2018 AGS Magazine

I chose four people whom I’ve gotten to know
over the years and sent them each a few identical
questions and a few questions specific to them.
I’ve written this piece around their views and
hope that it is an enjoyable read but I also hope it
serves to show that while what people consider to
be “the golden era” of lutherie is behind us, the
future of lutherie is extremely bright and in very
competent, passionate, and visionary hands. Maybe
it will be called the “platinum era” of lutherie.
The four luthiers I chose to speak with are Sam
Guidry, Tom Sands, Isaac Jang and Meredith
Coloma.
Sam Guidry
Sam was one of the first people I met in my
own journey in lutherie. When I attended Bryan
Galloup’s “Galloup School of Lutherie” Sam was
Sam Guidry
Bryan’s right-hand
man. He was an ever
present and admired
figure at the school and
later when I was Bryan’s
apprentice, Sam and I
became good friends
and throughout the
years he has continued
to be a source of inspiration
and information
for me. Sam has played
a critical role with Bryan
in developing an empirical
way of looking
at the voicing of instruments and, in my opinion,
their work in this area will be heavily studied and
revered in the future. I wanted to speak to Sam
because after nearly 19 years as Bryan’s right-hand
man, he has only recently begun building his own
instruments in earnest. When it comes to voicing
acoustic flat top guitars from the perspective of
empirically based science I don’t know anyone in
this generation of makers who knows more on the
subject.
Tom Sands
Tom Sands
I first learned of Tom Sands on Instagram. I had
been developing an idea for a while where I was
going to inlay chemically treated metals into my
rosettes. One day I logged on and saw that someone
named Tom Sands had beat me to it and was
doing it well. This moment of frustration and air
punching led to an interest in his work. I noticed
he was apprenticing with Ervin Somogyi and had
a very clean and fresh aesthetic design sense.
We met at the 2017 Artisan Guitar Show and got
along immediately. We share an interest in design,
ecologically sustainable building, and playing with
different materials. Tom gets a lot of his design
sense and woodworking chops from the fact that
prior to apprenticing with Ervin he was already an
accomplished and formally trained furniture maker
and industrial designer. The newest to lutherie of
the four folks I spoke with, Tom is already gaining
a ton of attention and clearly has a strong
command over the craft. He is an example of
something that I think is crucial for young makers
which is to expand your skill set understanding of
woodworking outside of the walls of instruments.
The knowledge gained from building furniture,
doing contracting work or carpentry gives you
a much broader foundational base that always
seems to serve those with that kind of experience
well in lutherie.
Isaac Jang
Isaac Jang was also
one of the first people
I met in lutherie. Isaac
was a student at the
Galloup School when I
was apprenticing with
Bryan. A big part of my
apprenticeship there
was being an assistant
instructor for the
school. One of the first
things I realized about
Isaac was that he had
an idea very early on
of how he wanted his
instruments to look --
constantly disobeying
instructions by us to
do his own thing -- a
trait that I also had as
a student. It was clear
that he had an impeccable
eye for clean
work and a serious
attention to detail and
focus. I was not at all
surprised to later hear
that he had landed an
Isaac Jang
artisanguitarshow.com | 29