By Warren Malone
It turns out, anyone can build a guitar. However, a really nice guitar, a guitar that you’d be proud to hear a musician play, that – it turns out – is not something everyone can build.
I arrived at Galloup School of Lutherie and Guitar Repair at the age of 56, trading the crowded noisy sidewalks of New York City for the dirt roads and big blue skies of Michigan. I’d spent my entire adult life playing music. If I wasn’t playing a guitar, I was repairing one. For over 20 years,
I’ve repaired guitars. I even built some instruments, I started with big ideas and small mandolins, then some little ukuleles – anything that would fit on the kitchen table. I moved onto guitars, again starting small, with Terz-sized bodies to save space and gain experience. Some of the instruments turned out nice, nice enough that a few commissions came my way for tenor guitars. I felt like I knew what I was doing. I felt like I was a pretty good repairman, but I also often felt like I was winging it. That apprehension was always a cause for self-doubt. I had known about Galloup guitars and their reputation as master builders and as the world’s premier lutherie school, but I never imagined I could have that opportunity. Enrolling in school was a pipe dream. Not until I was 56 did the chance arrive and when it did, I jumped at the chance to spend 2 months at Galloup, the only school I’d attended since I was 15 years old over 4 decades ago in Manchester, England.
Galloup offers a variety of courses that last between 2 to 8 months, I was sure the 2-month Journeyman course was all I’d need. I was to make an acoustic guitar as well as take classes in acoustic and electric guitar repair. My classmates ranged in ages from 18 to 74 and came from all over the world.
First day, first class “this is the neck, these are the strings.” The opening lectures were not specifically aimed at the absolute beginner but were designed to include them, which was a good thing because there was at least one kid who had never even changed a string on his own guitar. The classes quickly became more advanced. It was impressive how everyone got on board, got to work, and got the work done.
After lunch we started the actual building of our first guitar, making end blocks, neck blocks and bridges. The next day we chose our backs and our sides. We cooked the wood in an oven. We bent the sides with aluminum foil, heat and water. I wasn’t a stranger to seeing wood being bent into all kinds of strange and unnatural shapes, but watching people set up their freshly thicknessed wood and pull down the lever on the side bender for the first time and then removing what had become the sides of their guitar will always be cool.
I can’t even begin to express how jealous I am of the teenagers in this school. Can you imagine at 18 years old discovering there was a place you could go where you would spend every day not only learning how guitars are made, but actually building them? Maybe you can. But from where I come from in Manchester, I could not even imagine that opportunity as a teenager: making every part of the instrument, spraying the finish, sanding it to perfection, buffing it to the kind of shine that you’d only ever seen online or in magazines, doing everything but cutting down the tree.
The instruments that come out of this school are beautiful. I wonder if those youngest students can convince their parents or their friends that they actually made all of it, that they made all the parts, brought them all together. Measured, sawed, rasped, chiseled, drilled, and sanded every inch of the thing, with their own hands. They did everything but cut down the tree.
Every 2 months a flock of strangers from all over the world are thrown together with only 1 common thread – guitar! When someone in the class does something good, or interesting, or just better than their last attempt, there’s a room full of people who see and understand what it took for them to get there. It’s hard to explain these small moments. To cut an invisible mitre on your purfling is a pride that no one outside of Lutherie will ever understand, and to explain the value of these details over Thanksgiving dinner is futile. But at Galloup, everyone is hoping for their instructor to be stumped when searching for that hairline slice in the black white black.
The housing situation adds a whole other level of focus to the group, a collection of cabins, houses, and trailers are conveniently located a few miles from the school. Usually 4 students per house, sudden roommates from different backgrounds and generations. People make lifelong friendships, some find out who they actually are and what they want to become. Some of them wash the dishes and some do not. It’s all guitar all day 24/7. And it’s incredible. It only took me a beat to realize I was not going home after my 2-month course wrapped. I was hooked. I immediately signed up for the 6-month master course.
Andy Kirby was my first instructor. He is quite simply an invaluable source of guitar repair knowledge. He is super detail-oriented and has a solution to any problem you throw his way. My first term guitar was a dream to build. He walked us through every single step. He had a full in-depth explanation for why you were doing exactly what you were doing and why doing it in that order and in that exact way was important. Your reward: a fine acoustic guitar. He is exacting, precise, and demanding – all with a level of patience that inspires gratitude.
Cooper Wentz was my finger-style instructor for my second term. The guitar I made with him is by far the nicest instrument I’d ever made in my life (until term three). He has a different teaching style than Andy. It’s almost like he trusts that you’ve had enough training in your first term, that you’re ready to just get to it. He’s there to make you an even better builder than the builder Andy Kirby already made you just weeks earlier. He’s also ready to sit with you for days to creatively fix an issue with your guitar that you thought was surely its demise. He pushes you to raise the details in your build to a level you didn’t think you were ready to achieve. For my third guitar with Cooper, at his suggestion, I found the courage to attempt craftsmanship beyond my expectations. And I’m extremely proud of the results. These are skills that I’m just acquiring and I can’t wait to improve as soon as I start my next project.
Will Bezard teaches the electric build. He’s the dark figure in the front corner who’s usually in control of the music played throughout the day. Death Metal to Honky Tonk to Pavarotti to Ethiopian jazz. His musical tastes are as random as his vocal outbursts, all followed by a great big smile. Will is the guy you go to with a question about finish, about staining, about CNC, about making guitars to actually sell, and the reality of it all. He crafts some crazy instruments and he builds them right there in class, in between answering some of the strangest, stupidest, way out-there, and also very practical questions that his personality seems to invite.
Bryan Galloup is the boss, the man responsible for this entire operation. For decades he has been building and repairing guitars, creating and inventing countless jigs that will make your head spin with their seeming simplicity and brilliance. Since 1984 he has turned students into apprentices and apprentices into luthiers and luthiers into teachers who in turn repeat the process. If you want to see the boss all you have to do is make a mistake. Just do something stupid and Bryan will suddenly appear over your shoulder as if summoned by the Idiot fairy, “Who taught you to do that? Who’s your instructor? What you’ve just done here is… Here let me show you, I can help you with that “
Otherwise, you’ll find him upstairs. Upstairs is where the real magic happens. The guitars being built up there by a few luthiers (former Galloup students) will put your boldest luthier dreams to shame, and inspire them too. It’s a whole other level of expertise and creativity, turning wood into works of art. It’s both daunting and motivating, which it should be. That’s why we’re all here, to learn this skill and to be as good as we can and hopefully to make it to somebody’s “upstairs”, maybe our own upstairs.
There’s a lot of laughter in the school. It’s a lot of fun but it’s also a lot of work. Every 2 months a couple dozen guitars are released into the wild. Everyone is proud and amazed and happy and then they get to do it all over again. You can see minor miracles happening right before your eyes – students who didn’t know how to change a string or read calipers are making their second guitar, even critiquing their own sloppy work, something they didn’t even recognize during their first build. I’m not going to claim I became a master after the 6-month course. But I can see the possibility.
The course gave me all the tools I need to confidently move forward in the work, finally, after having lingered in place for too long. Am I now a Luthier? That’s a big word, a word I’ve shied away from in my moments of insecurity. It’s a word that gets used a lot. I like Guitar Builder. I can proudly say that I am a guitar builder and a better one because of Galloup. I’m ready to continue with all I’ve learned from the past 6 months, armed with some really nice instruments and a skill set that keeps growing. I’m headed back home to New York with a determination to find a space to build more guitars, to saw, chisel, rasp, sand, plane, and spray, to do everything but cut down the tree.
INSTA: @malone_guitarsandrepairs