is so easy to drive that it sounds very full. 

  I've been in love with resonator guitars since I first saw one, so it was only natural that I try to build them.  The quality of the cone inside the beast has more to do with good tone than anything else.  And, strangely, laminated wood sounds much better than solid wood.  Go figure.  These are just a sample.

    Above, two solid walnut resonator guitars.  They utilize the cone and spider bridge of Dobro-style guitars, rather than the biscuit bridge cone of a National.  The left one is bound in white plastic, the right one in turtleoid, their only real difference.

  The body of the guitar above was made from plywood which was finished in faux stone paint.  It's a heavy piece but it rings like a bell and is louder than my solid-wood reso guitars.  The rosette and fingerboard are Honduras rosewood. The rosette is filled with real shark's teeth.  There is a long tradition of resophonics with funky finishes , so this guy fits right in.  For playing slide I like to raise the strings slightly at the nut and use heavier treble strings, both to cut the rattle of the slide on the frets.

    It took me years to work up an interest in flattop guitars.  I always had a few factory pieces around, but I was too busy with other instruments to bother building one.  Keep in mind that for decades before 1990 handmade acoustic guitars had a poor reputation and were very hard to sell.  They were considered too fragile for the road and seldom measured up to the better factory instruments.  I also had an experience that discouraged me from building flattops. I helped a friend run the sound at a church basement festival where the folkies played a large variety of guitars that included good Martins and a couple custom pieces.  But the one that blew them all away was a low-end plywood Yamaha that had an incredible sound.  Why bother building guitars I couldn't sell that might not be the equal of a cheap imported instrument?

    Things began to change in the late '80s.  Taylor was making a huge impact on the staid old guitar scene, new boutique companies were springing up and thriving, and information sharing organizations like A.S.I.A. and the Guild of American Luthiers were helping individual luthiers get their acts together in a meaningful way.  Handmade acoustic guitars became a very hip item.  It was time to get interested.

    My first acoustics sounded better than I had a right to expect.  In fact, they sounded wonderful.  But building a tight box is difficult and they suffered some physical problems.  I especially found it difficult to properly fit the backs to the ribs in a manner that didn't induce cracks and distortions in the back.

    I had been contributing articles to American Lutherie magazine since about 1991.  In 1996 editor Tim Olsen asked if I would be willing to fly to California to attend Charles Fox's American School of Lutherie class called "Contemporary Guitar Construction".  Charles kindly waived the tuition to help out the GAL (which publishes American Lutherie), which made the trip feasible.  During seven long, hot days Charles made the guitar building experience come together in a manner that no doubt saved me years of struggle.  When I got home I revamped my shop, built a new series of jigs, and found that building really good guitars wasn't so hard after all.  Thank you, Charles.

  This was the first nice guitar from my early period.  Walnut back/sides and neck with a Sitka spruce top.

A mahogany jumbo with a cedar top.  Note that these guitars are sort of plain.  The chance to own fancy instruments was one of the reasons I entered lutherie, but it doesn't make sense to fancy them up before you know they are going to sound good.  All show and no go makes for a poor reputation, whatever your endeavor.

 Above  is a maple guitar built on the small body used for the octave mandolin earlier on this page.  Its only 12" or so across the lower bout.  The scale length was dropped to 23 1/2" to keep the balance right.  Surprising tone and volume. This body makes a deluxe travel guitar.  In fact, below is Lew Portnoy holding his Indian rosewood/red spruce version of the same guitar, which I built several years later and is post-H&D.  Thanks for the picture, Lew.

Left,  a sycamore/Sitka guitar on the same body as the walnut instrument above.  The neck and binding are walnut.  The purfling and rosette are crushed turquoise.  The bridge and fretboard are ziricote.

 Above, this guitar is approximately OO in size, but no attempt was made to copy the traditional Martin shape.  Back and sides are shedua, top is cedar, and the neck is zebrawood.  Shedua is the hardest to bend of all the species I've tried. This is the last of the pre-Charles Fox, pre-Huss & Dalton acoustic guitars on this page.

Greetings from Virginia

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