A wry-humored fellow with an owlish demeanor, he is widely regarded as a confoundedly brilliant restorer of instruments. Ford, at this moment, is in the back, running the repair shop, devising new schemes - he uses high-tech dental tools - to leave not a trace on the 1905 Gibson mandolin he’s restoring. As is Ford, son of a Menlo Park pharmaceuticals manager who came home each night to fix everything in sight, his true avocation. Thing is, Johnston, who grew up on a peach farm in the Central Valley, is still smitten with acoustic sounds. He appraises instruments for “Antiques Roadshow.” And here he is, after 40 years, still behind the counter of the shop he helped start fresh out of college, when revolution was in the air and he was smitten with the country blues of Mississippi Fred McDowell. He is co-author of two authorized histories of Martin guitars. Mind you, Johnston, 62, is a foremost expert on vintage American acoustic guitars, banjos, mandolins and ukuleles. Instant diagnosis: It’s worth about $2,200 and fixing it is no big deal. He peers inside to check the internal bracing. Johnston gently spins it in his hands, looks over its mahogany back and the sunburst finish on its face. “There’s something funky going on,” she tells him.
She hands it across the counter to Johnston for inspection. on a Monday: middle-aged, carrying her Gibson J-45 acoustic guitar. “Guitars are a world.”Īnd world-famous Gryphon is a magnet for folks interested in all sorts of acoustic, fretted stringed instruments. They all drop by because they speak “the same secret language,” says Richard Johnston, who cofounded the shop in 1969 with his pal Frank Ford. It’s a cozy institution, a gathering spot for beginning guitar strummers, advanced pickers and a cadre of vintage instrument collectors. Off the beaten track in Palo Alto, it is more than a shop, and better than an Internet chat room. Here we are in the age of cutthroat Internet retail sales - low prices, no service - and here, still, is little Gryphon Stringed Instruments, as fine an example as you will find of that endangered species known as the neighborhood guitar shop. - JAVASCRIPT HOOK FUNCTIONS FOR GRAVITY FORMS -ĭocument.OK, let’s figure this one out. And if you can accompany yourself on guitar, then the money doesn’t have to be split two ways. Of course it’s much easier to sing with accompaniment. Around the same time, it was popular for people to write songs and record them. In fact, two Martin brothers performed on mandolin and guitar shortly after the turn of the 20th century, as did many others, sometimes with a vocalist. Since both the guitar and mandolin were so portable, it was very easy for two people to travel around and entertain in almost any situation. Of course, magnetic pickups eventually came along, and the search for volume has primarily been in that direction ever since.
#Gryphon stringed instruments how to#
The quest for volume dominates guitar development from the 1880s to around the 1930s, when they figured out how to make resonator devices-a mechanical diaphragm that vibrated in a metal body and amplified the sound-for what became Dobro and National brand guitars.
So there was an immediate push to make bigger guitars, string them with steel, and make them louder.
#Gryphon stringed instruments portable#
It’s a highly portable instrument, extremely versatile, comparatively easy to learn to play, but it just wasn’t loud enough to hold its own, especially outdoors. A small gut-string guitar isn’t very loud compared to the instruments it might accompany such as the mandolin-which was always strung with steel strings-the piano, the violin, horns, and woodwinds. These guitars were strung with gut strings similar to violin strings, but longer. The audience for this article seems to be interested collectors without a deep knowledge of the vintage instrument market, so much of the information will be familiar to serious students of acoustic guitar, but it serves as an excellent introduction for those seeking to understand this realm.įrom the beginning instrument makers sought ways to make their guitars louder.
The Collectors Weekly interview is an in-depth discussion, covering the history of acoustic guitars in the United States, focusing primarily on Martin and Gibson. He is seen on episodes of the popular PBS show, Antiques Roadshow, and is a contributing editor at Acoustic Guitar magazine. Johnston has earned a reputation as a luthier, and particularly as an historian and appraiser of vintage acoustic instruments. Richard Johnston, co-founder of the venerable Gryphon Stringed Instruments in Palo Alto, CA, was recently interviewed by The Collectors Weekly web site.
0 kommentar(er)
