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The Fretboard Journal Guitar Podcast

Each week, the Fretboard Journal interviews some of our favorite musicians, instrument builders and historians.
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Now displaying: March, 2016
Mar 24, 2016

We celebrate our 100th podcast episode by ordering a custom acoustic guitar! On this episode, we talk to luthier T. Drew Heinonen, who got his start working for Bourgeois Guitars and acclaimed guitarmaker James Olson. Heinonen is now building guitars under his own name and will be making an OM style guitar for us over the next several months.

We’ll be checking in with Heinonen every couple of weeks on our podcast to discuss the guitar build, make decisions about its appointments and hear about all the steps and hair-pulling that a luthier goes through during an instrument build. We’ll also be posting photos of the process on fretboardjournal.com and on our Facebook page.

A huge thanks to all of our listeners and podcast subscribers for tuning in to our show.

To learn more about Drew, go to http://www.heinonenguitars.com. This episode is sponsored by our friends at Stewart-MacDonald.

Mar 17, 2016

Before he devoted himself to making electric guitars, luthier Scott Walker spent years setting dovetail neck joints at the Santa Cruz Guitar Company. With Walker’s most recent creation, the Katana, he gets to combine the two chapters of his life in a unique way. The Katana is a unique, stripped-down electric by Walker’s standards and it has a memorable party trick – it has a Japanese-style joint that bonds the neck to the body without glue, bolts or screws. The instrument itself is purposeful and simple: one-piece body and one-piece neck, no tone or volume controls.

On this week’s podcast, we talk to Walker about the guitar, the challenges he had making it and the prospect of this kind of joint working in an acoustic instrument. Walker is always on the vanguard of guitar construction techniques (you may remember our feature on him in the Fretboard Journal #27) and this instrument is no exception.  

Read more about the Katana on Scott’s website

Mar 11, 2016

Vintage guitar enthusiasts are quick to point out the differences between various makers, tone woods and construction techniques. But can you identify with just your ears what you’re actually hearing? That was the premise behind Matt Munisteri’s Blindfold Guitar Challenge at the 2015 Fretboard Summit. We assembled a variety of vintage instruments for Munisteri to play behind a thin curtain while the audience had to guess what they were actually hearing.

This set features some great playing by Munisteri (who could make any guitar sound fantastic) and some thought-provoking commentary on the merits of various collectible instruments. At various points, Munisteri is also joined by Bill Frisell, Eric Schoenberg and Michael John Simmons.

Though ran out of time before Munisteri could play through all of the guitars we collected backstage, we’re happy to announce we’ll be throwing the next Fretboard Summit October 14-16, 2016 at San Diego’s Rancho Bernardo Inn. With any luck, we’ll make the blindfold guitar challenge an annual tradition and have a whole new batch of vintage guitars for Munisteri to try out in California. Go to www.fretboardsummit.com for details and ticket information. 

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