Luthier Steve Klein Workshop Documentary
An outstanding 20-minute documentary about Luthier Steve Klein - about his life, workshop and building techniques. Produced by Santa Barbara Acoustic Instrument Celebration.
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MusicTranscript
00:00I needed a guitar. I had to impress the girls. I was playing Peter, Paul and Mary. My next
00:13door neighbor comes home with a drum set. So I made a guitar because I didn't know anything
00:18about amps and I could buy an amp and maybe make a guitar. It has a lot to do with the
00:24music. We were all inspired by the music of the era. That was an exciting time for a lot
00:35of reasons. At about 4.30, 5 o'clock, I would run at the backstage doors of the Berklee
00:45Community Theater with two guitar cases in my hand and the doors would open. There were
00:50definite steps along the way. I was interested in Peter, Paul and Mary, Bob Dylan, and then
00:59of course growing up in Berklee, the whole music scene there. I was hanging out at Campbell
01:05Coe's Music Shop, which was a little garage backed up against People's Park. I missed
01:11Bob Taylor at the American Dream in San Diego by probably a few months. I was offered a
01:20spot in the corner of the cooperative there, which turned into eventually Taylor Guitars.
01:25It was called the American Dream. Captain Bob ran it. It was just a cooperative of guys
01:32in an oversized garage and different little rooms here and there building their own guitars
01:37with cooperative tools that they all shared. I came home and did it by myself.
01:47I was taking my very first guitarist to shows in the Bay Area. Just crashing, getting there early,
02:02helping set up, finally getting asked by one of the Bill Graham guys,
02:07what are you doing here? I described it. I just said, hey, I want feedback for the instruments
02:15I'm building. He set it up. This is Clayton Johnson. He worked for Bill Graham. He set it up
02:22so I could get into a show every weekend. I did. It got to the point where Bill Graham actually,
02:29I was always at the end of the line when he introduced, the band was introduced and went,
02:33who are you anyway? I was getting a chance to get feedback from all these fabulous musicians.
02:42When I first met Michael, of course my interest was in steel string guitars. He was classical.
02:54I said, what do you think of the work on steel string guitars? He actually said, no. Of course,
03:00I wasn't listening. Interestingly enough, Richards and my ideas, though coming from a similar source,
03:09Kasha, became over the decades more and more similar in design. Not that we were in each
03:18other's shops at all. We were working independently with the same concept. The basic structure of the
03:29instrument, whether it's steel strings or nylon strings, is the same. You just have to compensate
03:36for the difference. Richard and I, we chased each other's tails around a lot. It was an irascible
03:47fart. I loved him to death. He thought out of the box. I met Richard through Michael Kasha. I first
04:04saw Richard's early prototypes of Michael's ideas at Berklee, my grandfather being Joel Hildebrand.
04:17Kasha was a visiting professor at the time. I was just building my first acoustic guitar. I was
04:30just excited by the fact that somebody with half a brain had stuck a mirror inside the guitar and
04:38thought it just shouldn't be like that. I've never built a traditional guitar. I've never
04:46built a dreadnought. In fact, I rebuilt a dreadnought that a friend had dropped on his
04:51kitchen floor. I had to take the back off, take the bridge off, put a Kasha bridge on it,
04:57rebraced it, put it all back together. We thought it all sounded pretty good.
05:01Lutherie, in this part of the world, has been an astounding renaissance. The people involved
05:17are so talented, from Rick Turner and Tom Rebecki and, of course, late Richard Schneider. Such a
05:31rich area that Lutherie supply places have grown up around this area, LMI, Todd Taggart, and Allied.
05:40They've all been very influential in the development of what was the Healdsburg Guitar Festival.
05:48Just look around NAMM show. The quality of even small manufacturers' work is phenomenal.
05:57My involvement in the show was primarily to do what I've always done, which is try to show the
06:09world that there's actually another way to make and look at the making of guitars. Everybody else
06:16is making traditional instruments. I have really much more interest in trying to push the evolution
06:23of it forward. That's been my main focus. That's what we as Luthiers have to offer. Factories make
06:35the guitars for the masses, but if you can't compete with them monetarily, why try? We have
06:47to be the cutting edge. They have to come to us, and we are also the go-betweens with the musicians.
06:54We've got to realize that the world is a changing place. I have a new neck design that I'm working
07:06on that uses remnants from Gibson's production. It's stuff that's too small and too short for
07:18their needs. Perfectly good wood. They can't use it because of their demands for the giant headstock,
07:25and it always breaks off. We're going to have to start thinking about using the best materials in
07:36the most efficient way as possible. I'm not blind. I'm not deaf. I don't do this in a vacuum. You have
07:44to get feedback. I wanted to get feedback from somebody who wasn't going to just look at the
07:52guitar and go, what is this thing? It's not a normal guitar. So I went to Doc Watson. I had
07:58three guitars, all exactly like that model, different woods. First thing I said down in
08:08his lap when he runs his hands over, this is the strangest thing I've ever seen. He had already seen
08:15it, but he couldn't see the woods. That is a redwood top, about seven grain lines per inch.
08:24It's fence material. It's got walnut back and sides, walnut and maple neck, rosewood bridge,
08:34ebony board. He liked that guitar. This is Mr. Rosewood, Gallagher Rosewood Man. He liked that
08:42guitar. So again, my curiosities peaked. I'm going, what's really going on? What do we hear?
08:50She had that to be below middle C. I didn't even think the guitar was going to make any sound at
08:57all. Basically, the guitar is a terrible instrument. It's a tuned acoustical chamber with a set, a
09:04couple of frequencies it likes, and the rest it does begrudgingly. That's why it's all uneven.
09:12It's too small to work in this range, and it's too big to work in this range.
10:27Fundamental difference is the coupler to the top. It's an impedance matching system. Regular
10:46square bridge is a bandpass filter. What the bass string is trying to drive the top to do,
10:53and what the treble string is trying to drive the top to do is completely different. It's trying to
10:59drive a much bigger wave pattern here, and this is all broken up, although it's doing it all over
11:06the top at the same time. So this is basically the coupler to the top. Then inside, you're trying to
11:14support the top. First of all, this is the stupidest place to put a sound hole. You've
11:23taken a perfectly good piece of wood with a grain running through it, and cut it right in the wrong
11:28spot, and it makes the guitar want to collapse. So Martin put in its X-Brace, thinking they were
11:33going to make it strong. They take two perfectly good pieces of wood, they put a notch in them,
11:39and they ruin both of them. There's a flying brace, which I think you can probably have seen,
11:51that is touching the top right in this area, and then the wings fly down and buttress onto the
12:02sides, so that I haven't added all that structural mass to the top, yet I've supported that area. So
12:09the top is still free to really move. Then it's got longer bass bars of course, and shorter treble
12:16bars. The neck block is also reinforced with carbon fiber. There's carbon fiber skins on
12:27poplar cores. You can see the brace on the back. You can actually see the weave of the carbon in there.
12:39I've got ideas for the new harp guitar design that is going to change the frequency response
12:54level in it. Harp guitars are going to go through a big change. Yeah, the popularity is really such
13:04that it's ready for an upgrade. Everybody's got the latest computer and they want a harp guitar
13:12that was made in the 20s and 30s. You've got to be joking. These kids are playing Hotel California
13:18on a harp guitar. He needs a cutaway at least. But other ways of making the instrument easier to
13:26manufacture is really my focus. The whole system I've got designed for making the instrument,
13:34revolves around this harp pin. So I'll be able to make necks here. They can make boxes down there.
13:41Once we get it tweaked, they can even glue the bridge on and everything is going to align.
13:47That is the biggest problem with harp guitars and why the necks are never aligned with the
13:53cloud up there. They're always a little cockeyed and sometimes there's a little metal piece.
13:58Because they're trying to set the dovetail and there's so many different angles there,
14:03they just it's impossible to get consistent. As with all of my stuff, it's a bolt-on neck.
14:11And it's finally a harp guitar. It's fan fingerboard. So finally, it's a single saddle for all the strings
14:17rather than these, you know, things that look like they're two different bridges glued on, cockeyed.
14:23Eco-friendly. Then the black veneers here, I'm going to put in carbon fiber.
14:27So by the time it has a slight conical shape to it, it'll be super strong.
14:33Put lights in here. Little LEDs. Little LEDs. And so when it's up to pitch, it'll turn on.
14:40It'll be a tuning system within the headstock built into the tuners.
14:52So
15:22this stump is actually my chia pet.
15:31I haven't watered the lichen in a while. See, it pops right back up.
15:43A
15:48tribute to Michael, Les Paul, and Steve Miller.
15:59And of course, great advertising for EMG and their cool new pickup system.
16:08I've left over parts from building the parts for Michael.
16:14And then, oh, stuff gets carried away. I even forged Michael's signature back here.
16:23He brought
16:27a godliness to his music.
16:32There's that joke of a guitar player dies and goes to heaven, and he's shown in, and
16:45this is his room, and the first night happens, and he could swear that Michael Hedges is next
16:54door playing. And it just goes on and on. He finally, he asked St. Peter,
17:00is that Michael next door? He says, no, it's God. He only thinks he's Michael.
17:12Obviously, I still miss Michael, too.
17:14But Michael lives on in the harp world. He's on this phenomenal
17:25group of talented, crazy kids.
17:44We've got to pass this on. Otherwise, we're like the Shakers.
18:01The young talent that's out there now is phenomenal. I mean, I'm now going to sponsor
18:07two kids, one of whom used to teach in my music store,
18:13and another who I think bought one of his first guitars in my music store.
18:20Yeah, I've got to get the kids out there. Julian Nguyen, I want to get him on board.
18:28I curated a show here at the museum, a guitarist's art show, many years ago,
18:35and had musicians come and play. He was 13 at the time playing for me.
18:41Yeah, absolutely. Another Jedi warrior I want on my team.
18:48Synchronicity, to me, is very real, but I know that it doesn't happen unless you're in the stream.
18:54Right now, I guess I'm in the stream because I'm not efforting, and things seem to be happening.