Customer Reviews

Making Early Stringed Instruments

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This is a useful book for those interested in musical instrument construction. If you are interested in making musical instruments this is a good book but it's not for those with no experience.

Ths book contains plans and instructions for making eight different stringed instruments: a bowed psaltery, a lyre, a simple lute, an appalachian dulcimer, a flat-backed mandolin, a mediaeval fiddle, a gothic harp and a guitar. All are adaptations of original instruments or are inspired by traditional designs. All of Taylor's designs are aestheitically graceful and elegant. The plans provided are detailed and clear. There are, however, some aspects of the book that I didn't like. I found Taylor's writing style to be rather flowery, verbose and pretentious. Conversely, his sets of instructions for building each instrument are too brief, one reason why this is not a book for beginners. It would have been nice if less space had been given to wordy anecdotes and more to fleshing out the instructions.

There is also a glaring error in the instructions for making the mandolin and guitar. It describes attaching the neck to a flat board when gluing the sides to the neck and bottom block. Doing this will cause problems with gluing on the fingerboard...there will be a step down from the soundboard to the neck surface. I hit this problem when I made a guitar from the book and it caused lots of frustration for me.

Otherwise, this is a fairly good book that would be a useful addition to the library of anyone interested in making traditional musical instruments. I'll give it three stars.

Making Early Stringed Instruments is a product of its times. Put together just before the whole desktop publishing phenomenon, it doesn't measure up to modern expectations.

I actually *like* the writing style, which is somewhat haughty. As a practicing luthier, I also found several interesting tidbits on construction technique. To suggest that this is in any way a tutor for creating the pictured instruments, is laughable.

-The drawings provided should be seen as a starting-point. I find them to be pretty displeasing, aesthetically. In fact, looking at medieval manuscript sources I have a hard time understanding how Taylor came to produce such "clunky" designs.

-The Panormo-style guitar is nicely drawn, but braced extremely heavily. Throw out the construction sequence. Tayler distills the entire process into 19 steps (19!) with very few illustrations. It's simply impossible for an amatuer to build a playable guitar with this level of instruction.

Taylor's previous book on lute construction is a far superior effort, if you can find a copy. It contains many anachronistic ideas and the instrument portrayed would be deemed unsatisfactory by most modern lutenists, but at least the building process is outlined in full detail.

I have been eagerly waiting to read this book since nearly a year ago. And now I wish I was still waiting.

I am not nearly an inexperienced woodworker(ok 32 years a cabinetmaker) nor a complete novice at making musical instruments, (3 banjos, many many appalachian dulcymers, a lute several mandolins, 6 hammer dulcymers, 8 harps, making music is fun) but I do know good directions from bad.

In an effort to simplify for the beginner Mr Taylor has skipped steps and made the plans/instruments bulky and over built. Which will cause mistakes for the beginner leading to frustrations and quitting. If the beginner is savvy enough to find an experienced woodworker who will help them and if they use the drawings as guidelines and not carved in granite facts then they have a hope of making a nice instrument.

Further that cute little harp on the cover of the book is not inside. Instead the things hidden in the background are. He would have had room for more detailed instructions if he had left out the dulcymer and the guitar (niether fit the books title anyhow) and maybe had a talharpa or a rebec (or two) instead (and that cute little harp).

Having said that; I will use the plans as rough outlines and make some instruments from these patterns.

I guess I should have read the other two reviews for this book before purchasing. The text doesn't provide enough detail for a novice woodworker or particularly for someone attempting their first instrument to get started. In particular the instrument list should be modified. Simply stating that it includes plans for a lute is misleading when the lute in question is a very Early Medieval type with a skin soundboard. It is more akin to a primitive banjo than what I was looking for. Also, all the drawings are reproduced at such a small scale to be virtually useless and none contain details such as full scale bridge designs or instructions on how to generate one's own patterns. The only useful content in the work is the chapter detailing his method of fretting. It should prove quite useful Caveat emptor!

I was very disappointed in this book. I had expected much, much better construction description after reading Taylor's book on building a Lute. These construction descriptions are absolute minimal. Most casual builders will have a lot of trouble building most of these instruments. I build harps professionally and it would not be easy. With just a little more effort this could have been a great book on building a variety of instruments but I think the writing was done in a minimum amount of time.

The Gothic Harp, in which I was most interested, didn't have any info on stringing, the critical part of a harp. Oh, don't expect any info on the harp on the cover, it's not in the book. So why is it on the cover?

As I said, his other book, Make and Play a Lute, is very detailed and has all the info needed. Why this wasn't done here is puzzling,

and disappointing.