What have Martin Simpson, Peter Rowan, Brendan Croker, John Renbourn and John Pearse got in common (apart from being damn good guitar players - blast them!)? They all own guitars made by Ralph Bown, that's what. Over the last 11 years, Ralph has built up a reputation as a maker of a wide variety of guitar types, inspired largely by vintage American designs, but not without an adventurous streak that shows his weakness for the weird and wonderful. For instance, he's been known to make tiples, long-scale baritone guitars, dobros and ukuleles, and has a long-term yearning to build a harp-guitar ... when he can find the time that is (He's in demand - you can expect to wait about 9 months for a Bown guitar.) His "bread and butter" guitars are, however, relatively conventional, beautifully crafted, small-bodied instruments : 12-fret OO , OOO , and 14-fret OM sized guitars, designed with the fingerpicker in mind, and more recently, an elegant and versatile "jumbo" design based on the Gibson J185, of which only a few were ever produced. Like Rob Armstrong (see June 1991 issue) Ralph's not interested in "production line" guitarmaking. He's a quietly-spoken, unassuming craftsman, who seems to relish the challenge of each new guitar, getting great pleasure out of tailoring its sound, looks and feel to the player's needs and desires. In contrast to Stefan Sobell's drive to create "the Sobell sound" (see Guitar International Feb/March) , Ralph goes to some lengths to find out and create the precise sound the player wants by careful choice of materials, size and bracing etc. I spoke to him over the omnipresent mug of coffee in his cosy York workshop ...
OK Ralph - the usual dumb journalistic opening question - how did you get into this guitarmaking nonsense in the first place?
I built my first guitar when I was still at school, about the same time as I started playing. It was a classical - I used Robert Welford's book. I never actually took woodwork, but I spent every spare minute either making models or messing about in the workshops. Then later, when I was at University doing languages, I hawked that first guitar around every maker I could find in Paris one summer. I got to meet Robert Bouchet, Daniel Friedrich and the Favinos. It was the first time I'd met any guitar makers, or visited workshops and seen instruments going together. The whole thing just inspired me - all my interests seemed to fall into place in guitar-making. I've been building full-time since then. I got a setting-up grant from the Crafts Council - that was a big help towards tooling up and getting things off the ground.
So are you self-taught?
Pretty much, yes. I looked for apprenticeships and courses, but there was nothing doing. In retrospect, I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing. You have to figure out for yourself what makes guitars tick, and so you inevitably end up with an individual approach. Having said that, I did get a lot of help and encouragement early on from various established makers - Paul Fischer and David Rubio with the classicals, then later Steve Phillips and Dave Gregory with steel strings. I set out building classical guitars, which is a relatively rigid and clear-cut discipline anyway, but the emphasis shifted to steel stringed instruments quite early on.
Do you still make classicals?
I make the occasional one on order, or for the English Guitar Centre here in York. To be honest, I think it's much harder to make a good classical. There's far less energy available from the strings, so you really have to concentrate on getting everything working for you - which is good training. The best classical makers tend to build little else, and get their results through continual refinement. There's a lot to be said for that, but I feel I need more variety. Sometimes I find it a bit galling that the steel string guitar, and folk instruments in general for that matter, are the "poor relations". Even the best hand-built instruments don't command the same prices as their classical equivalents. I suppose it's easy to see why - there's a completely different ethos behind the two traditions.
Yes, and I think classical musicians have always expected to pay a high price for a quality instrument. That's not so common even in the professional non-classical world. Can you describe a "typical" customer?
It varies right across the board really - from your keen bedroom guitarist to professional players. Virtually every type of acoustic music too. A typical customer might be someone who's been playing for a few years, and maybe already has a nice instrument, and is now looking for something a bit more individual - that perhaps incorporates some of the preferences they've developed. It often surprises me how many serious players have never considered a hand-built guitar as an option available to them, even although they may be prepared to invest a lot of money in a factory-built instrument. Also, with narrow-neck Dreadnoughts being pretty much the norm, I've seen a lot of players find it a real revelation to discover just how effective and comfortable smaller-bodied guitars can be, or how much their playing can benefit from a wider neck, or a different profile.
That seems to be where you've acquired a reputation - making tasty fingerpickers' guitars - relatively small-bodied instruments. Was that a conscious specialisation from the start?
Part chance, part design, I think. I just went back to those vintage American instruments, especially the smaller Martins - partly because it was an obvious place to start from, partly because it was an obvious place to understand the steel-string guitar, and partly because I just loved them. They're wonderful designs, both structurally and aesthetically, and they didn't appear overnight. The old guys who developed them really understood what they were doing in a way that's rare now, and you can follow their evolution over a long period. Take the 12-fret OO - it's just a perfect shape. If you get tired of playing it, you can simply hang it on the wall and look at it for half an hour! Then what happened is that I fell in with mainly blues and ragtime fingerpickers - the Northeast/Leeds mafia - players who were into these vintage instruments, and encouraged me in that direction, until I suppose I just became associated with those guitars and found myself a little niche. It's been a good grounding, but it's really only part of what I do now. I don't want to be known as "the guy who makes the nice little Martin copies", which is the way it seemed to be going at one point.
So - how far does your "range" actually extend?
So far I've kept to flat-top instruments - there's more than enough to be going on with there for now. I've built just about every shape and size of flat-top guitar you can think of, at some stage. I think it makes more sense now to concentrate on the designs that I feel work best. For example, the OM is hard to beat for performance and versatility. It also feels like the time has come to produce one or two more individual designs, drawing on the best of what I've soaked up from all the traditional stuff.
That sounds intriguing. What wonders are you about to unleash on us?
I've just finished an instrument that's a good example of what I mean. It's small-bodied, based on a very old Gibson shape, with a really bright twangy sound that suits ragtime and blues. I don't know what you'd call it - it's sort of Nick Lucas meets Robert Johnson! The original design had a short scale and a 12-fret neck, and predated the X-brace. I've lengthened the scale and used a custom 14-fret neck, as well as using a modified X-brace, which I can tailor towards that glassy, abrasive Gibson sound, even though it's not authentic to the instrument. There's nothing particularly radical about it, and it's very clear where the inspiration lies, but there's some of me in there too. I put the sound I wanted and playability first, and worked backwards towards the final design. I've also been developing a guitar to offer as a larger 14-fret instrument - the J185 you mentioned. I've never been keen on Dreadnoughts, but some styles just need a bigger body. It's basically the same shape and features I came up with for the baritone, and it's proving quite a flexible design to work with.
What about these guitar funnies? You've made baritone guitars, dobro-style resonator instruments, and even Stella 12-string copies. Are they a particular passion?
I suppose they are. There are two different passions there really. I always like to have at least one project on the go that's a bit off-the-wall and stretches me - the jobs you design on the bedroom ceiling. The baritone and dobros fall into that camp. Something like the Stella is the other side of the coin - that really is a museum piece. It's like wanting to build a vihuela or something - to play a particular type of music on. If you want to sound like Blind Willie McTell or Leadbelly, you need a big, primitive mahogany 12-string, with a long scale that lets you tune down, and a generous neck to pick cleanly. They make this absolutely wonderful noise ! Nothing else sounds like it, and you can't go out and buy a guitar that does the job. Stefan Grossman got Franklin in the US to build a handful, and he's encouraging me to build one or two more. Stefan Sobell and I have talked about this copying business. He's got a resolutely individual approach, which I really admire. The idea of copying anything is a complete anathema to him. I actually get a lot of pleasure and satisfaction out of building something like the old Stella - getting the sound and the old marquetry just right. Maybe it's the old model-maker resurfacing. It's not just making a slavish copy for the sake of it - it's more a desire to capture the sound and feel of an old instrument I really like. I think you also stand to learn a lot and keep an open mind by copying things every once in a while. I built a D-hole Maccaferri recently, which is a unique and really successful design. It was challenging, and a completely different approach to soundboard construction, so it gave me plenty to think about and maybe apply elsewhere. I think that's quite a healthy thing.
I know you've also made things like tiples and ukuleles. How do they fit in with the more mainstream guitarmaking?
They were just intended as one-offs for a bit of fun and variety, although the tiples proved surprisingly popular - I've made about 7 or 8. They've got roughly the same voice as a mandolin, but not as strident - more of a jangly, delicate, dulcimer-like sound. The great thing is that nobody really had a clue what to play on them, so they came up with all sorts of weird and wonderful things!
- and are your own musical tastes as eclectic as your taste in instruments?
At least. There's very little that I don't enjoy. I've recently come to the reluctant conclusion that the guitar is actually rather a complicated instrument to play - with my limitations, anyway. Someone lent me a double-bass, which I'm having great fun with. You can romp along to just about anything you like, and it's only as complicated as you want to make it. I think I feel an acoustic bass coming on!
I know you've used some unusual woods, along with the usual spruce/cedar/rosewood/mahogany combinations. Remember we spent some time sifting through scientific papers to get a handle on the Sitka vs. European Spruce argument? How do you choose which woods to use?
I think you can analyse things too closely, and lose a bit of the magic, but it was interesting how your searching basically reinforced all the existing wisdom about what woods are suitable for instrument-making. I think that to build a really thoroughbred classical instrument, as people perceive it, you need the traditional materials - European Spruce and Brazilian Rosewood. I've used Brazilian, and it really is exceptional in my experience. Fortunately, you have a freer hand with the steel-string guitar - there are several woods you can use with excellent results to get different sounds - not inferior to the traditional woods, just a different sort of good. I've always liked the crisp, bright sound of mahogany, for instance. Because it's normally associated with plainer, less expensive instruments, it tends to be under-rated, but for certain instruments - 12-strings for example - it would always be my first choice. I've built a few things in Hawaiian Koa wood, which you could describe as upmarket mahogany. It's got an even greater brilliance and crispness - ideal for fingerpicking - but with a bit more warmth in the bass. Apparently it was all the rage for Californian yuppies to panel their kitchens with it during the 80's and it's now back on the protected species list. That knocks Koa on the head for guitars! I've used Ziricote and Imbuya with good results, and I've got some American Walnut and Paduak put by to try. The way things are going, we're going to have to turn to increasingly obscure hardwoods and to timber from sustainable resources. That may lead the guitar to evolve in a different direction, but it needn't be a bad thing. Instrument-makers have always had to work with the best materials that were available to them, for whatever reasons. Even Torres wasn't above hacking up the odd lump of furniture when times were hard!.
What about tops? We decided to go for European Spruce for my guitar.
I've tended to concentrate mainly on Sitka, probably mainly due to the character of the guitars I was building. It's the traditional indigenous wood for American steel-string guitars, and I think a lot of that characteristic brash, gutsy "American" sound comes from it. European won't give you that to the same extent, but it can give a purer, more refined and articulate sound, if that's what you're looking for. Cedar responds more to lower frequencies (science backs this up! - AFM), so you lose a bit of brilliance, but get a nice warm, mellow bass response. It's relatively abundant, so you can get exceptionally good timber, but it's a lot softer than spruce. It sounds good straight away, but it can lose its elasticity in the long term, and the instrument plays out - perhaps it's not suited to the stresses of steel strings. It's also more spongy - I've found the sound can be quite temperamental with changes in humidity.
Stefan seems to have defined a "Sobell sound". Is there a "Bown sound", do you think? Where do you see yourself in the English-American sound spectrum?
I never feel comfortable discussing sound - it's so subjective. I know players whose ears I trust a lot more than mine. I'm not sure if I have a distinctive sound - it's more a case of getting the sound I'm looking for out of a particular instrument. I've been told that my instruments are relatively "American" sounding, as far as that can be possible - certainly I wouldn't really identify myself with the "English school". A lot of English guitars sound a bit thin and prissy to my ears. The ideal thing would be to capture some of that delicacy, and back it up with the more robust American sound. I suppose I'm drawn towards the qualities you normally associate with smaller-bodied instruments - good overall balance, a more immediate response, and a bass that's firm and focussed, rather than boomy and undisciplined. When you get everything balanced right there's a really vibrant responsive quality in a guitar - you only have to breathe on the strings and it's there. I think I aim for that quality, regardless of the guitar, rather than for any one discernable sound. It can be pretty elusive, and a lot of it comes from the timber. If you haven't got that responsiveness in the wood to begin with, you can forget it!
You seem to take a lot of care over details - like the way you put the neck and body together. Are there any other unusual factors in a Bown guitar?
The Spanish "heel" is probably the single most distinctive thing. It's a feature I've carried on from building classicals. It's not often seen on steel-strings, but I think it's far superior structurally - the guitar body is actually built around the neck, so it becomes an integral part of the instrument. The usual argument is that it can't be removed and reset later, but in my experience that's only called for because a dovetail has been used in the first place! I suppose there are a lot of little things I do - like graduating tops, scalloping braces, and other little features - that aren't particularly radical or significant in themselves, but they all add up.
What about the knotty question of decoration? Do you ever find yourself faced with a customer who wants something you think is over-the-top?
Only occasionally now. To be honest, I've done my fair share of fancy stuff in the past without too much arm-twisting! I suppose there's a temptation to show what you can do. It's funny how your tastes refine, though. On the whole I find the more restrained and understated things more satisfying these days. I've always tried to find elegant body shapes, and taken a lot of time over the choice of woods and inlays - matching up the colours and tones. I'd rather have a tasteful guitar that seduces you quietly than one that grabs you by the lapels!
Me too. Talking of which ... I've waited 12 months for my guitar. Is that about normal? It has been said - shall we say - that you "work at your own pace"
It's a fair cop! I've never been very good at working with one eye on the clock - I'm not sure how far you can doing this. I try to, but I'm still a time and motion man's nightmare. I got out of my depth with orders for a while, that was the biggest problem - only myself to blame, of course, but it's terribly easy when you're a one-man concern. I won't be getting in over my head like that again! I've spent most of this year just clearing the decks. I'm down to a handful of orders, and it feels much more comfortable to have got it under control. I can turn things around in a reasonable time - probably about 9 months right now - and I have time to do the odd experimental thing, or instruments for stock or to demonstrate. It was really frustrating - orders stretching miles ahead, but never any instruments around to play in or show people.
That's about all, really. Do you have a firm view as to where you're going in terms of luthiery? Any plans to branch out in the future?
I'll probably keep on in much the same way, just trying to make better guitars. I'm more drawn towards that than the idea of expanding - taking people on to make more instruments, then worrying about shifting product to pay them. It would probably have to mean more standardisation and some of the individual character would be lost.
I've always felt quite strongly that a guitar is really only "hand-made" if it's made by one pair of hands from start to finish, whatever many respected manufacturers may claim - i.e. one person has an overview of the instrument, and brings their judgement and intuition to bear on every aspect of it. I think that's the only way really exceptional guitars will ever get made. If you think about it, that, along with the scope to customise, is the most valuable thing any individual luthier has to offer, so it's worth hanging on to.