Official Luthiers Forum!

Our new book "Inventing the American Guitar" is now available for pre-ordering through Amazon.
http://www.amazon.com/Inventing-America ... lnk-c25-20

I think this will be of interest to all guitar makers and especially those with an interest in the Romantic guitar and the early Martin guitar. The book covers the intense period of development here in the U.S. from 1833 to 1860.
A number of European precursor examples are featured including several by Stauffer as well as the Spanish makers De Lorca and Recio. Stauffer is featured in a separate chapter by James Westbrook. A chapter comparing the Cadiz guitar with the earliest Spanish inspired guitars by C.F. Martin (C.1840) was contributed by yours truly.

Most exciting for guitar makers will be construction quality drawings of an 1834 "Stauffer" style Martin as well as a C. 1842 Spanish style Martin. These are the first detailed drawings ever made of these types. Stew-Mac will also be offereing expanded versions of these.

More description here from Hal Leonard:
Inventing the American Guitar
The Pre–Civil War Innovations of C. F. Martin and His Contemporaries
edited by Robert Shaw and Peter Szego

Available October 2013

In time for C. F. Martin and Co.’s 180th anniversary this October, Hal Leonard Books is publishing Inventing the American Guitar (October 15, $50), the first book to describe the early history of American guitar design in detail. With essays by prominent writers and spectacular color photographs of almost fifty guitars, many of which are newly discovered, this book tells the story of how a European instrument was transformed into one with all of the design and construction features that define the iconic American flat-top guitar—all within a mere twenty years.

The person who dominates this history is C. F. Martin Sr., America’s first major guitar maker and the founder of the Martin Guitar Company, which continues to produce outstanding flat-top guitars today. After emigrating from his native Saxony to New York in 1833, Martin quickly established a guitar-making business, producing instruments modeled after those of his mentor, Johann Stauffer of Vienna. By the time he moved his family and business to rural Pennsylvania in 1839, Martin had absorbed and integrated the influence of Spanish guitars he had seen and heard in New York. In Pennsylvania, he evolved further, inventing a uniquely American guitar that was fully developed before the outbreak of the Civil War.

Inventing the American Guitar traces Martin’s evolution as a craftsman and entrepreneur and explores the influences and experiments that led to his creation of the American guitar that is recognized and played around the world today.

The book includes fold-out pages of schematic drawings of two early Martin guitars: the Austro-German Style Martin Guitar and the Spanish Style Martin Guitar. An additional forty-five two-page color profiles of important guitars, including detail photos, measurements, and bracing diagrams, fill this beautiful coffee table hardcover. Contributing essayists include David Gansz, an expert on early American guitar maker James Ashborn; Antiques Roadshow appraiser and Martin expert Richard Johnston; luthier and early Martin and Spanish guitar scholar David LaPlante; Arian Sheets, Curator of Stringed Instruments at the National Music Museum, University of South Dakota; and James Westbrook, a scholar of 19th-century European guitar making.

PETER SZEGO is a connoisseur, collector, and player of 19th-century American banjos and guitars who headed the team that created the book. He lives in Princeton, NJ and is available for interview.

Oct. 15, 2013
9781458405760
$50
Hardcover
308 pages
10.5″ x 11″
4-color, heavily illustrated throughout

Hal Leonard Books is an imprint of Hal Leonard Performing Arts Publishing Group

Sounds interesting. With an October release it sounds like a good fall book to geek-out on some historical guitars and builders

I just ordered while Quine was typing.
It looks intriguing enough, I'd like to know more about that era and possibly make one.

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Old growth, shmold growth!

I'll order one for sure David!
Can I get ya to autograph it ?

The 1850's Martin I restored was a beautiful guitar.
I made a template & measurements & have sold many
replicas of it-for steel strings.

Mike

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Mike Collins

You bet Mike!
But you'll have to come and (finally) visit!
Best

OK, order placed, anxiously awaiting arrival.

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Gene

Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason- Mark Twain