Some Musical Instruments I've Made

©2015 by John LaTorre

As some of you know, I’m an amateur luthier (someone who makes stringed instruments). I’m not good enough at lutherie to do it professionally, but it’s given me a lot of entertainment over the years. These are some of the instruments that I’ve made. They are the ones I still have around the house.

Bottom row, left to right:

A cedar top OM guitar, built some years ago. It was my first OM guitar, and it’s still one of my favorites. The mahogany neck warped last year, and I replaced it with a cherry one which, I hope, will last a bit longer.

Acoustic Bass. This started out life as a half-finished dreadnaught (box only) that somebody gave me. I finished it but was never very happy with it. I took it apart again, redid the bracing and replaced the bridge and bridge plate. Now it’s a very-short-scale bass which doesn’t sound bad, except that it does need amplification when more than one more instrument is accompanying it. (It has two piezo pickups inside it.)

A spruce-top 000 14-fret. This is the first guitar I built to be played amplified. It has three piezo pickups inside.

A six-string "church" dulcimer. This is the first instrument I built, in 1980. It was a kit from the Hughes Dulcimer Company, but the top and fretboard have since been replaced. That black thing hanging from one sound-hole is a clip-on microphone for use when I’m playing through an amplifier.

A 12-fret 000 with a cedar top. I built it this year. It has a Baggs Lyric pickup inside. This will probably be my go-to finger-picking guitar.

This "lute-like object" is actually a rather odd classical guitar. It has a bowl-back, a "moustache" bridge, and pegs for tuning. It was designed to look as much as possible like a medieval lute, for use in medieval re-enactment venues. When people ask what it is, I say, "It’s a guitar, but its persona is a lute." People in the SCA get the joke.

I built this OO a few years ago. It’s my main travel guitar. I’ve found that this size is about as small as you can go and still get a decent sound with the style of music I play.

Top row, left to right

This violin was made from a kit, so most of the work was already done. However, I took it apart and re-fashioned it into a left-handed violin, for reasons that are too involved to explain here. The modification required removing the back, switching the tone bar and the tuning pegs from one side to the other, and then reassembling the violin.

A mandola. This is essentially a large mandolin, tuned a fourth lower. If I put a capo on the fifth fret, it has the same tuning and scale length as a conventional mandolin. It has two passive pickups.

A mandora (not to be confused with a mandola). This bowl-back instrument is the ancestor of the mandolin. It has four gut (well, synthetic Nylgut, actually) strings tuned to the modern mandolin scale. The "pegs" are actually geared tuning machines. Don’t tell anybody.

Concert ukulele. This little guy was made from scraps of wood I had left over from larger projects. It’s a fun instrument to play, although I’d have been better off had I built a tenor uke instead. I had enough wood for that, but not the plans.

A-style mandolin, made from the Siminoff plans. It has a slightly arched top and back, which I bought already formed. That was a bad move, because the top eventually cracked right at the glue joint. When I took the back off to repair the crack, I took the opportunity to install two passive piezo pickups inside.

Another A-style mandolin with a flat top and back. The neck actually came from another mandolin, which I’d built from a kit. The body on that one didn’t hold up, so I made a new body with a very different bracing pattern. It’s my primary travel mando.

A bowed psaltery. I made a bunch of them for friends. This is my brother’s, and it’s standing in for my own instrument, a nearly identical one currently on loan to a friend. By the way, the bowed psaltery is often passed off as a medieval instrument, but it’s not. It was invented less than a hundred years ago, in fact.

Finally, we have a "Symphonia" style hurdy-gurdy, based on plans by George Kelischek. A simple three-string model with a diatonic keyboard, it’s used in medieval re-enactment venues. The design dates to the 13th century. Just below it, hiding behind the neck of the lute-like object, is the monkey that travels with the hurdy-gurdy. Why a monkey? Because people expect one, that’s all.

I’ve made other instruments that are not pictured here because they’re on loan to friends, sold, given away, or donated to charities. They include an octave mandolin, a larger hurdy-gurdy, several hog-nosed psalteries, three lap harps, another mandolin I built from a kit (mostly to test the kit for the manufacturer), and the aforementioned bunch of bowed psalteries. If there were others, I’ve forgotten them.

What are all these instruments worth? Damn little, since they are all home-built. But they don’t sound too bad, and I’ve learned a little more about lutherie from each one of them. So their value is mostly sentimental.

For the record, I also own a 1960s vintage Oskar Teller classical guitar that used to belong to my father, a Yamaha 12-string guitar, an Oscar Schmidt autoharp, a Black Mountain four-string dulcimer, and a Saga lap harp with twenty-five wire strings. Plus numerous penny-whistles, which I play badly. And, to complete the "Oscar" trilogy, a genuine Oscar Meyer Wiener Whistle, obtained from the friendly crew of the Wiener Wagon when it last passed through Sacramento.