Book recommendations?

[Shane Woonton]

Hi guys,

I happen to be in Portland Oregon this week on business. Portland has my favourite book store in the entire world, Powells, and a pretty good range of second hand guitar building titles. If you ever find your way to Portland and you like your books you have to check this place out. It is an entire city block and 4 floors of books. Awesome!

I'm planning on adding some titles to my luthiery collection and am looking for recommendations on the following. I can't afford them all. Which ones would you get?

Bogdanovich - Classical guitar making
Sloane - Classic guitar construction
Siminoff guide to tap tuning (LOL! Only kidding. I made the mistake of buying one of his other books and won't be making that mistake again...)
Jim Williams - Guitar makers manual
Hiscock - make your own acoustic guitar (probably second last on my list after Siminoff)
Blisher - Acoustic guitar making

If you could add any two of the above to your collection which would they be?

I already picked up a new copy of Kellerman's "with strings attached" for US$24 and Erlewines guitar repair guide for $12. Pretty happy with that.

Thanks in advance for your advice!

Shane

[jeffhigh]

Bogdanovich is good value for a well produced book with lots of good ideas.
Sloan and Jim Williams' books are dated and IMHO only worth it if you like reading how it was done in the past- I do but only if they are cheap.
I share your opinion on Siminoff, don't know Hiscock or Blishers books
If you don't have Courtnall it is worth looking for.

[kiwigeo]

Don't buy any of those books. Once you're back in Australia spend the money on Trevor Gore and Gerard Gilet's two part masterpieces.

[Dominic]

Yep, I agree with Marty. None of the many books I have purchased are a patch on The Gilet/Gore books.

Dom

[graham mcdonald]

I beg to differ. I would suggest having as many of the various books as possible. They all contain useful information, and while you may consider some of the techniques 'dated', they are all valid to a greater or lesser degree. People built guitars from them, and I would suggest some pretty decent guitars at that. I was working with Jim Williams when he wrote his book (I am the hand model!) and he was making some pretty damn good guitars using those techniques. This is not to discourage anyone from purchasing the Gore/Gilet books. They are certainly a classic of the genre and should be on every luthier's bookshelf

As an aside, I did do a comparative review of just about all the acoustic guitar building books that was published in American Lutherie No 98 a couple of years back. Just one opinion, but it might be useful to someone.

cheers

g

[Nick]

Roy Courtnall's "Making master guitars" is always worth adding to any list, expensive (well my copy was once converted into $NZ) for a single volume book & they aren't always available but a valuable book to have on the shelf with others. Haven't had a lot to do with the others on your list but Bogdanovich is supposed to be another 'useful' book for the reference collection.
Sloane's was the first 'bible' on the craft & many of today's top builders acredit this book in helping them build their first bunch of guitars but as other's have stated, it's been superseeded, first by Smogyi (although his series of books are not really a 'how to' in the step by step sense of the phrase)which in turn has been superseeded again by Gerard & Trevor's series.

[jeffhigh]

Graham,
Not intending any offense on the Jim Williams book, my comment on it was based at least partly on a Q&A I read some years ago in which Jim said words to the effect that it represented a snapshot of how he was building in the 70's rather than his current practice.

Sloan is sort of stuck between tradition and modern practice, in that typical 60's and 70's American way
So he is dismissive of some traditional methods such as HHG and advocates thing like boiling sides to bend them, and presents a Torres style build without top doming.

I learned a lot from both books but I would not want to use either of them as my primary resource.

[Shane Woonton]

Hi guys,

Thanks for the responses. Graham, I'm with you. I like to see as many different perspectives as possible. I have Trevor's books (and they are excellent!) and I also have several others and will continue to add to the collection. Looks like I will grab a copy of Bogdanovich and might search their archive for Courtnall.

Cheers,

Shane

[Allen]

I really liked the Bogdonavich book for a very well photographed documentary of some processes that aren't seen in other books that I've come across. I'd add it for sure if the price was right.

And you can never have too many books. You will never know when someone will have a way of doing something that suits your style of building or tooling that will save you untold heartache and money.

[Paul B]

Read everything you can get your hands on. You'll get something from each of them, even if it's just a grin.

I built my first according to Cumpiano, and since that time I've read a bunch of books and my building process has changed a bit for each new guitar as I pick-up information here and there. Plus I've come up with a few new ideas myself.

Read everything, you aren't just learning how other people do it (or did it), you're picking up new ideas all the time and in the process you're learning how You make guitars.

[jeffhigh]

Read everything you can get your hands on. You'll get something from each of them, even if it's just a grin.


Read everything, you aren't just learning how other people do it (or did it), you're picking up new ideas all the time and in the process you're learning how You make guitars.

I agree, I even got a copy of Overholtzer recently, what a hoot
Even If you disagree with what you are reading it is teaching you something.