13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Detailed Hands-On Guide, July 16, 2000
This review is from: Making Stringed Instruments: A Workshop Guide (Paperback)
This is a marvelous, nuts-and-bolts guide to building stringed musical instruments. It starts, and goes into great detail, with a violin and then proceeds to cello, mandolin, classical guitar and finally arch-top or jazz guitar. Most of the shaping and assembly processes are covered in the violin section and then the following sections are shorter, dealing only with techniques specific to that instrument. The first section of the book, called The Workshop, covers selection, care and maintenance of common intrument making tools. It also outlines making some useful and reasonably easy tools. This is great if you are handy, resourceful and feel like saving a few dollars. It ends with a very important part on wood selection. Read the section on making a violin no matter which instrument you are interested in! It also covers, in detail, how to perform some of the techniques that are only covered glancingly in the following instruments. These might be useful hints for using this book: - Look for the scale for the instrument drawings along the edge of each picture! - After you've done all the reading about your intrument, look at the Construction Sequence to figure out what to do, and in what order! - Figure that how ever long it looks like each step will take, it will probably take twice as long. Enjoy the process of building because you will be doing it for a while! - When you are ready to build, look back at the wood types for your chosen instrument. Then go back to Part 1: The Workshop and re-read the part called Wood. Then go to Part 11: The Violin and read the section on Choosing The Wood. The part about listening to your wood as you tap on it may sound like hocus-pocus but it is vital to building a good instrument! You want clear, solid, sound wood to build with or all your work will be wasted! Use your imagination while you read this book. Musical instrument building is only partly a science; the rest of the process involves artistry. Many small errors can be corrected or simply incorporated into the final instrument. No great instrument makers made all of their instruments exactly the same. Their mistakes where called personalizing each instrument! This book will guide you comfortably through the process of building your own instrument.
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