An Interview with John Liddy In the Workshop

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Why did you choose to build Archtop Guitars and Mandolins?
Well, I just like the wood tone of carved top instruments.  And, I have always really liked Jazz, especially that whole idea of improvisation.  My appreciation of bluegrass is a more recent thing and has developed in conjunction with the mandolin making.
Also there was the craft challenge.  Carving the tops and backs is a really great thing.  I look at it as releasing the sound from the wood.  Then there are all the other fiddly bits, which require me to use a range of different skills.  It gives me great satisfaction when I can succeed in producing a thing of beauty that has got the sound there to turn players on so they want to use it.

Tell us about the first guitar you made. How did it come about?
Well, the first guitar I made was through Terry O’Riley, who was my son Matt’s guitar teacher.  I was a fine furniture maker at the time and Matt wanted to change from acoustic to electric, as they do.  Terry suggested I have a go at making him one. I made a copy of a ’59 custom telecaster.  Terry is a great authority on vintage instruments and he told me how it had to look and kept a close eye on what was happening all the way through.  He had a ’52 butterscotch [tele] which was a great help.
Terry, being the great enthusiast he is, didn’t stop there.  After the tele he suggested I do an archtop.  So I got Bob Benedetto’s book and took up the challenge.  I made most of this guitar in the late Peter Kempster’s workshop at Scott Creek.  Peter was a harp maker, he had people around on Thursday nights to his workshop, we used his tools and equipment and discussed ways of doing things with him.  He was an influence in getting a lot of South Australian instrument makers started.  He was a big loss to the instrument making community in this State.

There is a good balance between a warm sound and sustain with your guitars. What makes a good arch-top guitar?
I think the key factor is the carving and grading of the top and the back and getting them to work together once the box is put together.  I give a lot of time and attention to this.  You have got to decide what is right for each individual piece of wood.
The other crucial issue is the joinery in the guitar.  It has got to be spot on. 

How much does selection of the timber determine the outcome of a guitar?
I’d probably have to experiment with a lot more timbers before I could reach any conclusions about this. I have gone for the traditional tone woods and haven’t played around with other options as yet. I’d really like to try some good Australian tone woods.  My feeling, however, is that timber selection is not as important as a lot of people seem to think.  At the margins, though, you are always looking for that extra one percent.

How does the sound of the instrument change while you are going through the finishing process?
I always string the instruments up when they are in the white.  I actually do the set up  at this stage.  They sound quite raw in the white.  The finish mellows them out, takes out the harshness.

What electrics do you use?
I can use anything that the guitarist wants, but if I am building a guitar on spec then I will usually use either Bartolini or Lindy Fralin floating pickups.  For top mounted pickups I have used Seymour Duncan, Bartolini and Gibson.
At the moment I am working with an electronics whiz, Dieter Hauptmann, to develop a blend system for a bridge piezo and a neck magnetic pickup.  Hopefully all the hardware and controls will be able to be mounted under the finger rest, leaving the top of the guitar completely free.
For the mandos the only pickup I have used has been the Fishman M-100.  This is a bridge piezo.  The feedback I have got is that it preserves the acoustic sound of the instrument.  Obviously, this also involves an external preamp.

What sized guitar bodies do you build?
I do either 16 or 17 inch bodies as standard or 18 inch on custom order, that’s the measurement of the bottom bout of the guitar.

Is there a difference between the acoustic and electric arch-top guitar construction?
Well if I am making a floating pickup guitar I build it as an acoustic guitar using cross bracing, unless otherwise requested.  But where pickups are set in the top at the bridge and neck I have to do parallel bracing to make room for the pickups.  I will make the tops and the bracing slightly stiffer to compensate for the wood I am losing from the tops.  I have made guitars with a single body mounted neck pickup, cross bracing is an option here.  The other option is the oval sound hole guitar, Howard Roberts style, like the one I made for Chuck Morgan.  This is parallel braced.

Your Liddy mandolins have great tone and quite astonishing volume, in my opinion rivalling Gibsons and Gilchrists. Did you expect the mandolins to be so successful right from the first one?
No, it was quite a surprise for me really. But I’d come to mandolins after building guitars and I just went with my intuition. I built the prototype out of some scraps of maple and spruce that were too small for guitars and it turned out to be quite a reasonable mandolin. So reasonable, in fact, that Kym Warner ended up taking it to the States.

Are the key issues in mandolin making the same as with the arch-top guitars?
Well, I think they are pretty similar. I’m after a more percussive sound with the mandolins than I am with the guitars, so at this stage I am doing parallel tone bars rather than cross bracing. But generally I use the same principle of working up the tops and backs.

What is your favourite part of the instrument building process?
It has got to be tuning the tops. I don’t tune them to a pitch, but I work with intuition and the benefit of experience to get them to the point where I feel they will perform at their peak.  But this is an ongoing learning experience and I try to take in what every top has to teach me.

Tell us about the batch of mandolins that you’ve got on the go at the moment.
It is a batch of nine.  Up to date I’ve used mostly Red Maple and Sitka Spruce, but on this next lot I’ve got a couple with Red Spruce tops and Sugar Maple back and sides. Apart from that this batch is basically the same as the previous F5s I’ve made.

What is planned for Liddy Guitars and Mandolins in the future?
Well up to date I have been concentrating pretty much on just the guitars and F5 style mandolins. I have spent a lot of time getting the production process sorted – making jigs, that sort of stuff.  Obviously, you have got to have a reasonably efficient production process to make the small batch production that I do a viable operation.  While you're always going to be making improvements to things. I have reached the stage now where the process is fairly mature.The next big step is to develop up a range of A-Style mandolins.  I am doing this in conjunction with my son, Matt.  Or, rather I should say Matt is doing this.  I am just picking on him from time to time.

Your instruments are finished really nicely. Very thin and even, can you tell us about that?
I use nitrocellulose lacquer. I try to keep the finish as thin as possible, so as not to compromise the performance of the instrument.  To do this I am meticulous in the preparation before I put the finish on, so, hopefully, I don’t have to fiddle too much with the finish afterwards, and I don’t sand through it in the cutting back process.
Where I am staining figured wood I like to hand rub the stain on, in a series applications, this really brings out figure creating a 3-D effect.  Most instrument sunbursts are done by applying the colour in the lacquer, this just has the effect of hiding the wood grain.  This may even be the purpose of it, where the grain is not up to a high enough standard to be used in a natural finish guitar

Will you take custom orders for other styles of stringed instruments?
If it is a carved top in the guitar/mandolin family, I would consider it depending on my work load.

written by Paul Thompson