 How
I learned, a bit about my background
Some of my thoughts on bowed
instrument care
Repair
index
The SCGC Model H
This link (click on the photo) leads to a cluster
of
pages about
one of
my favorite guitars
Selmer guitars
Those marvelous Franco-American things
that get used for Gypsy Swing and more.
My
main man in Paris is François Charle. He and his wife Rosyne
have a marvelous operation going there called (you guessed it) R&F
Charle, comprising a shop offering lutherie and restoration, a lot
of very cool instruments, and an astonishing
amount of information.
A link to Djangobooks.com, which I think
is the best single place to get information about the burgeoning gypsy
jazz scene, with forums, ads, reviews, you
name it.
A
vanished site about possibly the most influential luthier of the 20th
century, Luigi
Mozzani.
Some
semi-connected and possibly useful remnants of the expired Dupont site:
discussion
of details | details about rosettes
| about tops and bracing |
Repair techniques and
tips
I recommend that you visit www.frets.com,
a marvelous and enormous site put together by my old friend Frank Ford,
over in Palo Alto. Much of what I have here on my site is ancillary to
what he has on his site. Except some of it.
Here are a few of many pages I have assembled on instrument
topics.
Violin
and bowed instrument care
A
piece about saddle angle, intonation and
compensation
in steelstring guitars
A page about
certain Gotoh mandolin gears
A
page about problematic Gotoh guitar gears
A page about tuner maintenance -
reviving old ones and new ones too
A
page about cutting nuts
A chart
the main available fretwires in the US
Here's
more than you cared to know about the
provenance
of spruce, particularly
the celebrated and somewhat mythical German
spruce.
Herewith, a couple of approaches to repairing
broken scrolls and necks
on bowed instruments, mainly basses and
cellos.
Here's
a piece on how the 14-fret guitar
evolved
from the 12-fret ancestors
Remember
those Gibsons with the dreadful adjustable saddles?
Here's
a piece on replacing the bridge with a better one.
About
scales, bridge placement, and so on and so forth.
How to finesse bridgepins
Nut slots -
theory and practice
How those cam clamps on
Gibson pickguards are supposed to work
A bit on fitting and adjusting two-piece
mandolin (and archtop guitar) bridges
How
I fixed a Favilla uke that didn't play in tune one bit
This
is banjo-specific, but it explains the concept of afterlength-scale,
generally
An
historical
review of important violinmakers
Wondering
about plywood in guitars? Here's a bit about that about
that.
A
piece I did for the AG Forum on neck straightening with heat
(which is a method I don't endorse except in
rare instances)
About
some resophonic mandolins I made some years back.
What
is grain runout, you ask?
violin
bridge wood grain orientation (someone thought this was really
important)
This
leads to Michael Simmons's excellent piece on the twelve-string guitar
How-to stuff, cont'd
 How
to make your own flatpicks and the wonders
of garish plastic picks
Questions?
I
often receive inquiries from folks wondering where they can learn
guitarmaking,
violinmaking and so on. When I began, there was virtually nothing
available,
so it ws often a case of the blind leading the blind. Now we have an
embarrassment
of riches, in terms of books, videos, journals, luthier's guilds,
schools,
seminars and so forth. Probably the most significant advance in
information
is the internet.
Organizations you
should know
about
There
are three luthier's organizations I belong to and heartily endorse. One
is approximately west coast, a non-profit, tax-exempt educational
organization,
another is approximately east coast and touts itself as a "Professional
Luthier Organization," though many people - professional and otherwise
- belong to both. The third one focuses entirely on bowed instruments,
and now encloses the Catgut Acoustical Society. Each has summer
conventions,
and produces journals.
Guild of American
Luthiers
GAL
8222 South Park Avenue
Tacoma, WA 98408
Publication: American Lutherie
http://www.luth.org
|
Association of
Stringed Instrument Artisans
ASIA
619 Fulton St.
Palo Alto, CA 94301
asialist@aol.com
Publication: Guitarmaker
http://www.guitarmaker.org
|
|
The Violin Society of America
VSA
48 Academy Street
Poughkeepsie, NY 12601
Publication: Journal of the Violin Society
Email: membership@vsa.to
http://www.vsa.to/
|
The GAL site has a great list of schools and resources
for
learning various aspects of lutherie here: www.luth.org/links/schools.htm
These
are a few of my favorite luthiers, including some shops
Fun Stuff
The
smallest guitar in the world, the nano-guitar!
And an update, too.
Would
Steve Martin miss the chance to take great advantage of
a two
page spread in People Magazine? I sure don't think so.
A one-man
band photo (from Detroit) I found
From
George Gruhn's site, a piece on a rosewood
Gibson Nick Lucas
with a Brazilian rosewood
top (honest).
Insane
Brazilian
rosewood in an old guitar.
All
about picks
(picky2
| picky3)
Fender
made a whole Strat covered in clownbarf. It's so beautiful.
Found
on eBay, of course: a weird Asian banjo. Pay close attention to the
frets!
Music
Party
of Seven is an uncommon and a very episodic band. I am
proudly
one-seventh of it. Read about it here, please,
and here too: seven #2.
Tony
Flores, my friend and playing partner for many years, passed away on
the 12th of
September 2004, less than a month shy of his 90th birthday party. Here's what I do to keep his legacy going.
China with the Blue Mountain Ramblers:
Lots of load time because of lots of pictures. Worth it.
Tarika
Sammy is a wonderful band from Madagascar. I
produced an album
for them in Madagascar. I produced some
others there too, read
about this here,
someday.
tarikasam.intro.html
| tarikasam.html
| Tarika Sammy/gloss.htm
|
Tarika
Sammy/discog.htm | Tarika
Sammy/links.htm
Here
again is a link to that list of local (Santa Cruz and SF Bay Area)
live
music events I keep for folks. If you want to receive periodic
notices
about updates, just send me an email.
Drop
me a line or something
click
here
This page ©
2001-2009
Paul Hostetter. All rights reserved.
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