Luthiers At Large
Have you ever wanted to know what Luthiers do in their spare time?
Well, they go to Guitar shows of course ;-)
Here’s a diary from Tim Reedes recent expedition to the Montreal Guitar Show.
Tim Reede is a USA Luthier making some very interesting Guitars.
Just check out the images below and you will see what I mean.
If you have never been to a Guitar show, put it on your bucket list now.
Now, over to Tim’s Diary:
During the last six years Tim Reede has been showing guitars At festivals around North America including the Healdsburg Guitar Festival in northern California and the Newport Guitar Festival in south Florida. Today we are in Quebec, Canada, on our way to the Montreal Guitar Show. It’s part of the Montreal International Jazz festival.
A large bearded man in a black uniform signals us to step up to the window. We have been detained at the Canadian Custom station for a questioning. He asks, “Where are you going, what is your business, and how long will you be in Canada?”
With only a brief delay we are on our way. A shuttle takes us to the Hyatt Regency where the guitar show will be held. The Guitar show is July 2nd through the 4th. There are over a hundred guitar builders here for the show including many of the
Tim & Gen at Montreal
most famous guitar makers in the world.
The electric guitars are in one room and the acoustic guitars in the other. “ I make both kinds but I choose to be in the acoustic room.” says Tim “It can get very loud in the other room.” The room we are in is a large banquet room with rows of tables with hundreds of guitars on them.
Tim’s guitars have been held up in customs for several days but after making some calls to the right people, the guitars arrive ten minutes before the show starts. We hurry to set everything up, and we are ready when the doors open.
People are browsing through the isles. They seem to be of all ages and come from all walks of life. Some people know exactly what they are looking for and others have come just to admire the guitars and to get some free picks. At this show Tim is giving out a CD that was just completed. It is a collection of some very talented guitarists playing Tim’s guitars. “This CD is all acoustic, the next one will be the electric guitars.” Tim says.
Tim is handing the guitars to guitar players and talking about how he makes the guitars. A man with a gray pony tail and a flowered shirt and straw hat sits down to play the arch top guitar. It’s the Venetian Cutaway model. Tim tells him about the guitar. “The top and back are hand carved. The pickup does not touch the top of the guitar, nor does the finger rest or the neck extension, this makes this guitar work as a great acoustic guitar too”. This goes on all day until 6:00PM.
That evening we are having dinner and Tim talks about how he got started in making guitars. “I began playing guitar in 1980 and by 1987 I was playing in a local band. I bought a used flying V, not a Gibson, I don’t even know what the brand was. It had one humbucker and one volume control, and a cheap tremolo on it. So I routed for another pickup and added a tone control and another volume control and put on a Floyd Rose and a locking nut and painted it black with gold spattering on it.
Then friends started asking me to do work on their guitars. The band did well, we toured and did some recording but not long after the band broke up I went back to school to learn wood working. I got a job in a cabinet shop and learned a lot about wood and how to build things. I worked there for fifteen years.” Tim continues. “During my days in the band I was playing electric guitar exclusively but later in life I found an appreciation for the acoustic guitar. The way that it could produce such fine tones from a resonant chamber was amazing to me. I thought, why not try to build a guitar? So I quit my job and went to school to learn guitar repair and guitar making at Southeast Technical College in Red Wing Minnesota. That was a great experience and my woodworking background really helped.”
It’s Saturday morning and we are back at the guitar show.
Tims Sonic Sitka
One of Tim’s guitars needs to be sampled. Tim explains, “I have been included in the Sonic Sitka project. This was the brain child of Dennis Merrill. It involves 87 guitar makers. All of the guitars are made with sound boards from the same seven hundred year old sitka spruce tree. The goal is to record the sound of each guitar periodically and study how a guitars sound matures over time. The guitars will be tested every year for at lest ten years.”
We take the guitar into a small room that is set up for sampling the Sonic Sitka guitars. Fresh strings are put on the guitar right before testing is done. The guitar is placed in a cradle to hold it. Exacting care is taken to be sure that the guitar is held the same way and the strings are strummed in the same place on the string. A very sensitive microphone is used to record the sound.
A specially weighted pendulum with a pick is held in front of the guitar strings, as it swings and strums the guitar. As the guitar is strummed the computer screen jumps to life. A frequency spectrum analyzer lights up to show what we just heard. The guitar is a dreadnought with a deep Florentine cutaway. The sound board is the Sitka and the back and sides are Makore’.
The guitar is remarkably light for its size. Tim says,”The guitar is very young, it hasn’t opened up yet, I am very interested to hear the changes over time.”
Besides the Sonic Sitka project, Tim Reede has recently been involved in some other special exhibits. In 2009, The Plains Art Museum in Fargo ND featured one of his archtop guitars in an exhibit called Art of the Guitar.
Also, the Blue Electric Guitar project shown in a special exhibit at the Newport Guitar Festival in April 2010.
Tim explains, ”The first Blue Guitar exhibit was done in 1995 and was a product of Scott Chinery. The second blue guitar collection was created by another famous guitar collector, Henry Lowenstein. It is a tribute to the late Scott Chinery and the first Blue Guitar collection.
This latest collection features all blue electric guitars. I built a five string bass with a neck through design and active electronics.
Tims' Midnight Special
“I wanted to make this guitar special so I added fiber optic strands that run inside the neck and light up the side dots.” Tim continues. “Most recently I made another guitar to honor the late Delaney Bramlett. The guitar is my interpretation of the rosewood telecaster that was given to Delaney Bramlett by George Harrison. The guitar will be presented to the Bramlett family. it will be auctioned off and the proceeds will go to a non profit charity called the Poor Elijah Fund, it will help musicians with medical expenses.”
It’s Saturday afternoon and Tim has a demonstration concert at 4:00PM. This year guitarist Nolan James has traveled from minneapolis to play Tim’s guitars. The demo concerts are set up in a small meeting room. The room is packed with people. We wait our turn and then Nolan does a quick sound check and Tim introduces himself. “My name is Tim Reede, I am from Minneapolis Minnesota and I am very happy to be a part of this fine event, I make arch top flattop and electric guitars and basses.” he turns to Nolan and says,” this is Nolan James, also from Minnesota.”
Leopard
Tim nods towards the guitar that Nolan is holding. It is an electric guitar . “This guitar has a swamp ash body and a leopard wood drop top, the neck is flame maple and the fingerboard is birds eye maple. A unique feature of this guitar is that it has a five way switch, so not only do you get the standard sounds that you would expect from a guitar like this, there is a position that wires the pickups in series and another that wires them out of phase.”
I am sure that most people don’t understand this, but once Nolan starts playing it doesn’t matter. Nolan is a young performer. His style is a combination of funk, new age and flamenco. He plays with youthful vigor, slapping the strings at times and at other times he is calm and introspective. Nolan plays each guitar.
The sound flows from the guitar with soaring melodies and playful rhythms. When he is done the room is filled with applause.
Tim says to me, “That is what it is all about, the performance. Guitars should look great but they are made to be played.”
On Sunday it’s the last day of the guitar show. We see some of the same people coming back to try the guitars again. “This is as good as it gets” says the man in the straw hat. He has comeback to play the archtop guitar for a third time.
Archtop
Another man says about the Sonic Sitka dreadnought, “This is my favorite guitar in the show, it has more character to the sound than the others that I tried. Tim says to me, “These shows are not always about sales. This is a way of introducing myself to guitar players and putting my guitar in their hands. They take my card and the CD and they will look at my web site, and we will talk again next year, or maybe sooner. “
Check Tims web site out here or by clicking the image below.
