Wilson Burnham Guitars

Here it is! My first video on YouTube of me playing the 1961 Robert Bouchet Sitka Spruce/Walnut guitar. I shot this with my iPhone this afternoon, and after several takes I got what I was after. Now, if I could only make time to practice on a regular basis, I might do this guitar justice. It really is a fine guitar-good separation and evenness of notes, a wonderful singing voice - this is the kind of guitar that makes you want to practice on a daily basis. This guitar received a wonderful reception from Alex Komodore , guitar professor at Metropolitan State University, Denver, Colorado; Warren Haskell , guitar educator and former director of the guitar program at California State University, Chico; and the members of the Boulder Guitar Society , Boulder, Colorado. Here are some photographs of the guitar. If you would like any information about this guitar, or others that you see in the side bar on the right side of my blog, please contact me at highcountrylutherie@g

...the (guitar's) graceful lines and splendor of its body possessed my heart as swiftly as would the features of a heaven-sent woman suddenly appearing to become the loving companion of a lifetime. Andres Segovia, Segovia , 1976 Binding installed, fret board glued and fretted Much is written in guitar making books and journals about proper neck angle of a guitar, I won't delve into it here, because others have done a better job writing about it than I could. I make my guitars in the style suggested by a 2004 Guild of American Luthiers lecture given by Eugene Clark. Part of that process is that I keep the neck and the heel block on the same plane, you draw a line along the neck in will intersect with the top at the heel block. The top is domed in the area of the bridge. This doming adds the proper amount of "neck angle", so to speak. In the above photo I have a 1mm thick piece of steel at the location of the first fret. 1mm represents the height of the

I was oblivious to the classical guitar until age twenty three. Jose Oribe, The Fine Guitar , 1985 Dial caliper, gramil, veneer and veneer cutting board If there is one part of making a guitar that really can frustrate me it is making and installing the bindings. Some of the tasks/problems involved are- *bringing the bindings down to .05 of an inch thick without breaking anything *thin pieces ebony break easily and have nasty little splinters *routing a consistent channel without blowing out any piece of wood or letting the router bit/chisel wander This task/act/duty is where any little mistake you make will show for the life of the guitar, unless you know how to fix that mistake. The great Spanish luthier, Jose Ramirez II once said, In all human work, the wise look for virtues and fools look for flaws. Shop made veneer scraper Two months ago, when I was working on the dimensional copy of Torres' FE 19, I discovered I was going to run out of maple veneer,