BRYAN DE GRUCHY:

Bryan makes steel strung guitars - really fine quality, good looking, unquirky guitars. He has also made pedal steel guitars and mandolins which he loves, but generally doesn't have the time ~ in any case these different instruments all require different tools and machinery settings and the demand for his guitars alone is such that he doesn't get much time to indulge. He reckons that classical guitars are easier to build than steel strung.

He often inlays 'paua' shell around his sound holes and as part of the purfling. This is a shell similar to abalone, but more consistently colourful ~ he buys whole shells and cuts it to size using a small diamond saw, using water as a lubricant/coolant. He has a common sense approach to guitar construction and design ~ but says that you can go too far with modern technology and testing. He related one story about an American team that had decided, by extensive analysis and experimentation, to produce the perfect guitar. Sadly this instrument sounded dreadful.

He makes mistakes, too - while I was there at his workshop he was working on a left-handed guitar and was just gluing the bridge in place on the sound board. He had just successfully slotted the bridge to take the saddle, sloping the opposite way as it was a left-handed instrument, on the third attempt. Both his first two attempts had resulted in the slot sloping the wrong way ~ 'it's amazing how strong habits can be!' he said - and I know this well myself!

I asked him if he had ever had to write off an instrument and he said that the closest he had ever come was one day when he picked up a heavy chisel while he was looking for something on the crowded bench where there was an almost completed guitar. With a broad, sweeping gesture which he demonstrated to me with the self-same chisel [several times as, in retrospect, it amused him as much as it did me] he lost hold of it. It apparently had spun through the air describing an elegant arc [he didnÕt demonstrate this bit] and embedded itself in the guitar's sound board. Nevertheless, he did manage to patch up even this and sell it, although at a reduced price. I certainly don't want to give the impression that Bryan spends his time patching up guitars that he has thrown chisels at - with nearly 500 guitars under his belt he is allowed the occasional cock-up, and it must be to his credit that it has never resulted in having to ditch an instrument.

Bryan de Gruchy is not the most famous guitar maker in Australia but his instruments are undoubtedly of the highest quality and his commitment to producing instruments that sound as good as possible and last is obvious. He says that he can, in fact, make instruments that will sound even better than they do already by thinning the sound boards further, but he says that these would probably self-destruct in 6 months. As always in musical instrument making, a compromise must be struck between many factors: quality of sound, volume, stability, ease of playing, cost, and many other competing requirements that escape me at the moment.

Greg Smallman, who leapt to fame when the world famous John Williams decided to use his guitars exclusively, uses a revolutionary bracing system called Ôlattice' bracing. His classical guitars feature ultra-thin tops braced all over for strength, and unusually thick, rigid sides and a thick, slightly arched back. This increases the overall volume, and particularly the projection at the top end which is often so lacking on classical instruments, particularly in a live concert environment. Bryan has experimented with a steel strung version of this but says that with a steel guitar projection at the top end is never a problem anyway and the sound of this instrument was far too strident- so he now sticks to his usual bracing method.

He started out by reading all that he could lay his hands on, not just to do with guitar making, but to do with making other instruments and almost anything to do with wood generally. He has experimented extensively with all aspects of the manufacturing process in the quest to produce the perfect guitar - but he says that many of his experiments could be summarised in the saying: " É the operation was successful but the patient died!" The final product is always the most important thing and he has always held common sense to be his most important guide.

On the left is guitar Bryan keeps on show, appropriately undusted, to remind him how not to make one.

One successful experiment resulted in his novel approach to seasoning the Sitka spruce he uses exclusively for his tops. It involves baking the rough cut pairs of pieces in the hot Australian sun through a whole summer ~ with temperatures up to 37° in the shade! It's not quite as simple as that and he has a strict regime to keep them from going too far.

He uses a few Australian timbers, particularly Australian Blackwood which he finds very good for backs and sides. King William Pine is the only possible Australian substitute for the various spruces usually used for the sound boards, but Bryan does not believe that 'King Billy' pine has anywhere near the stiffness required particularly along the grain, to make a good guitar.

Interestingly, both Ben Hall and Tim Guster [see subsequent pages] use King Billy pine for sound boards - Ben has used it for guitars and Tim for mandolins for the sweetness of tone it produces. Instrument makers have their own ideas based on their own experience of what works for them and on the feed back they get from their customers.

He has now made approaching 500 guitars but reckons he didn't start to build the guitars he really wanted to build until around number 200. This speaks volumes of his high standards - but I'm quite sure that the owners of guitars numbered 1 to 199 have no complaints whatever.

Visit Bryan's website at:
http://www.picknowl.com.au/homepages/degruchy/Head.html