page_title: Luthier
section_title: Guitars
hierarchical_section_title: Luthier / Plucked strings / Guitars
caption_attribution_description: English: A luthier building classical guitars in Madrid, Spain.
context_page_description: A luthier is a craftsperson who builds and repairs string instruments that have a neck and a sound box. The word "luthier" is originally French and comes from the French word for lute. The term was originally used for makers of lutes, but it came to be used already in French for makers of most bowed and plucked stringed instruments such as members of the violin family and guitars. Luthiers, however, do not make harps or pianos; these require different skills and construction methods because their strings are secured to a frame.
  The craft of luthiers, lutherie, is commonly divided into the two main categories of makers of stringed instruments that are plucked or strummed and makers of stringed instruments that are bowed. Since bowed instruments require a bow, the second category includes a subtype known as a bow maker or archetier. Luthiers may also teach string-instrument making, either through apprenticeship or formal classroom instruction.
context_section_description: Two important luthiers of the early 19th century connected with the development of the modern classical guitar are Louis Panormo and Georg Staufer. Antonio Torres Jurado is credited with developing the form of classical guitar still in use today. Christian Frederick Martin of Germany developed a form that evolved into the modern steel-string acoustic guitar.
  The American luthier Orville Gibson specialized in mandolins, and is credited with creating the archtop guitar. The important 20th-century American luthiers John D'Angelico and Jimmy D'Aquisto made archtop guitars.  Lloyd Loar worked briefly for the Gibson Guitar Corporation making mandolins and guitars. His designs for a family of arch top instruments (mandolin, mandola, guitar, et cetera) are held in high esteem by today's luthiers, who seek to reproduce their sound.  Paul Bigsby's innovation of the tremolo arm for archtop and electric guitars is still in use today and may have influenced Leo Fender's design for the Stratocaster solid-body electric guitar, as well as the Jaguar and Jazzmaster.  Concurrent with Fender's work, guitarist Les Paul independently developed a solid-body electric guitar. These were the first fretted, solid-body electric guitars—though they were preceded by the cast aluminum "frying pan", a solid-body electric lap steel guitar developed and eventually patented by George Beauchamp, and built by Adolph Rickenbacher.
  A company founded by luthier Friedrich Gretsch and continued by his son and grandson, Fred and Fred, Jr., originally made banjos, but is more famous today for its electric guitars.  Vintage guitars are often sought by collectors.
caption: A luthier building classical guitars in Madrid, Spain
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