Official Luthiers Forum!

I have just finished reading a one inch thick, hard bound copy of Classical Guitar Making, A modern approach to traditional design. Excellent tome with oodles of pictures. Yes it has the basic "this is how quarter sawn lumber is produced" and "this is a bridge", but he starts us our by detailing the jigs and fixtures that the traditional classical guitar luthier uses to produce a classical guitar (with some discussion of the differences between the classical, flamenco and steel string guitars) Plenty pictures and excellent documentation. One warning, don't try scale up the plans. The author has acknowledged that there was a mistake in calculating the positions of the frets. He offers a complete set of plans with mylar(?) templates on his website for a very reasonable price as well that have corrected the problem with the fret spacing. All in all, for $30.00 (USD) plus shipping it is worth every penny. Off to find some western red cedar...

I really like Johns book!
Fantastic photos!
A learned woodworker-better than some other guitarmaking books for sure!!!!
It's good for all of us to see how & why another maker goes about routine guitarmaking!
There is alot to learn here!

just absorb and use what you can use here!
I thank John for such a modern approach-as the title implies!
Mike

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Mike Collins

I thought the Bogdanovich book was really nice. I particularly found it useful in the making of purflings, where his detail photography and diagrams make it very clear. The guitar-building part, was also very good, and I found some parts very helpful, though I prefer a slightly different methodology.

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars