Introduction

Hi. I'm new here. I've been lurking for a few weeks and figured I'd better give it a try - especially after Grant posted a thread about a guitar that I'm building for him - thought I'd better defend myself.

I'm an old fart who has been playing guitar forever, unfortunately not very well. I'm mostly an acoustic sort of guy - brought up with folkie blusy music - you know, three chords and the truth. A few years ago I got interested in how these little boxes were made and how they work - I'm an engineer by training so naturally I'm fascinated by the technology of acoustic guitars m- why are they made the way they are - and of course that led to trying to make one myself. That was 12 years and 24 guitars ago.... (if you ever think of building a guitar let me warn you.....)

I had no interest in electric guitars but decided to build one anyway - basically a Les Paul clone - which led to another and another and yet another. I built a few for friends and a couple of "commissions" - a left handed ES-335 for a guy in Austria, most recently an L-5 sort of thing for myself. Finding myself with a jazz guitar I found that I needed to learn something about jazz which meant that I needed to learn something more about music and theory and the fretboard and how chords were put together and all of those chords with unpronounceable names - I wish I had done this 40 years ago. For what it is worth, here is the lester and the L-5 thing (this also gives me a chance to see if I can post a picture on this forum)

IMG_3861_zpsjeishd74.jpg


I don't call myself a luthier, I have too much respect for the true luthiers in our world, and I sit in awe at what they can do. Some wag said you need to build 30 guitars before you have made all the mistakes - then you can call yourself a luthier. I like to think the term is like musician or artist or photographer - lots of people play music but only a few are musicians, lots of people take pictures but only a few... - you get the picture (no pun).
I've built a bunch of different types of guitars - acoustics of every size and shape, resonators, a Weissenborn, solid and hollow and semi hollow electrics - which gives me a pretty good idea of how these things work. I do a lot of repair and setup work for my local music store - which gives me a pretty good understanding of what goes wrong and maybe how to fix it. I've taken a lot of pictures over the years which means I can often means I can provide the proverbial thousands words.

Anyway, that's me and I'll be popping in from time to time. For right now I need to go to Grant's thread about the barncaster and correct some things
 
I look forward to your input here. Your guitar building always impressed me, as did your kindness and common sense. Welcome. :hippie:
 
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