New Ermida

After having made a batch of purfling based on the stuff the Larson brothers had used, my mind had turned back to the Larsons and more specifically to my Ermida model, which is a copy of their Stahl Style 6. My Larson obsession renewed, I had to get an Ermida out of my system.

I had not built an Ermida in six years, during which time I've learned a few things and I wanted to put some of them into practice. When I made the first one, I made the best guitar I could at the time. I tried to make a faithful copy of the Stahl, and I think I did a great job. That said, there were a few things that I always wish I could have changed. So; Why put off until tomorrow what you could do today?

A few things about the Ermida model. First, it is named after my great aunt Ermida Fraulini-Gardella. Ermida was probably the fanciest of the seven Fraulini sisters. She was the first to leave the Missouri coal mining town where she grew up, heading for Chicago. She loved opera and spoke "proper" Italian. My family lived with her for a little while when I was a kid. I have very faint memories of her. My Ermida model is the only X braced guitar that I currently make. I named it after her because she was a classy trailblazer, characteristics she shared with the Larson's instruments.

Onto the Larsons, Carl and August Larson worked in Chicago from around 1900 to about 1940. They are thought to have made around 3000 instruments in that time. That's about 75 instruments a year, which is a very large number for a two man shop using traditional methods of construction. It is even more impressive when you consider the variety of instruments they made and that a number of these instruments were very ornate and some of the finest, most unique creations of that era.

While the instruments that I typically build are exercises in minimalism, structurally speaking, Larson's are on the other end of the spectrum. They are sturdily built and made to last. Some of their models have metal rods running from the end block, through the body and wrapping around the heel of the neck. They were some of the first builders to X brace their guitars, use laminated braces and to build tops and backs "under tension" (radiused in layman's terms). While the builders I am primarily influenced by built instruments to breathe and flex, Larson's built theirs to stay put. They are an exercise in rigidity. But, they still sound great. Just going to show you that no matter how much you think you know, you'll never figure it out.

For wood, I decided to use some old German spruce that I had. Its tight grain was very close to the stuff on the old Stahls I had seen. For the back and sides, I had some Madagascar rosewood that I had been wanting to use on something special, and I figured this was the perfect project for it. Another thing that I wanted to do was an inlaid pickguard. I have been experimenting with making pick guard material and this was a chance to put some of it into practice. The guitar was assmebled 100% with hide glue. For the finish, I French polished a spirit varnish as that seems like the closest finish to what the Larson's would have used.


The guitar turned out wonderfully. With the purfling and the pickguard it looks great and the sound is fantastic. It's loud, full and extremely present. It's not quite as bright as an old one, but I have to confess that I did build it a little lighter. I couldn't help myself. I'm looking forward to hearing it as it opens up.

Purfling

My friend Tony Klassen is a guitar collector turned builder. Tony has been collecting rare and fine instruments for about 30 years and he has a very intimate knowledge of some of the greatest instruments that have been made in this country. A number of years ago Tony started building guitars. Due to his insight into the old classics, he had a pretty good leg up on the competition. His company is Ark New Era Guitars. Check him out if you haven't already.

One of the things that Tony has set about doing is to make replicas of all the guitars John Fahey played throughout his career. He has made a copy of the Ray Whitley Recording King and most recently the Bacon and Day Senorita. His Senorita model is absolutely spectacular. In both looks, playability and sound. A great feat for a one man shop.

Among other things, Tony has a healthy obsession with the instruments of Carl and August Larson of Chicago. The Larson Brothers worked together from about 1900 to 1940, building somewhere around 3000 beautiful and very unique instruments. It was a Larson guitar that set Tony down the path which eventually led to instrument building. He has become the go to repair guy for Carl Larson's grandson Robert Hartmann, and has built many great Larson replicas for Robert.

Though not as devout, I share in Tony's Larson obsession. A number of years ago, my friend and teacher Wil Bremmer at Spruce Tree Music showed me a couple Larson guitars and lent me Robert Hartman's book "The Larson's Creation". I was really amazed at the amount of instruments the two brothers had made, the variety and the quality. As a result, Wil lent me a 1926 Stahl Style 6, as well as a 1929 Stahl Style 6, which I used to make my Ermida model.

On a recent trip to visit Tony, the conversation inevitably led to the Larson Brothers. From there, it eventually led to one of the purflings that the Larsons used. Being a fan of guitars of the early 20th century, I know a thing or two about purfling. I use lots of the stuff and have ordered it from most of the major suppliers. I've also made my own, a process which took quite a bit of figuring and is a lot of fun, though quite tedious. Anyway, I opened my big mouth and said that I could make a batch of the purfling for Tony. This was all true, I could in fact make the purfling, but it was also probably against my better judgement as it would require a bit of time and tie up a portion of valuable bench space in the shop. Nevertheless, it would be a good exercise and would keep my purfling chops up.

The vast majority of purfling in the old days came from Germany, where families honed there skills and developed tools to make really exquisite stuff. These days much of the purfling still comes from Germany, but there is at least one American manufacturer, Michael Gurian who is an incredibly knowledgeable figure and force of nature in the guitar building world.I started making my own because the dollar was down on the euro and it was a hassle to order from overseas and I didn't want to use any of the stock patterns that were available from luthier supply companies. My friend Federico Sheppard gave me the basic instructions on how to make it and I was off and running before long. I've made a handful of batches of purfling, some historic designs, some of my own design. They help to keep my instruments unique and give me a little more connection to them. They do require time to make though.


Back to the Larson purfling which I had offered to make for Tony. The first matter of business was to determine the pattern for the purfling. Tony provided me with some very detailed photos of purfling from an early Stahl guitar and we went back and forth emailing our takes on the pattern. It turned out that the mosaic portion in the center of the purfling was made up of a repeating pattern of 27 veneers. The veneer that I work with are generally 6" wide and 36" long, so if you can imagine half a deck of cards of those dimensions, you can get an idea of where I was starting.


After laying out the pattern of the veneers, I glued them up into a long block. After the block was glued, I slice it into a bunch of small angled pieces. I then glue those angled pieces into a long block, off of which I can slice thin cross sections which will become the mosaic portion of my purfling. After each slice, I glue a piece of veneer back onto the mosaic block, which will serve the dual purpose of acting as a border to the mosaic and will also hold the mosaics together while I scrape them to the proper uniform thickness. It is an incredible amount of gluing, slicing, scraping and waiting. The reward is that you end up with a pretty good pile of purfling which you can't get anywhere else.


After I had made up the first bunch of purfling, I ran a piece down to Spruce Tree Music to compare it to the stuff on Wil's old Stahl. The result was right on the money and I wish I had taken a picture. I was more than happy.

I'm keeping enough of the stuff to make a couple more Ermidas and I'm sending the rest down to Tony, figuring that he's doing such a great job on the Larson end of things, I can fulfill my curiosities by asking him. I'd just like to get a couple more out of my system first.

New Model- The Silvio

A few years ago, a friend in Italy turned me onto the guitars of Luigi Mozzani. Mozanni was a virtuoso guitar player who eventually began making guitars, harp guitars and mandolins. There is alot of great information on Mozzani and his instruments on Gregg Miner's fabulous site, harguitars.net. Here is a link to the article on Mozzani.

One of the shapes that seemed to be very inspirational to Mozzani kept popping out to my eye. A double cutaway, which I eventually learned was referred to as a "wappen", or shield guitar. The shape seems to have been developed in the early 1800's and used primarily by luthiers in Vienna and Munich. Oftentimes the soundholes were places on opposing sides of the fingerboard. I think that the reason for this was to create a larger sound board, something like what Francisco Simplicio did with his D hole guitar.

After returning to the Mozzani article several times, I found myself making drawings of a six string wappen guitar. I think harp guitars are cool and all, but I hadn't heard any music played on them which really inspired me (That has all changed now of course, but I'm not going to get into that here). I figured that a six string would be much more practical for my purposes. While I liked the idea of the soundholes on the side of the fingerboard, I initially opted to for a more standard soundhole placement. Eventually it evolved into an oval soundhole, partly to get a little more soudboard.

Originally the wappen guitars were on the small side, around 12" at the lower bout. I wanted to go a little bigger, so I kicked it up to a 000 size, right around 14 3/4" at the lower bout. I also pulled the waist in a little tighter and put a bit more of a curve in the cutaway. I wanted it to be easy and fun to play, so I opted for a 24.9" scale length.

I finally had a period where things calmed down a bit and I was able to put a little time into building a prototype. There were a few little challenges along the way, but it went together fairly quickly and smoothly. I was very anxious as to what it would sound like. Initially the sound was a bit off. In the first day or two, it sounded like someone was sitting next to me, playing exactly the same notes that I was. As the days went on and it got more playing time under its belt, it really began to open up. It started to get louder and the sound looser. I was very pleased with how it was turning out.

Reactions to the new guitar have been mixed. As a friend in Texas put it, "Man, that new guitar is f*%@!ed up", Others have remarked that it looks like a Selmer Macaferri. As it turns out, Macaferri was the star pupil of Luigi Mozzani and he incorporated some of the same elements into his designs. I've had a couple friends who are great players come to the house to check out the guitar. They are initially a bit reluctant toward the unorthodox shape, but they are quickly won over by the sound and the feel. While the cutaways don't allow for optimal access up the neck, they do allow you a little more room to work.
Overall I'm very pleased with the way that the guitar turned out. Pleased enough to make it a regular model, and to name it after my great grandfather. I'm looking forward to getting it out into the world and hearing what other folks think about it. I'm sure it will continue to evolve as I make more of them, but for now I'm glad to have resuscitated a great design from a bygone era

Tis the Season to Humidify

This post may be a little late, but it's better late than never. This is the time of year that you really need to pay attention to your instruments. As winter settles in and the air dries out, it is very important to humidify your guitar(s).

Most guitar makers keep their shops at around 40%-50% relative humidity. Guitars built under these conditions will handle extremes on both ends of the humidity spectrum the best. That's not to say that they can survive unscathed. As humidity goes up, wood expands, which can cause glue joints to pop loose and wood to pucker. As humidity goes down, wood shrinks and things crack. Neither one is good, but drops in humidity are usually a bigger concern, especially during this time of year, when many of us live in cold climates and keep a heater going in our home. With a forced air furnace set at 70 F, humidity can drop below 15%, which is almost guaranteeing that your guitar will crack.

Your guitar will usually send you some signs that it is getting dry before it cracks. The first sign is that the fret ends start sticking out. This happens because the fingerboard is drying out and shrinking, but the metal frets aren't, so the ends will feel rough on the edge of the fingerboard. If you get a second sign that things are getting dry, it may be some buzzing that wasn't there before as your action will start to drop. I wouldn't wait for any second signs, I'd start to humidify the guitar as soon as I felt the fret ends poking out.

For maintaining humidity there are several methods. You need to figure out which one will work best for you. It's good to start with a humidity gauge so that you can tell what sort of results you're having. Because I have several instruments in the home and shop, I keep a room humidifier going in the shop and one in the house, in the room where I keep instruments. I set it so that it maintains 40% humidity. These humidifiers work great and in addition to keeping the instruments happy, they make the room more comfortable for me as well. They usually cost between $30 and $70, which is a bargain compared to getting a crack repaired or the unsettled feeling you get when your favorite instrument cracks.

Some folks like to use instrument humidifiers, like Dampits. These work well if you only have a few instruments and keep them in their case. You need to keep on top of them and make sure that they are charged with water. I used to use them regularly and occasionally do still, if I'm going out of the house with a guitar, but I currently have too many instruments to make them practical.

One friend with a wood stove keeps a big pot of water on top of the stove. He has a small place and it seems to do the trick for him. Not all of us have the good fortune of having wood stoves.

One word of caution, don't depend on humidity systems that are connected to a furnace, like an Aprilaire. These units use a large amount of water and don't necessarily do an effective job of humidifying the air of your home. In my mind, they are a false sense of security. I think that a small room humidifier will do a much better job, and use a lot less water in the process.

So, do yourself and your instruments a favor and start working on humidity control. If possible, get a humidity gauge and a room humidifier. If you're always on the go with your guitar, get an instrument humidifier like a Dampit (or even something as simple as a damp sponge or washcloth in an open plastic bag kept inside the case). You will save yourself a lot of headaches and heartache.

Guitars and tomatoes

My apologies for being delinquent on the blog updates. It's been a busy summer and things are just now starting to calm down.

My family and I spend our summers gardening and enjoying the outdoors. One of our goals has been to put up as much food as possible for the long winter. We kept three gardens this year one in the backyard, behind the shop, one at a community garden, and a large one out at a friends farm, intended for low maintenance storage crops like potatoes, onions and squash. We put up about 150 lbs of potatoes, 300 heads of garlic, 50 squash, a dozen pumpkins, 15lbs. of sauerkraut, gallons of tomato sauce, applebutter and jam. Next weekend we get a pig from a friend and I'll make salami, bacon and prosciutto with one of my brothers. That is when the fun will really begin. All of this hard work has given my mind ample time to wonder, or wander.

When I was a kid, my folks raised a lot of our food, which partly explains why I have the desire to do the same with my family. I also grew up next door to an apple orchard, and some of my earliest food memories are of going out and picking apples in the orchard. I always loved the apples from that orchard the best. They weren't always the prettiest things, some of them were downright gnarly, but their flavor could not be matched. They were three dimensional. An extravaganza of flavor. I remember at Christmastime, my uncle Frank, who was a fruit wholesaler in Chicago, would always bring a fruit basket that was full of the shiniest, most gigantic fruit that could be had anywhere in the world. I'd immediately set my eyes on the apples, a perfect candy apple red softball sized fruit with a high polish like they had been under a buffing wheel. I'd sink my teeth into them and be immediately struck with disappointment. Their texture was mushy and their flavor was nonexistent. They paled in comparison to the apples that we'd pick at our neighbor's orchard.

I planted my first vegetable garden in my early 20's when I worked as a gardener on an estate, in exchange for rent. I had a surplus of tomatoes that year and I wanted to learn how to make sauce from fresh tomatoes. I went to a family reunion and figured I'd ask a bunch of old Italians how. Everyone gave me the same answer, "Why would you want to do that?" They all said that I should make my sauce from canned tomatoes. It would take me too long to make it from fresh ones and I wouldn't be able to get the consistency that I'd get from a canned tomato (I should add that many of these folks made gnocchi, a potato pasta, from instant potatoes, rather than the real deal, but, I digress). Being a respectful young person, I didn't question their logic. I made my sauce from a can and my few attempts at using fresh tomatoes fell short. Years later I learned how to make sauce from a fresh tomato, and I realized how wrong they all were. I can't say that my sauce is better than my grandmothers or any of my aunt's or uncles, that would be sacrilege, and if the Lord didn't strike me down, one of my siblings or cousins would. All I can say is that canned sauce lacks the same depth and intensity as the highly polished apple. With the fresh sauce, you can taste the sunlight and the earth. It is a transcendental experience.

These days I'm a tomato fanatic. I put in about 40 plants each year, hoping to beat any disease or bad weather that may jeopardize the crop. There is no such thing as too many tomatoes, so it is better to be safe than sorry. Our home becomes a tomato processing station during the late summer. When we have the time we oven roast the tomatoes with olive oil, garlic, salt, pepper and spices and then pass them through a food mill to get some of the best tomato sauce that can be had. When they are really coming in, we simply stew them and then can them, and when they are really really coming in, we freeze them whole to use them later for stews, soups or sauces. We'll use up every last one before next year's start to come in.

I have found that I can't bring myself to buy a "fresh" tomato from the grocery store. If I did I'd face the same disappointment as I did with the apples when I was a boy. The grocery store tomato is not bred for flavor, it is bred primarily for shape, color and shelf life. It is nothing to celebrate. I'll wait it out, until I can pick my gnarly fruit from the vine and use it as I see fit.

What does any of this have to do with guitars? Well, that's a good question. People have gotten hip to good food and it is a good subject to draw parallels with. The best chefs realize that you have to start with fresh, good quality ingredients to make a good dish, and people are gaining a new appreciation for fresh local foods, supporting local farms and farmers markets. But, there is a learning curve to working with all this stuff. It's not as simple as going to the farmer's market, buying some fresh produce, bringing it home and everybody's happy. You have to learn to work with it, and your taste buds have to get used to the real flavors. Once that's accomplished, there's no going back.

Often times people stray away from traditional methods because they seem cumbersome, take too much time, and don't always get consistent results etc. Maybe that's true sometimes, maybe at times they lack patience. Certainly not all traditions are good. But the further we stray, we lose a lot of good stuff in the process. You have to first learn the traditional methods before you can say that they are a waste of time.

The more I dig into traditional methods of instrument construction, the more I learn. The more practiced my hands and mind get at working together, the better and quicker my work becomes. I learn about ingredients and methods from people who have kept these traditions alive, I find out which ones work for what I am doing and incorporate them into my practice. I've found that once you have these methods down, they are as quick and efficient as "modern" methods, and often produce better results. As an exercise into how quickly I could build a guitar using traditional methods, I recently made one in four days. From joining the plates to stringing it up. I cut no corners. I used all hide glue, hand cut the inlays and French polished the finish (which was a combination of bug excretions and tree sap dissolved in vodka). It is a great guitar.

In short, if you can learn to judge an apple or tomato using your taste buds more than your eyes, your whole self will thank you. If you can learn to judge an instrument with your ears rather than your eyes, you will reap the same reward. Presentation is important, but it is not the key.

The Apprentice

For the past two and a half years I've been training an apprentice, Cyrus Brown-LaGrange. I met Cyrus almost twenty years ago, back when I used to play music on the street. His mother worked at the Farmers Market and he used to come by and listen to us play. Before long I was giving him music lessons in exchange for home cooked meals. Since then he has become a very close family friend.

A few years back, Cyrus and I were talking and he expressed some interest in building an instrument. I invited him out to the shop and started him out on a ukelele. I was impressed with his follow through and ability to stick with a project. Cyrus is a guitar player and understands how things are supposed to work and feel. He also has a natural gift for working with his hands, something that many people lack.

In the past two and a half years Cyrus has built a handful of ukeleles and about ten guitars. He's turning into a very good luthier and his work continues to improve. Not long ago I asked him to build two copies of an old concert sized Oscar Schmidt made Galiano that I have. I wanted him to focus on getting the old look down and to hone his craftsmanship. We decided to do one in white oak and one in birch. I wanted him to build them very traditionally, using all hide glue, with a varnish finish and he did a really great job.

Both guitars have red spruce tops, poplar necks with modified V profiles (the oak one has a truss rod), rosewood fingerboards and pyramid bridges and Golden Age tuning machines. The oak one is a little warmer and probably a little more suited for John Hurt style picking, while the birch one is a little more resonant and a little more raspy, probably better for Delta style blues, or playing behind a fiddler. They both sound and play great, putting out a lot of punch for new guitars. They are both currently available so email me if you're interested for more details or pictures.

Birch 12 String

For the most part, I try to build my guitars like the old ones, but standards and expectations have changed a lot since the old days and I think that in order to sell guitars, the workmanship has to be a lot cleaner than it was in the old days. Not that I judge my guitars by the same standards as some of the small and medium shops of the day. When I look at a lot of the stuff that comes from some of the small and medium shops, it looks flat to me. It doesn't have the depth of the old stuff. So many modern builders rely on CNC technology that their instruments are more hand assembled than hand made. Some folks think they look great, but I don't see a lot of distinction between some of the high end American makers and some of the stuff being made in China.

Enough of the ranting.

Occasionally I have a desire to build something "like an old guy", build a great instrument but without the attention to details that is expected of the modern luthier. Don't worry about cleaning out every little bit of glue on the inside of the box. Don't worry about pencil lines on the inside of the box. Don't worry about filling every single pore in the wood, and push the limits in terms of the lightness of the construction. I had a very rough winter and needed something a little cathartic to distract me.

Pat Conte is one of my favorite musicians alive today. Pat plays both blues and old time hillbilly music equally well, and he has mastered a variety of instruments, including fiddle, mandolin, banjo and six and 12 string guitars. He's a great singer and interpreter of old music. I had talked to Pat a while back and he said he was interested in a BBQ Bob style 12 string. It seemed like Pat was the perfect fit for the kind of build that I wanted to do.

I started out looking really closely at the photos of BBQ Bob, trying to figure out if there were any details that I had missed from previous viewings. Judging from the shine on the sides of his guitar, it looked like birch with a heavily tinted finish. I had some nice flamed birch which I decided to use for the project. I also had some nice diagonal checkered purfling that I made last fall that would give the guitar the perfect old time look. For the top I picked the gnarliest set of red spruce that I have ever seen. The grain was very tight in the center, then turned to wide, then tightened up again. It had some irregular steps in the grain that gave a bearclaw effect, but was very close to being knots. I also decided to go for a poplar neck (not truss rod) with a flat fingerboard and very small mandolin frets. The old guitars had much smaller frets than they do now and were equivalent to modern mandolin wire.

At a certain point the guitar departed from being a straight BBQ Bob copy and took on a life of its own. I've been into the whale tail bridge lately and decided to go that route on this one, with six pins instead of 12. I also considered a "ebonized" maple fingerboard and bridge, but decided to switch to rosewood as it would be an improvement to the sound and feel.

For the finish, I used button lac, which is the rawest, least refined variety of shellac. It has a deep orange color with lots of impurities that add to the character. It's probably the closest thing to what was used on the old inexpensive instruments. I put a bright white binding on the guitar, and let the finish give it an aged tint and pool up in areas, something you always see on old instruments. I gave both the birch back and sides and the poplar neck a brownish red stain to simulate mahogany. I strung the guitar with my standard gauges, but with round core nickel strings instead of bronze.

I'm really happy with the way that the guitar turned out. I built it in about half the time I usually spend on an instrument, and because it was built so lightly and had such a light finish, it really roared. Every time I do a project like this, it gives me a little more insight into the past. I get to try out some different techniques and see if I'm on the right track in terms of what the old guys were thinking and doing. I'll look forward to doing more like it in the future. Plus, it went to one of my favorite players!



Thanks to John Heneghan for the video and to Frankie for being the test pilot and delivery man.