Some luthiers know from
an early age that they are destined for careers as guitar builders.
Others, like Montreal-based Michael Greenfield (www.greenfieldguitars.com,
[514] 499-1352), take a little longer to come to the same realization.
Although he's a self-confessed guitar junkie who has been playing since
the age of eight and has repaired and restored guitars for two decades,
Greenfield supported himself for many years by managing hotels. He also
worked as a trained chef but found the hours too long and the pay too
meager. "About nine years ago I decided to look for a new way to
lose money," he explains. "Eventually I settled on guitar
making."
Greenfield has opted not
to specialize in any one style of guitar, and his catalog
includes flattop steel-strings, nylon-strings, and archtops. "I
build steel-strings because that's where the market is," he says,
"classical guitars because that's where the challenge is, and archtops
because jazz guitar is where my personal musical interest lies."
Building three styles of
guitar has given Greenfield a greater insight into the subtleties of
the craft than if he had just concentrated on one particular type. "Even
though I started building steel-strings, making classical guitars has
had the greatest influence on my understanding of how a guitar works,"
he says. "The tone of a classical is more affected by tiny variables
than the tone of a steel-string is, so you have to pay extra attention
to elements like the top bracing, the thickness of the tonewoods, the
shape of the back, and things like that. I found that the more I learned
about how a classical guitar works, the better my steel-strings got."
In recent years Greenfield
has begun to experiment
with taking structural elements associated with one type of guitar and
using them on another. His C2 classical guitar, for example, features
a carved maple back similar to that of his archtop guitars. He feels
that the arched back gives the classical a more focused tone and increases
the volume. And the top of his long-scale jumbo G4 steel-string is braced
with a hybrid lattice pattern similar to the one used by classical guitar
makers like Greg Smallman and Thomas Humphrey.
Greenfield makes about 15
guitars a year, and his prices start at $5,500 for a basic steel-string
and go up to $11,000 for his Fat Cat archtop. "I made a conscious
decision to keep my business small," he says. "I burned out
on the complexities of running a large entity when I was in the hotel
business. My small output allows me the luxury of having the time to
match a particular guitar to a player."
Greenfield builds five different
archtop models and four different classical models. His most popular
guitars, the steel-strings, are available in two different series: the
Boreal Collection, based on his own ideas, and the Heirloom Collection,
inspired by the classic designs of Gibson and Martin. "One of the
first orders I got when I started building full-time was for a large,
flatpicking guitar," he says. "I happened to be doing some
repair work on a 1936 Gibson Advanced Jumbo, so I used that as a template.
I still make a model, the AJ, based on that guitar." Other models
in the Heirloom Collection include the SJ, inspired by a 1942 Gibson
SJ-200; the D, inspired
by a 1938 Martin D-28; and the OM, inspired by a 1929 Martin OM-28.
Greenfield custom
eight-string, fanned-fret nylon-string built for jazz guitarist
Charlie Hunter. |
The Boreal Collection, which
consists of five standard models, gives Greenfield the opportunity to
express his own creativity and develop his own guitar-building theories.
The models include the grand concert G1, grand auditorium G2, parlor
guitar—size G3, jumbo G4, and GB baritone guitar. "I encourage
clients to use a standard model, such as the grand concert—size
G1, as a starting point for their guitar," he says. "The sizes
may be set, but everything else, from the wood selection to the top
voicing to the scale length and nut width, can be adapted to the needs
of the player."
Greenfield finds that most
players are happy ordering guitars with only minor custom modifications,
but from time to time he gets an order that really stretches his abilities.
"I just built an eight-string, nylon-string guitar with a ovax
fanned-fret fingerboard for Charlie Hunter," he says. "That
one really took some thought. And I built an incredibly rich-sounding
fanned-fret baritone G4 for a Canadian guitarist named Del Vezeau."
Greenfield has exhibited
his guitars at various trade shows and conventions over the years and
has earned the respect of other luthiers for his meticulous craftsmanship.
But as gratifying as those accolades from his peers are, Greenfield
feels that the final arbiters of a guitar's quality are musicians,
and that in the end, the fit and finish are secondary to the tone. As
he puts it, "The ultimate compliment a builder can get is when
you hand over a guitar to a player and it inspires him to play new music."
Excerpted from
Acoustic
Guitar magazine, June 2004,
No. 138.
