Official Luthiers Forum!

My first instructor from 1971, Garfield Clack. A wonderful British gentleman, who taught a night school class with an old blueprint (and I mean blue paper with white drawings and instruction) and a high tech (for the time) light bulb side bending machine. Grit Laskin, a man who is world class in every way, and always ready talk to an amateur without making you feeling you're in over your head.

Have any of you guys ever heard of Jimmy Foster? Jimmy lived down the street from me, I can't tell you how incredible of an experience it was to meet this man! Unfortunately Jimmy passed away over a year ago. He was a very genuine person and an incredible jazz guitar player, top-notch. Look him up on YouTube under Jimmy Foster guitars. After meeting Jimmy I was possessed with the passion of building guitars!
http://www.fosterguitars.com/

In guitar-making: Robert Ruck, whose generosity, innovative methods and impeccable workmanship will always make me aspire to be better.

In guitar-playing: Agustin Castellon "Sabicas". His music launched me on a life-long love of flamenco. Even though he's been gone for over thirty years, his artistry continues to inspire me.

Max

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Max Bishop
Brighton, Michigan

Howard Klepper - Michihiro Matsuda - Elkyam Boaz - Kathy Wingert - Kevin Ryan
and the dark genius of Philip Interdonati
so many really.... thats the beauty of luthierie - so many luthiers especially now - cheers
charliewood

Great thread I'm honored to have my name mentioned a couple times.

Some of my biggest influences are:

Ervin Somogyi for voicing and some aesthetic style.

Bruce and Matt Petros are probably my top aesthetic influence (particularly this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRqZLiAsgys), although their designs are mostly laser cut and not practical to do by hand. But my headstock shape, fingerboard end curve, decorated bridge wings, and "bold ring with pictures in it" rosette style were inspired by their work. Although lately I've been doing background-less rosettes and liking that as well. Still need to develop my own techniques for making artsy purflings

Bill Cumpiano for construction style, using minimal tools and jigs. I love being able to draw up new shapes for every instrument, and build anything from ukuleles to harp guitars with the same techniques and without accumulating mountains of forms and workboards that take time to make, and use up natural resources as well as storage space.

The first 2 guys I met when I began building set a pretty impressive standard- John Monteleone and Jimmy D'Aquisto. Didn't take me long to figure out that I wasn't as accomplished as my friends seemed to think! Showed me what was possible in a garage-sized space. Mind- blowing!

Aside from Cumpiano from the book for my first build, the biggest influence was a guy who lived on a big farm where I lived 30 years ago. He was a sculptor, painter, and master carpenter. It wasn't his work that influenced me as much as how he approached it and the importance he placed on hand work. Also, the way he sort of got out of the way and let the work blossom, following to help it along. He didn't instruct me in any of this, but I learned through his example. When he died a few years ago, I put a post on my blog http://www.patfosterguitars.com/wordpress/?paged=2 if anybody would care to read it.

Pat

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formerly known around here as burbank
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http://www.patfosterguitars.com

I am still only on my first, but for building:

WaddyThomson.

His work is truly inspirational. In fact, I doubt I would have ever had the courage to try and build a guitar without his build threads and tutorials. As soon as I started researching the idea it became apparent very quickly that this is something I that will probably be doing most of my life, one way or the other. In September I will hang up my chef whites and start a two year classical guitar building course. So, thanks Waddy.

For playing: El Niño Miguel. In my humble opinion one of the greatest guitarists to grace the planet.

The list is long but it starts with Steve Grimes. It was my second trip to Hawaii. Got of the plane and there in the airport, safely locked in a display case were two of Mr. Grimes guitars. They were the first 'custom' guitars I had ever seen and to this day still among the most beautiful I have ever seen.

The list grew from there to such people as Jim Olson and Kevin Ryan, Alan Carruth, Trevor Gore, and of course Mario Prolux. But the list goes on and on.

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Joe Beaver
Maker of Sawdust

Thank you, wt, for that thought, but thank the experienced classical builders here who all gave me great inspiration and encouraged me to do build threads: Dave La Plante, Shawn Carlson, Colin Symonds, Joshua French, Mike Collins, Gary Lee, and others. All were very generous in sharing information about building quality classical guitars. My building hero, however, is Jose Romanillos, and I've never even held one of his guitars in my hand. My first knowledge of him was through the Evans book, "Guitars, from Renaissance to Rock". That introduction inspired me by his philosophy of building.

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

in the world of Lutherie...would have to be,,,,,,, Lance Kragenbrink,,,,,runs a great forum!!!!!!

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MK5acoustics.com

I'll second that atta boy in Lances direction.

This place is awesome!!!!!!!!!!!

Mikey

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The Biggest Little City, Nevada
www.hammondguitars.com
I love building guitars!

My Mother: http://www.newbycoker.com

And one of these style mosaics will soon be on the face of one of my guitars in a small area.

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John Mayes
http://www.mayesluthier.com

Andy's instruments are amazing. Great luthier.

There's a copy of his book on ebay at the moment - don't see it for sale very often.

I am fortunate enough to have him live nearby (well, 100 km is kind of near...) and besides a great luthier, what strikes me most about him was how kind, generous and unpretentious he was.

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member of the guild of professional dilettantes