Official Luthiers Forum!

"Larry's a great guy and as humble as he is talented and he deserves every accolade that he gets and more."

Kevin count me in as part of the fan club.
Larry is as fine a person as are his inlays. With or without inlay as a link to each other I am impressed as much with the man himself as with his work. I am honored to know him.



Craig L

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www.handcraftinlay.com

I spent my first 50 years as a non musician and without really knowing about instruments. My eyes have been opened in many ways regarding guitars and ukuleles. I once thought that lots of bling meant a good instrument (what can I say ) but have learned that’s not necessarily so. Now I find myself less interested in bling and more interested in a well built instrument with a good sound. My eyes were really opened up after taking my building school. On the way home I happened to meet a first class passenger who was also carrying a ukulele case. She told me the story of how she admired a certain builder and had come to Hawaii to purchase one of his instruments. She revealed a stunning instrument with plenty of beautiful inlay including a fantastic vine on the fretboard. I looked up the instrument on the builders’ site and guess that it cost a minimum of $2,800.00 3 years ago. She and I traded ukuleles and tried them out. I was surprised that the beautiful ukulele sounded ok but was very quiet. She had a surprised look on her face when she played mine. Mine sounded pretty good with good sustain and quite a good volume. She asked why mine sounded so loud. I told her not to worry that her ukulele was quite nice and that stringed instruments get better and louder as they are played and age.

It was that day that proved to me that beauty alone does not make a good instrument. Of course, with my building skills I have to take that to heart. My goal is to build quality instruments. In fact, I think my goal is to make better than average sounding instruments and I will try to make them look acceptable.

Philip

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aka konacat

If you think my playing is bad you should hear me sing!
Practice breeds confidence and confidence breeds competence. Unfortunately, I'm stuck in practice.

Okay we all know that the more inlay then the more a guitar will cost that's only natural since shell cost and there's more labor. But from a building position, does pearl inlay purfling have any effect on tone and as opposed to plastic purfling or hard wood purfling. I use MOP nuts sometime and it has an affect. And what's everone take on using indangered woods as to using undangered woods.

That is hard to say with out speaking of what, where and how.

Lets look at a D45 with an additional tree of life vine inlay. That would have abalone purfling all edges, abalone rosette and inlay on the peg head. This would be considered a typical high end inlay package for most. I am sure the total inlay out weighs the material removed during channeling by some small amount but not much. And no inlay is in what would be the active zones of the body. So I doubt this would have a detrimental affect.

Now if you start inlaying all over the tops and backs active zones It may have, but I trust what Kevin had to say about how the 1M Martin played so tone wise I think some one would have a hard time proving that most high end inlaid guitars are sonically affected enough to concern ones self with.