The following is for those individuals who are not only curious, but quite understandably want to see some substantiation to my claim of being a "guitarist/luthier". Here then, in the form of a brief personal/professional history, is contained some relevant information.
I began playing and studying music at the age of four, in 1956. My first instrument was the violin, followed closely by piano, and in 1960, I began playing the guitar. At that time, I was living in Caracas, Venezuela. In 1963, I moved to Manhattan Island in New York City where I continued to play and study music. My parents, both professional musicians, showed me a great deal of encouragement, training, and influence. My father (a cellist and teacher at the Julliard pre-college division) had a workbench set up in a room off the kitchen in our apartment on West End Avenue, where I would watch him do small repairs on his cellos and bows. His work fascinated and inspired me, and I began experimenting with setups and refinishing on the guitars that I owned.
I majored in Classical Guitar in both undergraduate and graduate school, and have a Master of Music degree in Classical Guitar Performance. I always played rock, blues, folk, bluegrass, flamenco and jazz, but never became"degreed" in those fields.
The various guitars I owned of course needed to be maintained at a professional concert level, and I found myself becoming gradually more involved with guitars from a builder/repair person's standpoint. It would be misleading to state an exact point in time that I "began building guitars", because with me it was more of an evolutionary process starting with early experiences repairing my own guitars. I did however, built a first instrument in 1987, a direct result of not having a truly concert grade "electric classical" to play in concerts with Al DiMeola. I became obsessed with the idea of building truly great nylon string guitars, and that any of these instruments could be turned into guitars that could be "plugged in" without losing the original integrity of sound and structure.
To sum up, I make guitars from a player's perspective, down to the smallest component. Having played classical guitar for over 35 years, and having owned many fine instruments, my attitudes and principles of building follow the dictates of a demanding performer/concert artist. During 7 years of concertizing with Al DiMeola, I began building concert grade guitars that retained all the best qualities of the great Spanish instruments, while allowing for the option of amplification devices(pickups, mics, wireless transmitters, midi controllers, etc...) placed inside the guitar without any degradation to the sound.
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