Question:

Building for Playability David Freeman
Fairly basic information on design and construction to ensure good playability. Centered around neck angle, top and bridge, followed by setup and adjustment. (Interestingly, Freeman builds almost exclusively with Spanish heel, including all his steel strings).
19th Century Lutherie Techniques James Buckland
Buckland is both a builder and very fine player of classical guitars build in the traditional method of 19th century Italian guitar makers. Guitars are built on a solera using all hand tools – he showed some examples of very old classicals from his collection (and played them). That evening he gave a wonderful concert on one of his guitars.
Structural Guitar Repair Dan Erlewine and Frank Ford
Yup, THE Frank Ford and THE Dan Erlewine, talking about solving strange little problems that they have encountered during their years of repair. Ford has a small machine shop and delighted in showing how he would build a special tool for some esoteric problem. Very fun presentation with lots of good natured banter between these business competitors who are obviously very good friends. A highpoint was Erlewine’s weird acoustic and electric that have allowed him to keep playing as athritus has limited his ability. Not pretty, but very effective.
Steel String Guitar Voicing Dana Bourgeois
Traditional methods of flexing and tapping the top to help select the woods and then remove wood from braces to get the best (and consistant) sound. The traditional way based on years of experience, but interesting to compare to later seminars by Siminoff and Cone)
Understanding Tap Tuning Roger Siminoff
Siminoff is a scholar of the work of Lloyd Loar and has developed methods of tuning the various parts of instruments (mainly mandolins but his work applies to guitars). By using a strobe tuner he attempts to tune tone bars, braces, sound holes, and the air chamber to different musical notes. Properly done these notes can reinforce a particular chord, cancel “wolf notes”, and make it possible to duplicate instruments in a small shop setting. I’ve used Siminoff’s methods with limited success on some of my instruments.
The Life and Work of Tom Humphrey Michael Gurian
I was not familiar with Humphrey but wanted to hear Gurian speak. During the 60’s Gurian was one of the early American guitar builders and greatly influenced many following builders. One of his students, Humphrey had innovative ideas about contruction methods that are starting to be explored today. He recently passed away – there were a number of friends and luthiers who had worked with him in the audience. Gurian’s presentation at a lot of fun old picture from the guitar world of the 70’s.
Wood Bending Techniques – Old and New Charles Fox
Fox guitars are noted for often having tightly bent cutaways as well as other modern features (sound ports, bevels, elevated fretboards). The Fox side bender is the system used by many small volume luthiers, although he started by demonstrating traditional bending over a hot pipe. Fox proceeded to bend a piece of mahogany into a cutaway side, and when it cracked I knew that even the best sometimes have problems with their work. Fox showed a new design bender that addresses some of the problems with the current model (plans for the old one are available at LMI)
Steel String Listening Mike Doolin (facilitator), Mark Swanson (player)
Swanson started by saying “I woke up this morning thinking ‘I have to go play 35 hand built guitars for an appreciative audience, life is good’ “. The was a chance for the luthiers showing their guitars to have them all played in the same setting by the same player. Doolin would present a guitar to Swanson and ask the builder to describe it – tone woods, bracing, scale length, finish, any thing else he or she thought was important. Mark then played the same little strum/flatpick and finger pick riffs, offered his comments and asked for comments from the audience. It was not a competition (every one was a winner in my book), but was a wonderful opportunity to hear differences in woods, shapes, construction methods. There were a few odd balls – an incredible harp guitar, two archtops, some offset sound holes, and a couple of really weird things. A couple of the guitars were the builder’s very first ones. Interestingly, only about 10 were rosewood (and I don’t think there were any mahogany), lots of different and beautiful tone woods.
There were also classical and bass guitar listening sessions which didn’t attend but understood were equally good.
Strings: The (Often) Forgotten Accessory Fan Tao
Tao is a violin player and works for D’Addario, primarily in R&D for bowed instrument strings, but he talked in general about how strings are made, presented some good engineering information on tension, tuning and similar things, then discussed the problem of building an instrument for which there are no strings available (many of the new bass guitar, long scale lengths and special tunings fall in this area). He described how a builder should approach selecting the strings for his wild new design – a very real problem.
Practical Acoustics: An Oxymoron? Michael Cone
Cone is both a builder of classical guitars and an engineer. When approached by a world famous classical player to duplicate a guitar he had built 30 years ago, Cone set out to study its acoustic properties. Using a variety of transducers and acoustic software he mapped the resonances of the soundboard and constructed a second guitar with similar characteristics (and made some modifications to eliminate an A440 wolf note.
He also used his “shaker” system to artificially age the guitar and proved that it truly did “open up” by the spectral analysis. Much of his presentation was at a very high mathematical level – as an engineer I understood some of it but most went over the heads of the audience. However it was fascinating to compare the results that Cone obtained with both Bourgeois and Siminoff’s presentation. Three different approaches to the same problem.

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Fun stuff
Pipe Organ Tour Paul Tegels
PLU has a beautiful pipe organ and Organ Master Tegels took 12 of us behind the scene, showing the bellows, pipes (including the 32 foot wooden ones that rumble like an earthquake down to the tiny little ones at the limit of human hearing). The triple keyboard, stops (which are mechanically programmable for rapid resetting during a piece), linkage between the stops, keys and valves), and all the other parts of the organ were demonstrated to the appreciative group of instrument builders. The great hall was designed around the organ – and its acoustics can be fine tuned by adjustable curtains. At the end of the session Tegels played a short recital – sitting in the middle of the hall I have to admit to having moist eyes.
Forderer Rare and Historic Instrument Collection Jim Forderer
Forderer has been collecting rare stringed instruments, but unlike many collectors doesn’t lock them away. In one room were literally dozens of guitars, lutes, violins and other instruments dating into the 18th century – original Stauffer’s, a few of CF Martin (the first) originals, Renissance guitars, classicals including Torres, Hauser, and other builder who I had heard of (or not). All sitting on tables and, believe it or not, the owner was encouraging people to pick them up and play them. I noddled around on some prewar Gibbies and Martins (an old 00-18, a D-42, ho hum), and listened while the classical players in the room tried the 18th century gut strung ones. I’ve heard that the 90 or so Torres in existence fetch $30 to 100K at actions – there was one sitting on the table.
General Exhibition
Two large rooms filled with nothing but hand built guitars (and their builders) and table after table of beautiful tone woods (many builders were selecting woods for their next project). As I would stand admiring a guitar the builder would say “here, sit down and play it”. Mike Doolin and Charles Fox and David Freeman and Chuck Tweedy and Stephen Kinnaird and so many others – many who I had not heard of. Andy DePaule where I have bought all my pearl, LMI and StewMac and Notable Woods and dozens of other sources of every kind of supply. Open to the public on Saturday – many people got a chance to see and hear and play these wonderful instruments.
Concerts
James and Karen Buckland 19th Century Guitar and Piano
Lovely classical music played by a master on either historical guitar or his copies.
Mike Doolin and Nancy Conescu Steel String Guitars
Nancy (Mike’s wife) is a beautiful Celtic singer and Mike played a bunch of his funky guitars and and basses, including a harp guitar and an 8 string combination bass and guitar.

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Wow...love those old "gut string guitars" :love:
Thanks for the excellent report and fine photographs. I can see that being luthier yourself you must have found the conference to be most inspiring.
I have no intention of ever building guitars but I do love to look at them and learn more about how they are built. I wish I could attend one sometime. Maybe in a couple of years.

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Wow. What a report. Thanks Freeman, I wish it was closer to me so I could attend.

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Thanks for going over the seminars, I will most definitely be going next year.
Actually I have a quick question for you freeman. I am building a very large workbench in my garage for building/ repairing guitars. How deep do you think it should be? I was thinking somewhere between 2 and 3 feet but in your experience what would be best?

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Sounds like a great exhibition - pity it happens across the other side of the world from me.
Thanks for the photos, Freeman - I would really, really have liked to have been able to play some of those baroque guitars.
Traynor YCV50Blue -- Fuse question.?
Does any Online Dealer still have Dual-pickup Melody Makers in Worn White?
truss rod adjustment?
Summer NAMM this week.?
My first NGD?
Howling Wolf told me to take off my shoes at his house.?
"Out for delivery."?
I think we need a Reverend Congregation?