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Lutherie Info Home Page
Welcome to the Liutaio Mottola Lutherie Information Website, the college of lutherie knowledge. The site contains a wealth of information of interest to guitarmakers, violin makers, and other luthiers. Lutherie is the process of building stringed musical instruments. This site contains a collection of resources on the subject of designing and building plucked stringed musical instruments, from R.M. Mottola at Liutaio Mottola, nonprofit provider of design, research and educational resources to the lutherie community. Information here will be of interest mostly to guitarmakers. The focus in these pages is on electric and acoustic guitars and basses, and includes information on design, construction, acoustics, and ergonomics of stringed instruments. The approach is technical but most of the content is intended to be accessible to readers with non-technical backgrounds. There is information here that should be of interest to folks who want to get started in any aspect of lutherie as well as for more experienced designers, builders and researchers. The site includes free guitar and bass plans, step-by-step instructions for building many of the components of guitars and basses, reprints of some of the author’s previously published papers, a list of recommended books and other info for first-timers, and links to other high content Internet resources for luthiers. The browse box to the right will take you to the major areas of the site.
Last updated: Monday, April 29, 2013
Contents
Major Areas on this Site
This section contains a list of frequenctly asked questions (FAQs) and answers, a list of recommended books, links to other high content lutherie information sites, and information for first time builders of stringed instruments, including some tips and a list of essential resources for those that want to build their first stringed musical instrument.
Technical Information for Instrument Designers
Formulae, data tables, and other technical information and resources for designers of stringed musical instruments. Discussions of some important concepts such as string tension are in this section. A number of the formula pages include javascript calculators for your convenience.
Lutherie Materials, Parts and Supplies
Luthiers use a lot of the same materials as other woodworkers (wood, glue, etc.) but we also use a number of materials, parts and supplies that are either specific to lutherie or are used by luthiers in ways that other woodworkers don't. Articles about materials and reviews of parts and supplies are collected here.
Lutherie Construction Techniques
Some specific lutherie operations are detailed here, such as how to carve a neck and how to make a bolt-on neck joint. Info is available for guitarmakers (both electric and acoustic) and makers of other stringed instruments.
Lutherie Tools, Jigs and Shop Techniques
Lutherie is one of those areas of woodworking where a number of jigs and fixtures are required to do the job. This section details construction and use of these fixtures and jigs and also provides information on other commercial and shop built tools and fixtures that can make the job easier, quicker, and/or more precise. Some general woodworking tool techniques are covered, such as how to sharpen a number of the tools used to make stringed instruments. And there is a sub section on CAD/CAM/CNC - Computer Aided Design (CAD) tools, Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAM) tools, and Computer Numerical Control (CNC) machines. Included in this sub section are downloadable CAD drawings of some common instrument hardware, in AutoCAD 2000 .dwg and .dxf file formats.
Some Stringed Musical Instruments and Plans
Descriptions of some of my original instruments. Some are practical, some highly experimental. Full sized downloadable plans are included for most of these. There are solid body electric guitar and bass plans, archtop acoustic guitar and bass plans, flat top acoutsic guitar and bass plans, and electric upright bass (EUB) and some others as well.
Pickups, Transducers, Preamps and other Electronics
Construction details and general information about pickups and transducers and related circuitry. Mostly for the guitarmaker and bass guitar maker but there is also info here on pickups for some of the bowed instruments.
Discussions on the science behind a number of commonly held lutherie beliefs, as well as some outright debunking of lutherie myths. This is a very popular section.
Abstracts of some of my published research papers on lutherie topics.
How to contact the author of this site.
About the Author
A former engineer, R.M. Mottola began building stringed instruments in 1994 after an illness left him unable to work. Since then he has been involved in a number of non-commercial activities, including research oriented instrument design and construction as well as formal research in the areas of instrument acoustics, psychoacoustics, ergonomics, materials and construction. He is a member of New England Luthiers and is the technology editor and a contributing editor for American Lutherie, the journal of the Guild of American Luthiers. The GAL is the largest, oldest and most respected organization of stringed instrument makers in the world. He is also editor of the Savart Journal, the online research journal of science and technology of stringed musical instruments. And R.M. is a guitarmaker, a bass maker, and a font (but a bit of a leaky font) of guitarmaking theory and practice.
By the way, the word Liutaio is Italian for luthier. I am American, don't speak Italian, but I am of Italian extraction and like the vibe. You can tell
that Liutaio Mottola is not a commercial enterprise because no American in his or her right mind would use a word which is as
seemingly unpronounceable (to non-Italians in any case) as Liutaio.
It is pronounced (more or less) lew-TIE-oh (rhymes with Ohio).
About this Website
This site is both composed and hosted on the cheap. Yeah, I know, it shows. Like it says up top, this effort is non-profit. The pages were generated using the free WYSIWYG HTML editor Nvu KompoZer and this is working out very well.
The information on this site was collected (slowly) as a consequence of my own lutherie projects since about 1995. Limitations in the way I must approach things these days makes it necessary for me to do detailed planning before I set to work on a project, and to maintain much detailed information while I proceed. I try to put as much of that info as possible into a useable form on this site, but this is not always possible so there are gaping holes in the information presented here. With time and luck these holes will get smaller.
I am by no means a professional web developer, but from maintaining this site for so long I have come to realize that folks that toil in that profession spend about 50% of their time designing and building a site and the other 50% trying to make it work with Microsoft Internet Explorer, the only browser that consistently does not adhere to established standards. For the most part this site makes use of no fancy web technology, but the pages in the Technical Information section may not display or behave properly when viewed with MIE. If you have problems with those pages and you are using MIE please try a different browser.
Want to Show Your Appreciation?
If you find the contents of this site useful please consider the following.
If you have a website or blog, or if you post to the lutherie forums or contribute to Wikipedia, or if you use any of the social bookmarking sites I would greatly appreciate a link to this site and references to the pages here. Links make the world go 'round (OK, Google makes the world go 'round, and links make sure Google is paying attention to this site). I can't tell you how important this is. Lutherie is a pretty esoteric topic, so just getting Google to fully index this site requires there to be some solid links to it. Thank you!
This site is edited by the author, which is always a recipe for disaster when it comes to errors of fact and errors of omission. I depend upon readers of this site to serve as editors. If you find anything wrong or awkward, even small things like typos and misspellings, please let me know. Thanks!
Copyright
The contents of this site are copyright © 2004 - 2013 by R.M. Mottola, including all text, images and scripts. The downloadable instrument plans and the CAD drawings of instrument parts are made available for non-commercial use and may not be redistributed. This means that copying these plans to sites like scribd, the sole purpose of which is to make ad money from other peoples' copyrighted material, is in violation of copyright. Please do not copy whole pages of this site to discussion groups - that is also in violation of copyright. Please link to those pages instead.