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Luthiers on the U.S. West Coast. Lots of 'Em........
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srshea
Posts: 833
Joined: Oct. 29 2006
From: Olympia, WA in the Great Pacific Northwest
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 Luthiers on the U.S. West Coast. Lot...
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I’ve come to notice that there a LOT of flamenco builders here on the U.S. west coast.
Starting south and heading north you’ve got Devoe around the central coast, Faulk and Canin in the Bay Area, Ruck in Eugene, Tsiorba and Shelton-Farretta around Portland. California native Eugene Clark is just twenty minutes north of me; I know there are a couple guys in Seattle; there’s that guy up in Port Angeles or Port Roberts or Port Somewhere who was making affordable Santos copies that folks were saying good stuff about (something like that…). That’s just a top-of-the-head list, and I know I’m missing more than a few names.
What’s notable to me is that so many of these guys really are builders of note, putting out quality, respected work, and not just hobbyists.
So, I know we’ve got a lot of trees around here, but aside from that I’m curious to know if there’s anything that explains the uncanny preponderance of flamenco luthiers ‘round these parts. I know there are great builders out in other parts of the country, Blackshear, Brune, et al, but it really does seem like there’s an abundance of them in a relatively concentrated area here.
Are y’all actually from the places you live and work at, or did you migrate here; is this some kind of conspiracy; etc? Cheap spruce, relatively mild climate, stuff like that? What’s going on here?
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Date Feb. 10 2010 10:51:07
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Samarto
Posts: 160
Joined: Mar. 21 2008
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RE: Luthiers on the U.S. West Coast.... (in reply to srshea)
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Here is a list I compiled a while back.
West Coast Flamenco Guitar Makers
California
Lester DeVoe Nipomo, Ca.
Eric Monrad Healdsburg, Ca.
Jose Oribe Vista, Ca.
Glenn Canin San Francisco, Ca.
David Schramm Clovis, Ca.
Pepe Vergara Lake Forest, Ca.
Kenny Hill Ben Lomond, Ca.
Bruce Wood Alta Vista, Ca.
Stephen Faulk Oakland, Ca.
Michael Nguyen Santa Ana, Ca.
Richard Prenkert Santa Rosa, Ca.
Mark Berry Cotati, Ca.
Tomas Delgado Los Angeles, Ca.
Oregon
John Shelton Alsea, Or.
Susan Farretta Alsea, Or.
Robert Ruck Eugene, Or.
Les Stansell Pistol River, Or.
Peter Tsiorba Portland, Or.
Kerry Char Portland, Or.
Clarence Burnett Portland, Or.
Washington
Ethan Deutsch Seattle, Wa.
Drake Traphagen Bellingham, Wa.
Eric Sahlin Valley Ford, Wa.
Darren Hippner Point Roberts, Wa.
Steve Ganz Bellingham, Wa.
This is just the ones I am aware of that make flamenco guitars. There are many others that make Classical and may make flamencos, but don't advertise as such. I am sure I missed several as many don't advertise or have webpages. If you know of more, please add them to the list. If the list included all guitar makers, flamenco, classical, steel string, etc., it would easily go over a thousand.
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Date Feb. 11 2010 9:35:06
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Tom Blackshear
Posts: 2304
Joined: Apr. 15 2008
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RE: Luthiers on the U.S. West Coast.... (in reply to srshea)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: srshea
I’ve come to notice that there a LOT of flamenco builders here on the U.S. west coast.
Starting south and heading north you’ve got Devoe around the central coast, Faulk and Canin in the Bay Area, Ruck in Eugene, Tsiorba and Shelton-Farretta around Portland. California native Eugene Clark is just twenty minutes north of me; I know there are a couple guys in Seattle; there’s that guy up in Port Angeles or Port Roberts or Port Somewhere who was making affordable Santos copies that folks were saying good stuff about (something like that…). That’s just a top-of-the-head list, and I know I’m missing more than a few names.
What’s notable to me is that so many of these guys really are builders of note, putting out quality, respected work, and not just hobbyists.
So, I know we’ve got a lot of trees around here, but aside from that I’m curious to know if there’s anything that explains the uncanny preponderance of flamenco luthiers ‘round these parts. I know there are great builders out in other parts of the country, Blackshear, Brune, et al, but it really does seem like there’s an abundance of them in a relatively concentrated area here.
Are y’all actually from the places you live and work at, or did you migrate here; is this some kind of conspiracy; etc? Cheap spruce, relatively mild climate, stuff like that? What’s going on here?
I talked with John Gilbert in California, as he built classical and flamenco guitars at that time, and he told me, then, that he was not taking any more orders as he had a 25 year wait list. I think he must have retired before he finished that list, as his son now builds in that style.
I think California has always been a melting pot for guitar builders, for as long as I've been building; over 50 years now. But one thing I have to say about the information highway in those parts of the country is that many of the builders didn't have a clue about certain fine tuning issues until I brought it up some 32 years ago in one of the GAL booklets.
Even Charles Fox called me on the phone about a month after I took his 1995 class and told me that a group of international builders were at a guitar symposium in California, conversing about how they found how to make better sound by thinning out a little under the bridge area. He thought it was particularly funny since I had shared that technique with him a month earlier from my use of it 25 years before that.
Certainly, this was not my personal invention but a result of what I observed from some of the old master builders' guitars from Spain. The problem with American builders at that time, was too much scientific innovation and not enough looking at micro adjustments to improve balance and sound.
I shared this some years back in the GAL magazine to Cindy Burton who wrote the story with me as her information source.
_____________________________
Tom Blackshear Guitar maker
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Date Feb. 13 2010 14:27:58
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estebanana
Posts: 9351
Joined: Oct. 16 2009
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RE: Luthiers on the U.S. West Coast.... (in reply to Tom Blackshear)
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I have to say a few things about Northern California regarding the flamenco guitar. I'm a bit of a historian of flamenco building in this area. I would agree in many ways the builders the US have looked right past the obvious solutions which is to study the Spanish guitars. On the other hand there is a balance of trying out new ideas and keeping what works from the past.
Northern California has not really been an area where guitar makers are overly scientific in their investigations. The notion from this area, that was mostly put forth by John Gilbert, is that the guitar can be engineered to sound a certain way. In some ways his guitars are very successful, and structurally he created a few conventions that really proved to be correct.
Strictly speaking to flamenco guitars, most of the steel string builders were not interested or never got it; and tried to make them overly complicated or messed up the aesthetic by decorating them. Those builders eventually realized flamenco players had no money and built archtops and other types of guitars that were more mainstream.
The kind of blood and guts intuitive building has always been quite alive here and passed along from builder to builder. Most of the steel string folks never understood the Spanish method or aesthetic or cared. For that matter neither do many of the classical builders. One thing that did happen here and continues to happen among the flamenco makers is that we don't let on we figured out how to voice the guitar.
The grandaddies of all of it in the Bay Area were Eugene Clark and Warren White and a few others like Gabe Sousa who all knew the ins and outs of the Spanish methods from first hand observation of the guitars coming from Spain in the late 1950's and early 60's . Those guys and the next wave of builders including Chris Berkov in the late 1960's all understood the Spanish guitar profoundly, and how to voice it.
Before the Fletas, Estesos, Barfberos, Santoses et al were in private collections under climate control today, they were played by regular musicians here in the Bay Area. Lots of Spanish instruments made it to this area which for more than 100 years has had a connection to flamenco from Spain. ( the roots are so long and tied to key people in Spain there's currently an archive project happening to document flamenco in Northern California) The consequence of the Spanish instruments being so close at hand is that Gene Clark and other builders in the 1950's were measuring and copying what they saw and felt.
All that information percolated down through the last three (or now four) generations of builders and there's a pretty pithy body of knowledge here. The confusion and weedy thinking happened later with advent of the catalogs published by the wood merchants who included articles designed to sell products arther than true Spanish construction methods. Those of us who are versed in traditional Spanish building know that it does not take a lot of tools to build a Spanish guitar, to a company selling tools that's a bad thing. The industry of suppliers began to come up with gagets to sell to builders and most of those gagets were designed by and made for steel string builders. They did not know beans about Spanish building and touched off a movement of over complicating the way the classical guitar was built and by extension also the flamenco.
All through this debacle there was a quiet small number of builders who did know how to build and voice classical and flamenco guitars in the Spanish way, but they never talked in any public way that would indicate there was anyone here who knew anything. In fact the opposite is true; in the Bay Area building flamenco guitars is kind of an open secret and always has been. The people who understand it either don't care to be public figures or they don't want to broadcast over the internet how to do it. Before the internet and the advent of all the hobby luthery with classes and seminars ect. the ones with the knowledge of how to build Spanish method were nearly not as active as those who understood steel string construction. The main thrust of the small luthiers movement was by the steel string makers and they were trying to turn from the hand building methods of Spain to jigging up to make lots of high quality steel string guitars. Most of them, even the very good ones, did not understand Spanish building and thought it was backwards. They were trying to and succeeded in, reinventing steel string building.
The guitar makers in Northern California who got Spanish method building were mainly on the sidelines during the first wave of the small builders movement and never really spoke to the subject in public, but there always has been a core of builders here who profoundly get Spanish guitars.
Mi tierra
_____________________________
https://www.stephenfaulkguitars.com
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Date Feb. 13 2010 22:43:24
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