Building Your First Guitar
Make a Copy of the Guitar You have Always Wanted!
Earlier this year, I attended a guitar festival here in New Mexico. I met some wonderful folks, reconnected with old friends and got an order to build a small guitar for a new client. One of the participants was a man several years older than myself who had recently retired and decided that he needed to start making steel string guitars. He did a good job at making them, they sounded and played well, which is all you really need in a guitar, I did notice that none of them were based on any well established style of guitar. I asked him why he did this and he said that he saw no reason to copy any other guitar shape or form, he liked his own ideas. He asked me if I made my own guitar outlines. He was a bit shocked when I told him that both guitars I had brought to the show were pretty much copies of Andrés Segovia’s 1912 Manuel Ramirez guitar.
“Why make a copy of another maker’s work?” he asked.
“I don’t need to reinvent the wheel and axle, besides I have learned so much about guitar building by making copies of historic guitars,” I replied, “copying gives you the skills and technique to move on to greater things.”
If you really want to make a guitar, then make a guitar. To make that first guitar successful, I strongly suggest that you make a copy of the guitar that you have always wanted. If there is a plan available for that guitar, follow that plan and instructions to the letter and it will be a wonderful guitar. You will learn a lot about the world of woodworking.
Now, if you don’t have much woodworking experience and have some trepidation about making a guitar from scratch, a successful approach is to buy a guitar kit from a well known luthier supply house. Buy the kit that is the guitar you want, or something close to it, and should you desire to continue down the road of lutherie, decide what it is that you want to do next. Maybe attend a class on guitar making, or a guitar making school.
Recently, a young woman stopped by my studio, she wanted to know what she needed to do to learn how to make guitars. I asked her why she wants to make guitars.
“For the art of it.”