Randy Lucas
Biography
In 1988, I began repairing, restoring, and building
acoustic guitars. Fifteen years as a mechanical designer
served me well as I made the transition to become a
luthier.
The initial phase of this journey was spent repairing
hundreds of guitars. I learned that a great deal of
tone and playability could be gained if a guitar just
had a proper neck angle and set-up. Replacing nuts and
saddles with bone material and intonating the saddle
made a huge difference alone. Many of my clients brought
me brand new guitars just to get these modifications.
More importantly, I noticed that some designs were
consistently prone to the same problems. Some of these
repairs could have been easier to correct if only the
manufacturer had made them more repair friendly.
Sadly, many builders skip the process of learning repair
skills and go right into building new guitars. I think
reading textbooks and trade publications are great learning
tools in any endeavor, but it was my repair experience
that helped forge my career as a guitar builder.
I also restored several vintage pre-war Martin and
Gibson guitars. I still have the notes, drawings, and
photos of those fabulous instruments. I invested hundreds
of hours analyzing and restoring them because I wanted
to find out why they sounded so good. This experience
helped me formulate a correlation between design and
tone. With over sixty years of use and abuse these designs
proved the test of time. Especially when you consider
that these instruments endured many of those years under
the tension of heavy gauge strings. A tip of the hat
goes out to those who came before me!
For the last ten years, I've focused building traditional
models of vintage guitars. My attention to detail led
me to use Adirondack red spruce for brace wood and guitar
tops. Almost all Martin and Gibson instruments built
before 1945 used this wood in the construction of their
guitars. The results of using this wood have proven
so successful that I now use it on almost everything
I build. It has recently found favor by other builders
as well.
Randy Lucas
Models Offered: All Models. We
offer them in stock and by custom order.
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