Hi Folks,
Buck Curran is primarily known for his musical output, Arborea. He also builds his own style of guitars and has vast experience through working for Dana Bourgeois. He creates his own style of guitar influenced by Vintage Martins as well as the work of English luthier, Stefan Sobell. I caught up with Buck to chat about construction techniques and about his experiences!.
I can't link pics or mp3s here so for the full AV presentation, please check it out here:
http://guitarbench.com/index.php/2009/0 ... interview/Warmest regards,
Terence
TT - Hi Buck, thanks for taking the time out from your busy schedule to speak to us. I was wondering if I might ask how you got into lutherie?
BC - When I was a young boy my father bought a classical guitar and had a private tutor come to our house, so I’d say the guitar became a fascination and inspiration of mine from that point forward. Prior to that I was mostly drawn to singing, and I would sing a lot…often singing along with records by groups like Fleetwood Mac, The Beachboys, and The Beatles…my parents had a great record collection in our house that fueled my interest. One record in particular though was an instrumental record…and it was John Williams playing Bach.
The rhythm and tone of his playing and the voice of the guitar itself was really an amazing thing to listen to…so incredibly beautiful to my young ears. Eventually my father gave up trying to learn how to play and the guitar went under his bed for a while…but I always knew it was there and eventually he let me use it and later on I took lessons.
Even back then I could spend a long time just hitting notes and letting them ring out…and then when I got my first tape player I would spend a lot of time recording these sounds. My other great passion and something I started at a very young age was drawing…and by the time I turned 13, I was drawing very technical, blueprint style drawing of spaceships that I would dream up. By the time I turned 15 and started taking guitar lessons, and met some other boys my age who played guitar… I stopped drawing spaceships and started drawing and designing guitars. While I was attending high school I’d say guitar really became my primary focus and when I graduated I thought about going to study guitar in College….but eventually I joined the U.S. Navy to get school money to go the Guitar Institute of Technology in California.
However, during the last year of my service I decided that I didn’t need school to learn how to be creative, and I figured the best place to learn how to play was in the real world… so I stayed in Virginia Beach and pursued my musical career in the Tidewater, Virginia area.
Being in the Navy was a great experience for me because I got to travel to Europe and it also afforded me a lot of nice guitars…and it was during that time that I bought my first nice acoustic guitar, a new Martin HD-28. Only a few months out of the service I landed a job at a well know Instrument shop and Folklore center in Norfolk, Virginia called Ramblin’ Conrads.
It was at Ramblin’ Conrads that I got my real education about folk music from the British Isles, and old-timey banjo music from the Appalachian mountains, and so much more. Aside from being an instrument shop, Ramblin’ Conrads was also a venue…so everyother week we’d have musicians like Ed Gerhard, The Battlefield Band, and Martin Simpson coming through to play.
Eventually, I went on to manage Ramblin’ Conrads and run sound for many shows. The real turning point for me was in 1991 when we got a promo copy of Martin Simpson’s record ‘Leaves of Life’, which quickly became my favorite record to play at the shop.
Eventually that year Martin Simpson came to play at the shop and he brought with him a brand new guitar made by Stefan Sobell that really floored me. After the show, and everyone had left I got an intimate look at the guitar…who’s voice he described as a “Choir of Angels”. The guitar also had a really unique body shape that I thought was really beautiful.
After that day, I put the HD-28 up for sale and after it sold, I took the money and sent a deposit to Stefan. I’d say that was a pivotal time in my life…working a Ramblin’ Conrads, meeting Martin Simpson, etc. After that point, I thought about building an acoustic guitar for a very long time…and spent a lot of time educated myself. I did build an electric guitar while I was at Conrads. It wasn’t until I moved to Maine in December of 2000 however…and a year after that, when I had an extra room to work in, that I started to build my own guitar. At one point I even went to Pantheon guitars and talked with Dana Bourgeois and bought some brace wood from him. In the summer of 2002 I went to work for Pantheon guitars and soon after I started really focusing on making my Butterfly design become a reality..
TT - And how your time at Dana’s place?
BC - Being at Dana’s shop over the past 7 years has been a really positive experience and has allowed me the opportunity to improve my guitar making and to work with and learn from skilled craftsmen like Cary Clements, and John Slobod. I came to Dana’s shop with a very specific mindset of how I prefer a guitar’s voice to be (which is quite different from Dana or say John Slobod) and that has not altered since those early experiences with that first Sobell guitar, and the sound of that Custard/Kistler guitar on Martin Simpson’s ‘Leaves of Life’ record.
The greatest influence that Dana’s shop has had on me, is getting the opportunity everyday to be around a great amount of quality tone woods. Seeing and hearing endless variations of Spruce tops….Brazilian, Madagascar, and Indian Rosewoods, Mahoganies, etc and getting to see and hear how they translate into guitars has been an invaluable experience. Out of all these experiences…I cherish my close contact with thousands of Red Spruce tops…and comparing it with great Sitka, and European spruce. To my mind Red Spruce translates into the most powerful, and beautiful sounding guitars…and has become my personal favorite top wood.
TT - so Red for tops- how about back and sides?
BC - For my preferences the backs need to have a good density and a nice reflective quality. Over the years I’ve heard people say that they like mahogany for a drier tone…but I think that comes more from the mahogany (or any species of wood for that matter) being light in weight. I’ve heard a great many mahogany back and side sets that had great density, and had a glassy or metallic tap tone…and the finished guitar ended up sounding closer to a rosewood instrument. In the past I even chose a set of very responsive, but light weight set of Brazilian Rosewood for an OM. The finished guitar was very loud, but very dry…and although a great sounding guitar, definitely not my thing. Some of my very favorite sets of back and sides, has been sets of dense, well quartered Indian Rosewood with very distinctive blood red to fiery orange streaks running along the grain. It sounds a lot like really nice Madagascar Rosewood…dense stuff, with a very metallic (Reverby) tap tone.
In this regard I’d say my goal is to build more of a ‘Classical style’ steel string guitar where as someone like John Slobod or Dana Bourgeois are trying to make ‘Flamenco style’ guitars…that is to say guitars that are light weight, with a quick response, and a great big fundamental. The way a bluegrass guitar player needs it to sound…like a machine gun. I’m more interested in a guitar with a strong fundamental…but equal to that it must have great sustain, and gorgeous overtones. Michi Matsuda had a great article in Acoustic Guitar magazine a few years ago where he spoke of the differences between the Western and the Eastern aesthetic…and how in the East the overtones and microtones are just as important as the fundamentals. I appreciate both, but tend to lean a bit more to the East.
TT - So you’re generally aiming for a more complex tone and harmonic structure? Is that reflected in your music?
BC - Absolutely! My goals are to build guitars for myself…instruments that can respond to all my demands as a guitar player and artist. This is the way I approach guitar making, and all the folks that have ended up with guitars that I have made seem very pleased.
TT - What inspiration do you take from Sobell and Bourgeois?
BC - I’m very much inspired by the lines, curves, and unique shapes of Sobell’s guitars…also the complexity of tone. I love Dana’s guitars for their attention to detail and I really love the catalyzed finish we use. I’ve had all my guitars finished at Pantheon guitars because I’m incredibly satisfied with the look and durability…and the way the finish effects the sound. The hardness of the finish definitely adds to the overall clarity in the voice of the guitar. All these things really help inspire my work.
TT - Ah, with regards to Finish, how you find the varnish finishes?
BC - Varnish finishes take a lot more time to harden so it takes longer to get the results I’m after. We have finished some guitars at Pantheon with Varnish, though they came out far too yellow in color for my tastes. I also don’t perceive a sound improvement with varnish on guitars that I have played…over the finishes that have ended up on my guitars. My friend Laurent Brondel has great success with his varnish finishes and he gets a very elegant and organic look with it on his guitars. As for myself, at this point in my life, I don’t have much of an interest in it.
TT - We heard about your aesthetic and tonal influences- maybe you could give us an insight into the structural concepts behind your guitars?
BC - There has always been a lot of theories about bracing…but my interest in bracing is ‘Secondary’. The function of bracing should be one of strength yet flexibility, and the back braces and back plate thickness is very important to the way the guitar moves air…in turn having a great influence on whether a guitar has a tight or loose sound. So, to my mind the ‘First’ important ingredient and vitality to the voice of a guitar is the quality of the plates (top and back). I think everybody is in agreement that well quartered tops are ‘Key’ to a superior steel string.
For myself…voicing the guitar is getting that top thickness to be just right…not too thick and no too thin. Past feeling/flexing the top for strength…this is where having a good musical ear comes in handy. When I tap on an unbraced plate I can hear the musicality of it..the sustain, and the shade of it’s voice…it’s darkness or brightness, and in turn I make the decision on whether or not this is a top that suits the kind of guitar I’m after.
Another thing is to think about the side structure or rim of the instrument as an important bracing structure itself. I believe that making a strong rim is important to the sound and longevity of the instrument (though I think it is important to make sure the rim is not too heavy). My experience comes from believing in the importance of history and ‘really’ listening to what other guitar makers have learned and from playing a great many world-class guitars over the last 20 years…and of course helping to build a great many incredible instruments. In the end however I must admit that I’m also a bit of a radical in that I feel that life is short and anything goes and people should have fun and experiment.
One of my favorite guitar voices on record is an 18″ wide cedar topped instrument that Dan Hoffman (with assistance from Eric Aceto) made with experimental radial bracing. Martin Simpson used this guitar Beautifully on his instrumental recording ‘Leaves of Life’. Martin skillfully controls the dynamics of that guitar, yet really lets the guitar sing out and you can hear it’s rich and complex voice. Another interesting and beautiful sounding guitar (that I wrote about for the July 2005 issue of Acoustic Guitar Magazine) is a guitar built by Ken duBourg which became Michael Hedges’ first hand-built guitar. Ken’s idea was to build a steel string acoustic that had the look and bracing of a classical, yet the size and playability of a dreadnought.
TT - So am I right in saying that you believe in maximizing the individual characteristics of individual woods?
BC - Definitely…interpreting and choosing the wood, and making decisions on what to do with it based on what kind of guitar I am visualizing! Of course the humbling fact is that wood can always surprise.
TT - But do the overall tonal qualities remain the same within wood species?
BC - My experience is that the tonal qualities are not necessarily the same within the same species of hard woods. Again it depends on the density and tapping voice of the chosen set of wood.
A good example of this is having heard many sets of very dense mahogany that had a metallic or glassy tap tone that ended up sounding like great sets of rosewood in the finished guitars (great clarity, and lots of that ‘reverby’ character to it). My way of looking at tone woods for back and sides are that they’re sound reflectors and greatly influence the tonal shade of the guitar. To my ears Spruces within their own families (Red Spruce, Sitka, European) are more predictable. I’ve never heard Red Spruce tops that sound like Sitka…but I’ve heard Red Spruce from many different regions and it all seems to behave the same way.
Western Red Cedar tops always respond and sound like Cedar. I’ve spent over 15 years listening to Sitka, European, and Western Red Cedar topped guitars and having been with Bourgeois guitars for over 7 years now I’ve heard thousands of sets of Red Spruce. I think Red Spruce is truly amazing and I prefer it for my own instruments. In the end though…they are too many variables and just when you think you’ve got something pegged…you can always be surprised.
TT - In your experience is there much of difference between the best Indian and best Brazilian?
BC - I feel Indian Rosewood and Brazilian are Apples and Oranges. I’ve tapped hundreds of Brazilian sets and played a great many Brazilian guitars over the past 20 years and I can’t say that Brazilian is superior to the best Indian. Though it is hard to get away from the fact that there are some really gorgeous looking sets of Brazilian.
I will also say that occasionally I’ve played…and even owned a Brazilian guitar that sounded Truly Amazing! In those cases however I think that it just wasn’t the backs alone…but everything that was used in those guitars giving them their Elegant and Enigmatic qualities. I feel the sets of Indian Rosewood that I’ve used in my guitars…the kind with the blood red streaks, is just as Unique and Amazing sounding as the best Brazilian.
For my preferences the absolute best sounding Brazilian sets were always well quartered, straight grained, with good weight, and metallic/glassy tap tone. I’ve been less impressed with Brazilian ‘Stump’ wood…though it sure can look stunning!
TT - Here’s a question I’ve also been pondering- figured vs. non figured mahogany? I expect you handled a bunch of either right? Any truly discernable consistent tonal difference?
BC - There are so many variances in the Mahogany I’ve seen over the years…it’s all pretty amazing tone wood. Again, the tonal differences I see comes down to the density and weight of the back and side set. If it’s a dense set, regardless of whether it’s straight grained or figured it always seems to approach the qualities of rosewood. The lighter weight mahoganies, whether straight or figured tends to give you that drier traditional ‘Mahogany’ sound.
TT - Recently, there’s been some talk about how bridges and scale lengths can alter the tone of a guitar….
BC - Scale length definitely alters tone, but string tension and string size are definitely key factors. I spend a lot of time playing guitar on a 25.5 scale length guitar, but I have the strings tuned down to CGCGCD and it more closely approximates the sound of a short scale guitar in standard tuning. When you have strings tuned to standard and a longer scale length, the tone sounds more strident (to my ears) and their is more of dominant ‘fundamental’ voice to the guitar. To my mind this is not a bad thing, but just ‘Is’ and can be very useful to attain a certain muscial aesthetic.
With shorter scale instruments their is more overtone content surrounding the fundamental…but less ability to cut through the mix if playing as part of an ensemble…definitely not ideal if you are playing Bluegrass for example. In my opinion shorter scale guitars are great for solo fingerstyle guitar playing and amazing for accompaniment if you are a singer.
Obviously over the years…Eric Schoenberg and Dana Bourgeois have made a case for long scale OM’s and how they are perfect for fingerstyle guitar playing but I think that is a very particular aesthetic and should not be gospel. What should be gospel is…how comfortable is the particular guitar you are playing and how much are you attracted to it’s particular voice. No one should ever get caught up in the mindset that… ‘So and So plays it’ or ‘So and So says it’s the Only Way’… so it must be the Way to go!
I think bridges are more of a mystery…but then again I’ve owned and made guitars with a lot of different bridge shapes and it almost always seems that the smaller the bridge (or the less mass you have)…that there is an increase in low end. I think these things however are subtle and may not really communicate themselves to a large degree in the big picture in the sound of a guitar. Waist sizes on guitar shapes are a huge factor in the sound, and I think a very overlooked part of guitar. All my guitars have pinched waists…something of a great value that I learned from Sobell’s guitars.
With the tighter waist you have more mid-range response and the guitar starts to move towards that Dobro sound. I am really attracted to this sound! In the end the player is the biggest factor in tone, and touch and attack can vary greatly…putting three different people on the same guitar will yield very different results.
TT - But how about those Ivory bridges I keep hearing about?
BC - I have personally never used an Ivory bridge for one of my guitars, but I have had experience with a few that were made at Pantheon Guitars and by a couple other makers. Ivory definitely works as an alternate material for bridges and it’s sharp looking…but I have not been able to discern whether or not it really makes for tonal improvement. I will say I’ve certainly never heard a bad sounding guitar with an Ivory bridge.
TT - Thanks, Buck- are there any new exciting projects you would like to share with us?
BC - I’m slowly starting the first of a batch of guitars…it’s a Butterfly in Red Spruce and more of that ‘Red’ Indian Rosewood. I’m going to alter the bracing just slightly for this one….so it will be nice to see if I perceive a difference.
Over the next two years I plan on building 4 ‘Very Special’ guitars to my own specs that I’ll offer for sale. I have also been planning for a couple of years now to build a guitar similar to Michael Hedges’ DuBourg guitar. That guitar has fan bracing like a Torres guitar. I’m not sure when I’ll tackle it however, as I’m in no hurry (and maybe I’ll be lucky enough to visit the actual guitar in California in the next year or two). I really like to ‘Realize’ guitars in my head for a long time before I try to make them become a reality.
The cool thing about that guitar is that I got a rough tracing off the original from the gentleman who is taking care of Michael’s estate. Unfortunately the tracing in the upper bout ended up being really choppy and broken, so I couldn’t perfectly reproduce the lines of the original. It was incredible difficult to communicate with him through email, so I ended up having to draw my own lines in certain areas. It looks a little different but it will be close enough for my purposes. I’m not interested in making exact copies anyway…each instrument must be it’s own unique entity.
I’ve also curated a compilation recording titled ‘Leaves of Life’ that’s available world-wide. It includes Alternative folk artists from the U.S., U.K., and Europe. All proceeds from the sales of that record are going to benefit important hunger relief programs run by the UN World Food Program. I spend a large portion of my time playing music with my wife Shanti in our duo Arborea. Our third cd ‘House of Sticks’ was released this year on Borne! Recordings and we did a session for the BBC in London this past May.
Getting out and performing in Arborea, and helping promote ‘Leaves of Life’ and ‘House of Sticks’ is ‘Really’ one of the most exciting things I can do with my time. Thanks so very much for inviting me to talk about guitars!
©2009 Terence Tan.
Pictures courtesy of Buck Curran unless stated ©2009
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