Rick Turner’s name is probably more familiar to electric guitar players than mandolin players, or even acoustic guitarists. Rick started out as an folky acoustic player, playing with some big names in the folk scare of the 1960’s, was in a psychedelic rock band that was signed by RCA, then drifted into repairing guitars, winding pickups, and building guitars. He was a partner in the Alembic Company that provided basses and guitars and sound systems for some of the biggest bands in rock music the 1970’s, including the Grateful Dead, Crosby, Still, Nash & Young, to name just a couple. As the saying goes “it ain’t bragging if you can do it.” Rick has done it, gotten out of luthierie and come back again. For a more complete history of Rick’s career, there is a long interview on his website:

http://www.renaissanceguitars.com/key-articles.php  from American Luthierie, number 64. Also, The Fretboard Journal featured Rick in the Summer 2008, number 10 issue, http://www.fretboardjournal.com/back_issues/index.html though the issue is sold out, if you can find a copy, it is well worth reading and studying the pictures. We are going to focus on Rick’s recent involvement with mandolins.

 

JM: Thank you, Rick, for taking the time for this interview. When did you have your first encounter with mandolins and do you play mandolin?

RT:  Well, I came up through what I’d call the second or maybe third wave of Boston/Cambridge folkies; I enrolled at Boston University in 1962, and immediately majored in Coffee House 101.   Pretty quickly I met Lowell Levinger and Michael Kane (both of whom eventually became members of the Youngbloods), and we started playing what I’d have to characterize as punk Bluegrass as Banana and the Bunch, Old Time Music with A Peel.  We were the kids on the scene with our “upper class men” being the Charles River Valley Boys, the Kweskin Jug Band, Keith and Rooney, and over at Hillbilly Ranch, Don Stover and the Lilly Brothers with Joe Val on mandolin.  Peter Rowan was a good pal, and so mandolin was all around.   I met David Grisman down in New York probably in ’64, saw Monroe, Flatt and Scruggs, was amazed by the Kentucky Colonels, and all that.  I gravitated to flatpicking guitar, and wound up playing with Canadian folkies “Ian and Sylvia in 1965.  I always had mandolins around, but never really played them all that much, though I could always fake a decent chop on basic chords.  Looking back, I also know that Michael Kane wound up with an Orville three point…one with the nut-bowl construction back and sides, though we had no idea of it’s significance at the time…

JM: Please, tell a little bit about how you got involved in the mandolin building classes you currently teach.

RT:   Long story short…I managed Gibson’s West Coast Artist Relations office from 1988 into late 1989, and did freelance work for them beyond that.  Part of my duties included going to Bluegrass festivals and manning the Gibson tent…a fabulous gig.  One of my regular festivals was Telluride, and when I did that I also did instrument care workshops for players along with luthier Michael Hornick.  When I stopped doing the Gibson booths, Steve Szymanski, director of the Telluride Bluegrass Academy, wanted me to still come to the festival, so he challenged me to come up with a lutherie course that I could teach for three days before the festival as part of the Academy curriculum.  I, perhaps brashly, suggested that I could teach building a mandolin in three days.  Steve didn’t know any better; Michael…who takes a month and a half to build a guitar…thought I was out of my mind, but agreed to see what might possibly come of it.  Working for Gibson, I’d been exposed to Flatiron’s updated Gibson Army/Navy style pancake mandolins, and I thought that if I could simplify construction and make a good kit with some pre-glued and pre-machined parts, we could pull it off.   We did.

JM: How similar/different are the class mandolins to the Flatiron/Gibson pancake models?

RT:   The breakthrough was going back to the 19th Century and building the mandolins “Spanish style”…that is with no neck joint, rather with the heel and neck block and neck all one piece with the sides glued into slots with wedges.  It’s a brilliant way to make an instrument if you don’t insist on finishing neck and body separately and don’t think you’ll ever need to reset the neck.

At first we did an “X” brace, as much to teach that as any other reason.  Now I’ve gone over to an “H” bracing pattern which is closer to the original Army/Navy mandos. 

We make most of them with Western red cedar tops and a variety of woods for back and sides…maple, walnut, koa, mahogany, whatever.  The wood is almost all “fall down” from guitar parts in my shop.  I have my own 20 hp resaw, and so we cut most of our own top and back wood, and I have fantastic resources for timber. 

JM: What do students have in front of them the first day of the class and what do they take home with them?

RT:   They have a kit with a rough machined neck, a slotted and tapered fingerboard, pre-bent sides (a timing issue, though I do demonstrate side bending and the students do get to bend wood on a traditional bending iron), joined, glued and sanded top and back (again, a timing issue), a workboard, and all the other bits and pieces.

JM: What is the hardest part of building a mandolin in three days?

RT:  Well, we’re doing it in four days now, but the basic instrument…all assembly, gluing, sanding, fretting and such is done by the end of day three.  Day four is all about final setup…making the bridge, the nut, and getting strings on.  The single hardest thing for the students to learn is making the nut…doing the string spacing layout and accurately slotting it.   I’ve just switched over to using a zero fret, and that was a huge improvement.  Now I think I’m going to set up a slotting saw arbor on my milling machine with eight spaced thin blades of appropriate kerf to get the basic slots started. 

JM: What is the most surprising thing that has happened in the class?

RT:  I’d have to say one was to find one of Australia’s top luthiers in my first class in Tasmania.  He was just Gary for the first part of the first day, and then his bench mate wondered aloud how a certain operation might best be done, and Gary advised him quite correctly.  The other fellow asked how Gary knew that, and Gary said, “This is what I do.” My lady friend, Louise, overheard that and asked, “Are you Gary Rizzollo?”  He was, and he signed up just to meet me and see what I was all about.  It was fantastic having him in the class, and he was very helpful to the other students, even bringing in some kerfing which I’d run short of.  Lou and I wound up visiting him at his shop, and he’s a fantastic builder and terrific guy.

JM: How many mandolins are you responsible for being out in the world through the classes?

RT: If you include all the Telluride and it’s Rocky Grass descendents (since I did design the course) plus Roberto Venn plus the Crucible plus Tasmania, it’s got to be going on three hundred now.

JM: Obviously there is no way put build and put a finish on and instrument in the short time of the class, what type of finishes do you recommend to your students?

RT:  I suggest a range of possibilities including rattle can lacquer or shellac, Tru Oil or Waterlox for oil finishes, or varnish if they’ve got any boat experience.

JM: There is a lot of talk everywhere these days about which finish is “the best”, lacquer, varnish, French polish, polyester, etc.  What does the finish really need to do on instruments, besides look pretty?

RT:  The number one job of the finish is to protect the wood; then it’s about beauty, and that’s about the earliest coats of whatever you use.  The violin makers use what they call a “ground” which is basically a sealer that really enhances the grain and makes the top few thousandths of the wood translucent.  I pre-seal practically everything I make with either Waterlox…a very thin long oil varnish made with Tung oil and phenolic resin…or West Systems epoxy.  They share very similar wetting properties, and both act as a “tie coat” which helps to adhere subsequent coats of whatever to the wood.   My guitar finishes get pretty complicated sometimes with the tie coat, then a couple of thin coats of McFadden Rosewood Sealer, then McFadden or Simtec polyester. 

JM: How much effect does the thickness of a finish have on the sound?

RT:  I’m of the opinion that it’s mostly about the thickness unless you’re trying to tame high end harshness as they do with violin varnish.  In that case, it’s a combination of the thickness and the damping qualities of the finish.

JM: So all the talk about one finish sounding better than another is just that “talk”?

RT:  No, it’s not just talk, but for different instruments, the job is different.  The violin makers are always trying to tame shrillness, and I think that may be why some mandolin builders really swear by (and at) varnish…it may make for a mellower sounding instrument.

JM: Before the import instruments showed up with finishes thick enough to measure with a ruler, was the type off finish on a given instrument even discussed by players?

RT:  Yes, sure, but most particularly in the classical guitar field where some builders moved from French polished shellac to nitro lacquer to polyurethane (Ramirez).   It’s also pretty well known that the French polished Martins from the very early 1900s tend to look a lot better than most of the early lacquered ones…unless you’re one of those who loves crackled finishes.  I love the look of those FP Martins where you can see every pore in the Brazilian rosewood and every grain line in the top.

Also, I have to put in a good word for the much maligned polyester.  You can do this stuff very thin… five thousandths or so, and if I’m pushed, I can do a complete finish in four days without resorting to UV cure.  And then you’ve got the toughest, most scratch resistant finish on the market, bar none right now.  It doesn’t take quite the buff of lacquer, but if you’re not trying to make a direct comparison between a lacquered and poly’d instrument, it doesn’t matter.  A lot of small shop luthiers have looked at my guitars and thought they were lacquer because of how thin the finish is…you get it thin, and you don’t have that light bending refraction we pick up on with thick finishes.  If you do a lot of this stuff, you get to where you can judge the thickness of a clear finish just by eye pretty well.  Another kind of mind blowing thing is that the way I do poly, I can glue a guitar bridge directly to the finish…no scraping, no masking, no routing the finish off.  I clean off any traces of oil or wax and use thick CA, and I can string it up in an hour.  Excess glue squeeze comes right off with CA solvent which doesn’t touch the polyester. 

JM: That’s pretty amazing! The polyester adheres to the wood well enough that sting tension doesn’t pull it off of the top, and the glue grips it well enough to hold the bridge, too?

RT:  Yes.  It’s a trick I picked up on from Jean Larrivee, though it stopped working for him because of some chemistry change in one or the other of the products he was using.  For me, the trick is using Waterlox first on the bare wood top.  The coating chemists call it a “tie coat” if you use it under subsequent sealers and top coats.  Apparently, the tung oil in Waterlox bonds particularly well to cellulose while the phenolic resins bond tightly to lignin, and since most of wood is cellulose and lignin, that’s what you want…a really good bond with the first coat of finish.  Then, the McFadden rosewood sealer bonds well to the Waterlox, and seals in any oils from the wood as well as the tung oil.  Finally, the polyester sticks great to the sealer.

JM: On the subject of glues, how much difference does the type of glue used in construction make to the sound of an instrument? A lot of well respected builders swear by hide glue, but if it holds the pieces together and doesn’t creep does it make that much difference what chemical it is? It seems to me that having the pieces fit together well is more important?

RT:  I use up to seven different glues in an instrument…everything from hot hide glue, which I really like for top and back seams, gluing braces, and gluing bridges…to epoxies.   Along the way I’ll use LMI white glue for a lot of basic construction, Franklin’s polyurethane glue for peghead overlay laminations, thick and thin CA glues, Duco for celluloid bindings, and in fact I use two different speeds of hardener with the WEST epoxy.   I do think that for some of the acoustically important joints, particularly with the top, hot hide glue may make for better sounding instruments because it cures so hard and it shrinks, drawing the joint tighter.  It’s also really easy to use if you just keep it in small squeeze bottles, freeze it when you’re not using it, and use a glue pot with water in it to heat it up.   I learned lutherie with hot hide glue way back when, and now I like returning to it.  Another thing is that when doing center seams for flat tops and backs, you can run the parts through a drum or wide belt sander, and the glue just sands off without gumming up the sandpaper; that’s a huge advantage and a great reason to use hot hide glue.

JM: The neck joint is often discussed on many of the message boards, and everyone has an opinion on what is “the best” one. What exactly does the neck joint need to do, besides hold the neck and body together?  

RT: It holds the neck and body together!   I build acoustic guitars with a tilting neck and cantilevered fingerboard.  There’s no wood to wood contact in the joint, it’s just bolt heads and such.  There is absolutely no lack of tone or sustain, and in fact, I’d argue that it’s much better.  

I use the Spanish neck joint in the pancake mandos because it’s easy and fast.  They sound fine.

JM: You are known for innovation in your guitar and basses, what innovations would you like to try on mandolins?

RT:  I need to build a mandola for myself kind of like the mando guitar I finished in 1997.  It was a 2/3 size 1934 Super 400 archtop non-cutaway guitar with fully carved top and back and cantilevered fingerboard, though it didn’t tilt.  It was absolutely killer, especially in the mandola range.

JM: What effects do you suppose your tilting neck joint might have on mandolins, carved or flat?

RT:  I may try it on the archtop mandola I want to build.  It would be tough on a mandolin because there’s a lot of string tension and not a very deep heel for the leverage. Also folks are quite used to adjustable bridges on carved mandos, so that takes care of the action bit.   However, it might be interesting to try some of the internal bracing ideas like the flying buttresses or rods from neck block to tailblock to help with that problem of instruments buckling between bridge and tailblock.

JM: Why do you think tried and true instrument designs eventually become the only way many folks think a mandolin or guitar can be built? Why the close-mindedness, when so many instruments that don’t fit the mold, so to speak, sound so good?

RT:  Well I look at what’s going on in the mando world, and while I certainly admire all the Loar clones, I am drawn more to the work of John Monteleone, Corrado Giacomel, and James Condino.  For more traditional I like what Peter Coombe is doing, too, especially with his use of Australian timbers. 

But look at the state of “traditional” Bluegrass…It’s still Martin D-28s, Gibson MasterTone flatheads, and an awful lot of “that’s not how Bill done it…”  It’s so weird to me that the window of innovation opened up by Bill and Earl and Ralph and Jim and Jesse could slam so shut.   Of course it’s not all that way…NewGrass Revival and all that, but Sam Bush tells the story of when Monroe first heard them and asked Sam, “What do you call that music?”  Sam walked right into the trap, and he said, “NewGrass…”  Bill’s reply to that was, “I don’t care what you call it; I don’t like it.”   Sheesh!  

The funny thing is that Django-style Gypsy jazz is the exact French equivalent to Bluegrass.   You’ve got a couple of founding fathers…Django and Stephane, a bunch of clones, and some ex-clone innovators.  You’ve got fantastic virtuosity.  You’ve got amazing prodigy kids coming up.  And yes, you’ve got really wonderful music.

JM: It is ironic. Why do you think those styles of music got stuck in instrumentation as well as instruments that are allowed?

RT:  Well, getting stuck is what innovations do when they become traditions…and then you have people who use the language of that tradition to move forward…guys like David Grisman, Sam Bush, Frank Wakefield, Mike Marshall, and Chris Thile in our mando world.

JM: Many folks are plugging their mandolins in these days, have you given any thought to pick-up design for the mandolin?

RT:  Yes, I’ve made some pickups laminated into bridge tops, and they sound really good.  I just haven’t had the time to turn them out of the prototype stage and into products.  Local mandolinist Mike McKinley (used to play with Gillian Welsh) has one, and he swears by it, not at it.  I do know how to get nice warm sounds out of bridge pickups…warm, yet detailed and very musical. 

JM: I’d like to try one of those out sometime. I’ve often thought that one of the big problems with pickups is they allow things our ears don’t ordinarily hear acoustically to be amplified. Is that really part of the problem? Or are there just so many things going on in an instrument that it’s a very complex nut to crack?

RT: I have and continue to spend a lot of time on amplification and it’s horrendously complex.  There are so many competing requirements; the first of which is the degree of feedback resistance desired.  Then for any given level of feedback resistance there may be two or more different technologies available, each with it’s own way of “looking” at the sound of the instrument and/or strings. 

Understand that a mandolin or guitar box does not really amplify the string vibrations; it performs more like an electrical transformer or a lever taking one form of energy…mechanical vibration…and transforming it into another via mechanical impedance matching.  You’re taking the quite visible motion of the string which has energy inputted and spreading that out to a plate…the instrument top…which has no visible vibration, yet is vibrating over a much  larger area and can thus launch sound waves by pushing air.   Strings don’t push air very well!

I’ve had a chance to delve into some of the very earliest work with pickups; Lowell Levinger and I co-own what is arguably Lloyd Loar’s 3rd ViviTone acoustic/electric, Hawaiian/Spanish guitar from 1933, and I helped restore Loar’s personal solid body electric viola.  I know what was going on in his head with those pickup designs.  I also understand the technology apparently used in Loar’s elusive 1923/’24 electric L-5.  He was into some interesting stuff, and the viola pickup still rivals anything I’ve heard out of modern electric violins.  It’s very interesting, and I may take a crack at updating it. 

I also make a modern “inside out” version of the early Rickenbacker horseshoe lap steel pickup, and it’s been a real trip learning what makes that design work so well.  That pickup works loud and clear or overdriven; clean it can sound like a dreadnaught on steroids with incredible sustain in the right instrument.  It’s huge and chimey with no harshness at all. 

The thing about pickups is that the more feedback resistant you make them, the less of the instrument they hear.  With contact transducers, you’re hoping to find the microcosmic spot that represents the macro of the instrument…and it’s a never ending chase.  With on board mics, you’ve got weirdness if you put them inside the instrument, and you’ve got location, location, location issues if it’s on the outside.  And then you’ve got feedback issues.   If you use magnetic pickups…well they resist feedback really well, but they always sound like magnetic pickups.  If you use under saddle pickups, you’re intercepting the string signal before it even gets to the top.  And so on and so on with this. 

I helped develop a device, the D-TAR Mama Bear, which uses digital signal processing power to overlay algorithms of the wood and air sonic signatures of different guitars onto the raw sound of saddle or magnetic pickups.  It’s a remarkable device…a real killer guitar collection in a box.  I can go on and on about why it works, about why pickups sound like they do, etc.  

I’ll tell you something ironic…I’ve learned a lot about how acoustic instruments work through my experiments and explorations in amplifying them.  It’s forced me to really understand how our instruments filter, equalize, and transform what should be pretty simple and pure string vibrations into very complex tones.  There are things going on with those transformations (transforms in tech speak) that involve frequency response changing in time…and I don’t mean long time, I mean milliseconds.  The phase response of an instrument is really where a lot of the signature sound comes from.   Wood and air are responding faster or slower to different string vibrations in transforming them into acoustic pressure waves. 

Right now I’m working on a show for the Museum of Making Music on the history of electricity in music.  I’ll be working with a couple of local Santa Cruz musicians on this, and Loar is, of course, a major part of it.  I (and others who have really looked into it) consider him to be the real inventor of the electric guitar…and mandolin, and fiddle, and bass, and piano…

JM: So Lloyd Loar was a genius and might have been much more innovative in areas other than he’s well known for? Just think if Bill Monroe hadn’t spotted that mandolin in the barbershop window, Lloyd Loar might be just a name on a dusty former Gibson employee list. What is so innovative about his pickups?

RT:  Let me say that there is some controversy over what Loar did and when with regard to pickup development.  Many sources indicate that he was experimenting on amplification as early as 1923-’24.  Lynn Wheelwright doesn’t think so and puts Loar’s ViviTone experiments later in the ‘20s or in about 1930.  I’m not sure.  If he was working early, then he was probably making an electrostatic pickup, but all the ViviTone stuff is magnetic with the bridge connected to a cantilevered steel plate with a pickup under the plate.  That faded out pretty quickly as the dominant technology became string sensitive pickups.   There was an incredible explosion of electric pickups in the period from 1928 to 1935 and beyond, and people are still finding previously unknown makers and instruments that never achieved commercial success from that early period.   We just don’t know who first amplified stringed instruments, but we do know that Loar was in the thick of it all.

JM: Rick, this has been great, very informative. Thank you for taking the time to be interviewed. It’s nice to look at things from a different perspective, and thanks for letting us have a glimpse of your take on things? I appreciate your respect for the great instruments & innovations of the past and your willingness to go beyond them.

Is there anything that you would like to add?

RT: Just that this world of lutherie never ceases to mystify me.  The more I know, the less I’m sure of.

Rick may be contacted through his website: http://www.renaissanceguitars.com/

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