Bio and Lutherie Background
I am a Canadian, born and raised in a small community in the province of Saskatchewan. Upon completing high school, I was recruited by a local bank and so began a successful career in banking that spanned 43 years until my retirement in the year 2000. I live with my wife, Gaylene and our teenage son Tyler in St. Albert, Alberta.
After joining the bank, but while still in my teens, I discovered the guitar and there began an enduring passion that thrives to this day.
As with many guitarists, my passion for playing sparked a never ending quest for better and better instruments. My earliest concept of what constituted a great guitar was shaped by the instruments owned by my teachers and friends as well as by professional guitarists that I had an opportunity to hear from time to time. For some years, I considered the Ramirez concert guitars to be the ultimate. Occasionally I would meet someone who owned a Ramirez but, unfortunately, I am a left handed player and Ramirez guitars did not lend themselves easily to conversion. On one occasion a friend asked me to "baby-sit" his spruce top Ramirez while he was away on vacation. He encouraged me to restring and play it while he was away. Despite intonation and action problems that resulted when the guitar was strung left handed, this was a notable experience for me and helped to set my standards during those early years.
In 1972, I had an opportunity to enroll in a week long master class being conducted by Carlos Barbosa Lima at the University of Hartford, Connecticut . Carlos was playing a guitar that had been produced under the "Augustine" label by luthier Frank Haselbacher. (Yes, this is the same "Augustine" that makes guitar strings.) I subsequently learned that Haselbacher studied guitar making under Albert Augustine who in turn was influenced by Hermann Hauser. I was completely mesmerized by the sound of that guitar. It made an impression that lasted many years and formed a basis for new standards that I would use when considering guitars for acquisition.
During the late 70's I learned of a guitar maker named Robert Bouchet and studied whatever literature I could find about his guitars. I never did get to hear a Bouchet guitar but the written descriptions of them fascinated me. Then, in 1980, I discovered a book entitled "Classic Guitar Construction" by Irving Sloane. In addition to clear instructions for building guitars, Sloane provided some details regarding the Bouchet designs. I had some basic woodworking and modeling experience so I decided to try building my first guitar based upon the Bouchet top bracing designs. I have to admit that the result was pretty crude looking, but it was playable and it had some characteristics that I was quite pleased with.
The top from my first guitar was from cedar and I decided to try a second using spruce. This guitar turned out to be considerably better than the first and I was surprised by its volume and tonal characteristics as compared with the spruce top classic guitars available through local retail stores. I began taking it with me to play at local guitar society gatherings where it began to attract some interest. Shortly thereafter, our guitar society engaged the well known Cuban guitarist Leo Brouwer to put on a concert and I was assigned the privilege of meeting him at the airport. During our conversation while driving to the city, I told him about my guitar making adventures and brazenly asked if he would take the time to try my guitar. Leo graciously agreed (not the first time he'd done that I'm sure). The next day, I brought my guitar to his hotel at the agreed upon time. Brouwer took the guitar and played a few scales and then, to my considerable surprise, he began playing excerpts from his repertoire. I was stunned by the beautiful tones he was coaxing from my creation. After about an hour, Mr. Brouwer put the guitar down and told me that I should continue my pursuit of guitar making. He also tactfully pointed out shortcomings and, while I will always be grateful for the inspiration Brouwer imparted, I was even more appreciative of the constructive criticism.
Over the ensuing 20 years, I went on to build more than 30 guitars while I continued with my increasingly demanding banking career. The earlier guitars were as often from cedar as from spruce. Later I began working almost exclusively with spruce always striving for improvements in my construction methods and experimenting with variations on the Bouchet design. Throughout those 20 years and to this day, David Grainger Brown, a close friend, a guitar teacher and an accomplished player has played a my guitars exclusively. His advice and collaboration have been of enormous value to me.
About 4 years ago, our guitar society engaged the Greek guitarist Antigoni Goni to stage a concert and I once again heard a guitar that made a lasting impression. This guitar, by Jose Romanillos, exhibited wonderful clarity throughout its full range. Its tone was transcendent and, while I would not categorize it as a "loud" guitar it reached out to fill the hall in every important way.
I could mention at this point that I have looked into some of the approaches being taken by Smallman, Damman, Humphrey and others utilizing radical designs and/or synthetic materials. The guitars that I've heard are impressive, particularly in terms of their loudness. However, these instruments did not inspire me to change my standards from those imprinted in me by the Haselbacher & Romanillos guitars that I've talked about. While far better players than I will ever be have sung the praises of these guitars, words by Julian Bream might express my thoughts most appropriately when he said; " It is not my intention to argue about the merits of recent developments in the art of guitar construction, but I would like to add that it is, in my considered opinion, a debatable virtue to search for greater volume of sound at the expense of sound quality".
Following the Antigoni Goni concert, I revisited an article written in 1976 about Jose Romanillos who said " I work by tapping, by tapping the soundboard. I also go by the feel. When I'm shaping the struts, I take the top and flex it. The feel of the timbers and the tapping will give you more or less what you're after, if you're lucky. Sometimes it doesn't work because sound is not the sort of thing that's easy to understand. There's no physical law that tells you what you've got to do, you can only go by your own experience. You've got a sound in your ear and you try to get that sound out of the top. There's only one way to make it work, feeling it here, tapping it there." Later in the article he says " It's the material which is critical- You must know the material and what to do with it. The timber is absolutely vital."
Romanillos subsequently wrote a book about Antonio de Torres (1817-1892), the Spanish guitar maker who developed the classic guitar from its earlier origins and set many of the standards for today's classic guitars. At a dinner party organized by local clergy, Torres was asked to "share his secret with others and not take it to his grave". Torres replied "It is impossible for me to leave the secret behind for posterity; this will go to the tomb with me for it is the result of the feel of the tips of the thumb and forefinger communicating to my intellect whether the soundboard is properly worked out to correspond with the guitar makers concept and the sound required of the instrument."
These readings suggest that there is much more to building a good guitar than good design and sound craftsmanship, Unfortunately, I had not undertaken a lot of tapping and feeling as part of my building experience. Even if I had, I would not have had any clear points of reference to relate to. So...I went back to my design based approach and worked to further refine my construction methodology and overall craftsmanship.
In April of 2000 I retired from my banking career and resolved to pursue my guitar building with more vigor. I built 4 guitars that year based upon some new design & construction concepts that I'd worked out and they turned out to be my best ever. Furthermore, I had achieved greater consistency in my results I had in the past. Nevertheless, the 30 year old memory of the Haselbacher guitar along with the more recent memory of the Romanillos guitar continued to haunt me. Would I ever find a way to approach these high standards ?
In the summer of 2001, I received an invitation from the American School of Lutherie in California to attend a week long master class in classic guitar making being conducted by Gregory Byers. Something moved me to take this seriously and it didn't take me long to find Byers' web site where I learned that he had studied with Jose Romanillos. In his own biography, Greg writes;
"Romanillos was (is!) wonderful. A deeply spiritual man, he showed me that lutherie is more than just gluing sticks together. Inspired by the greatness of both his artistry and spirit, I found my calling as a luthier. He gave me reason to think my life's work could touch the creative, the spiritual, the rational in equal measure. This is what I had been looking for."
To make a long story short, I attended the master class and discovered, not only a great guitar maker, but a great teacher. While Greg's approaches are somewhat more scientific than the procedures described by Romanillos (and therefore I more easily understand them) the objectives and outcomes are the same. At the end of the class, Greg strung a new guitar that he had made and I experienced for the third time, a guitar that made a major impact upon me.
I should say, at this time, that I have no impression that any one of the Haselbacher, Romanillos or Byers guitars that I have heard is better than any other. Each of them had their own character but all of them had certain characteristics that really move me. Each had a blend of tonal character, sustain and balanced power that is hard to describe. The best I can say for each of them is..... "this is what a guitar should sound like". I am very aware that each of these makers, along with Hauser and others saw Antonio de Torres as the "Stradivarius" of the guitar. I recently purchased and read Romanillos ' extensive work on Torres life and work and there is no doubt in my mind that all of the luthiers that produce what I would consider to be great instruments share a common bond, that being a deep and enduring affinity for the work of Antonio de Torres.
When I returned from my studies with Greg Byers, I undertook the construction of a prototype guitar incorporating new designs and utilizing the new methodologies I'd learned. Based upon the result, I followed with 3 more which I completed during the first three months of 2002 and an additional 4 during the winter of 2002/2003. I was delighted with the consistency in characteristics among these eight instruments.
In the fall of 2004, I undertook another challenge that I'd been dreaming about, namely a raised fingerboard design that incorporated the Spanish heel architecture in its construction. The need to do this was based upon an intuition that I'd conceived to the effect that treble notes above the 12th fret would be more consistent with those below the 12th fret in terms of their tonal characteristics. The prototype for this was successful and I've since filled orders for 11 of these guitars and as of this writing (November 2005) I am working on 5 more. Variations from my standard guitar have included a 7 string guitar and variances in scale lengths.
Those who may want to know more, can find further and more detailed information in the other pages to this site.