interviews

Here you will find part of a long conversation between the writer and Luca Waldner, a guitar maker living and working in Ponte in Valtellina who agreed to talk about some aspects of his work, shedding some light on the different phases of a journey which, after twenty years of activity in the sector, still looks towards a mysterious mirage.

Before embarking on the profession of guitar maker you pursued your studies of guitar leading to an outstanding diploma. To what extent does your experience as a guitarist influence you as a guitar maker?

A lot, I would say. Your knowledge of the instrument allows you to get to the heart of the matter, it allows you to see things from the inside, it produces a more intimate relationship because you understand the sound and its properties, you understand the necessity of a balance which expresses itself in the musicality of the instrument. At the same time, you already know the workings of the guitar from a mechanical point of view. You have the experience of the guitar’s ergonomics and of the problems that the guitar typically poses such as the ease of holding the neck. Essentially, there is the seminal experience of contact with the instrument, be it for the right hand or the left, as well as for the approach of the body as a whole. We’re talking about the accumulation of years of experience which somehow comes back to me and bears fruit.

Typically, a guitar builder isn’t, or wasn’t a guitarist too…

Whoever has not internalised these experiences needs to be guided by someone who has and who understands their dynamics, otherwise the risk is that of building instruments that go against, rather than towards, that which every musician seeks in his own studies. I am generally of the opinion that the instrument should be played - and probably Torres himself played - in order not to be limited to just the ‘visible’ aspects of construction such as the materials, the shape and the dimensions but to go deeper toward the most important dimension of an instrument – that of sound.

When did you first have the idea to build a guitar and what inspired it?

It happened in 1989 and came about by exclusion, so to speak.

In what sense?

In the sense that it started life as an investigation of self, allowing one’s own attitudes to have their own space.

To which attitudes are you referring?

I have always had a strong predilection for any type of manual work, especially for the mechanical aspect of objects and I have always been instinctively interested in their structure and an understanding of their underlying mechanisms. By vocation I should have done something entirely different with my life.

What would that be?

A mechanic.

That doesn’t really have a great deal to do with music…

Music has always played an essential part in my life because in the study of guitar I found things that it was a shame to lose. I followed the course at the conservatory and thereafter spent a year between teaching and performing. It was at this point that I asked myself the question whether it was really this that I wanted to do. The answer is not always easy but implies nonetheless a choice which contains that part of yourself that you cannot give up: if you suppress an important part of yourself, everything that you are and do will then be negatively affected and the price you pay will be enormous.

So you found a synthesis of the two tendencies?

The choice came from my personal history rather than a theoretical standpoint, it is difficult to speak well or ill of paths that have been followed, or to say if a choice is right or wrong.

You spoke earlier of an investigation. What is it that you are searching for in the instruments you make?

The guitars are stages on an ever growing and evolving journey. When I finish a guitar I am already beyond it, because the fixed point that a particular instrument represents defines already a way forward, an objective that lies beyond that which has been completed.

Might one say that your guitars speak of you?

My guitars reveal what I am and what I’m searching for as I’m building them.

And what is the goal of your search?

By defining a goal you put yourself into a situation of immobility, where the search would end the moment the instrument was finished. In reality, what you are looking for is indefinable, the guitars themselves are a way towards this indefinable. And we should not be misled by the fact that we are dealing with material objects. We are nonetheless dealing with steps which mark out a path in the evolution of the story.

While we are on the subject of stories, can you tell us the story of how you went about the preparations for the construction of you first instrument?

Well at the start I examined my own guitar, a Ramirez. I tried to understand how it was built, how and in what order the different pieces were stuck together, how they had been cut and made, what their role was in the structure as a whole. For some of the bits it was necessary to build the equipment that I was lacking. I had to do my utmost to learn a craft that nobody was actually teaching me.

How long did this initial phase take?

Six months – then guitar ‘0’ was born.

How many guitars have you made?

By now, it is one hundred and two. But the first steps started from the first instrument. Each successive guitar was built off the back of all the errors I was able to observe in its predecessor. And so on.

How do you choose your raw materials?

The choice of materials is a necessity guided by taste; in reality there aren’t any strictly mechanical needs, the choice is very personal. Spruce is essential for the soundboard given its physical capacities for extreme vibration. For the back and sides I am especially fond of maple, which I have found to be a superb wood from both the aesthetic and acoustic points of view, while I have to admit to a love hate relationship with Rio rosewood, as it obliges you to work on a knife edge, so to speak. It’s a heavy wood, barely workable, the sound can be beautiful or like a broken promise, it is right on a borderline between the two; it is also difficult to work. Cypress too is an interesting wood. For the neck I used mahogany for a long time but have recently come to prefer cedar which is a lighter wood with greater functionality in terms of the static and acoustic balance of the instrument.

Aren’t there any “objective” criteria for the choice of the woods you use?

There are some theoretical criteria in the sense that the wood must of course be dry, it must be well cut and must be free of flaws. There are moreover criteria associated with one’s sensibility which are difficult to define. Even in this, one could admit to being guided by one’s own mirage which is, as we said earlier, something ultimately indefinable. If on the one hand there are undeniably intrinsic qualities to the wood itself, there is on the other the intuition that a particular wood might take you in the very direction you want to go.

And with regard to the shape?

The shape of the instrument is defined by the sonority that corresponds to it, in the sense that there are characteristics of sound that are linked to the shape in use. I have tried to design my own, but in the end I use two Torres shapes, that of Llobet’s guitar and 111: they are so beautiful and functional from a vibratory perspective that it would be superfluous to search for others.

Have you also used Hauser’s shapes?

Yes, indeed, but I have to say that the direction in which they are moving isn’t in line with my own.

And others?

I’ve tried many, many shapes reworking the guitars of many builders, operating a sort of “disengineering” which means starting from something complete and breaking it into sections, in an attempt to get close to the original act and thought. There is a strong link between the aesthetic and acoustic aspects of an instrument by which I mean actual physical phenomena which include the relationship between all its different elements. The harmony of the sound cannot be divorced from the harmony of the shape and this is such a complex phenomenon that it cannot easily be explained in its totality, even if it can definitely be observed in nature.

Are the decorations on your guitars original?

Yes, especially on my most recent guitars. The ideas just come to me, to be honest. I tend to use what I like, always trying to achieve an effect of proportion and harmony. A decoration can also be plain and simple especially if by being so it renounces whatever is redundant and is functional to the harmony of the instrument. The constructional criteria for the rosette are new as well, and are not always willingly accepted. Often a new design will be refused outright simply because it isn’t like the designs one typically sees: but that which is new shouldn’t be an end in itself, it must be meaningful and this can be difficult to bring about.

The dichotomy between old and new is a fairly current concern; what’s your position with regard to old guitars?

Old guitars are really our foundations and they should be studied, observed, known and understood; but in order to continue one’s work in the future they need to be internalised. If they become a monolith which blocks the way forward, then one falls victim to an auto-referential fetishism in which you lose all sense of direction. I think it is necessary to look to the future beyond any idolatrous cage. Old guitars are really beautiful but the risk is that they represent stasis and therefore death. They cannot be ignored but should not be venerated. They are like a well or an extensive library: to be dipped into with a fully conscious mind in order to create something new and original.

Nevertheless, part of your work has been dedicated to the restoration of old guitars, if I’m not mistaken.

Exactly.

What inspired you to do this work?

From a technical point of view, I’ve attempted to work in absolute neutrality, at the same time being well aware that the principal of neutrality is a paradox , because everyone – albeit unconsciously – puts himself into what he does. I started with an attentive ‘listening’, by which I mean a detailed observation and comprehension of the instrument in its totality; from there, the work carried out will depend on what the guitar needs. Much as a doctor needs to know the patient as well as the pathology in order to prescribe a treatment.

Even if this means distancing oneself from personal choices?

Repairing a guitar means, above all, understanding the criteria by which it was originally built, criteria which don’t necessarily coincide with those which I pursue in the construction of my own guitars: it is a question of listening to the tiniest movement of the wood and analysing the damage in order to return the guitar to the best possible condition.

Why have you chosen to address the matter of restoration in your work?

Because there are instruments that it is worthwhile repairing; they are guitars that are beautiful in their own right and not just because they are old, but for the fact that they have as their objective the research of sound. Obviously this is my personal position but it is that which has lead me to carry out important restorations as in the case of the Torres of Tarrega. You see an instrument which is suffering take on a new lease of life as it re-appropriates all of its previous potential.

Have there been instruments that you have built which have left you with a sense of wonder?

In a positive sense, yes. Sometimes a guitar has turned out much better than originally anticipated. Normally one can foresee the result that an instrument will give because one knows the chronological evolution of one’s own instruments and the direction one is moving in. But some guitars come as a surprise, restoring that sense of magic and of the unfathomable.

How have your guitars evolved from the first years up to now?

At first you are very aware that it is an uphill struggle: you start from nothing and proceed with small steps. Change is inevitable, indeed, essential, I would say. But there is one constant and that constant is me. There is a common thread which unites all my instruments and permeates their sound.

How does a typical working day pan out?

On average I work about 7 or 8 hours a day doing a number of different things depending on how urgent something might be. My work is not exclusively about building instruments but involves many other things, such as the writing of texts (for magazines, conferences or my website) and jobs which cannot be ignored such as travelling to obtain materials or to take part in events or many other things. I often need to purchase new equipment to meet the needs sparked by the idea of a new project or I have to invent them myself, acquiring along the way a whole variety of mechanical and electronic skills; consequently my evenings, and frequently my weekends, are dedicated to study.

What do you study?

Guitar making, of course, but also electronics, computing, digital photography.

One could say that they are hobbies?

Well, they are actually sidelines which are part-and-parcel of guitar building and are the result of a sense of enquiry – I’m interested in all sort of things, I want to understand, deepen my knowledge and put things in relation. It’s neither work nor hobby – here I find myself at odds with the widespread view that any activity that does not make money cannot be considered as work.

The market however works in a pretty brutal way: the value of an object is determined by its financial cost.

That is because we have lost the understanding of things: the guitar is considered to be a product and people consume products without any understanding of the work that has gone into a guitar built in a workshop. People are often ignorant of the fact that the finished product is the fruit of study, knowledge, time and effort; but what’s worse, they are incapable of understanding what they are buying, thanks to an equation which is as simple as it is profoundly wrong, i.e. that an industrially made guitar and one built in a workshop are the same.

Is there anything about your work that you don’t really like?

I would say not, even if some tasks can be more tiresome and demanding than others. When I first started there were some parts of the work that I found boring, such as bending the sides, for example. But I think that all the stages require an understanding and if there is something you don’t enjoy then it’s because you aren’t really able to do it or because you haven’t really understood it.

What sort of relationship do you have with the world of guitar making here in Italy?

To be honest, there is no relationship – I have chosen not to get involved. I am more at ease with Americans, of whom however I have only indirect experience, because they are more open, more pragmatic and less hidebound; there isn’t any of that intense suspicion or secrecy surrounding the workshop that I perceive here in Italy. Our environment is debased by a constant moral commentary about one’s personal choices, when culture should be free from any such judgement.

For example?

Even today, what one earns maintains a negative, almost sinful aspect. The purchase of an expensive piece of machinery held to be indispensable for the realisation of one’s research, ought not to be the source of scandal, much as the conspicuous payment for the construction of an instrument which implies not only a considerable number of days work but also study, materials and research ought not to be.

What does it mean trying to make a living from guitar making in Italy today?

It makes for a difficult life. Strictly, a guitar maker is an artisan and so 20% VAT is levied. My customers are mainly students of Conservatories or recent graduates who rarely – in reality, almost never – have any disposable income. If one really were to create some parity between the cost of the instrument and the materials and the amount of work that has gone into making it, the resulting price would render it instantly inaccessible to the majority of guitarists, and this is a problem that one has to face up to.

Is there any culture around hand-built guitars in Italy?

I would say not, or at least only a very marginal one. There’s neither curiosity nor attention paid to such matters. Today people are only interested in how easy something is and how fast it is, there’s neither the time nor the desire to understand or go into depth. Paradoxically, in an age where there is ever greater availability of very high quality products – I’m not just talking about guitars but also high-tech products – people are ever more inclined towards the extemporary exploitation of an object, enjoyed more for its novelty than its value, and less and less open to an understanding of what lies behind the object. In the world of guitars, there’s an increasing ‘deculturalisation’, which is why people are not only incapable of distinguishing between an industrial and a hand-made guitar, but also lack the willingness to attempt it.

So what does the future hold?

I would like one day to build ‘the great guitar’, one which has an evident and unique personality. In real terms, I would like to carry on, maintaining an interest in everything that surrounds me.

And with the outside world?

Clearly there’s a lot of work needed to increase the visibility of my instruments in terms of advertising and contacts. This means periodically updating my website, maintaining my Spanish and Japanese contacts. The world moves on apace and is evolving at a frightening speed; obviously one has to keep up and in order to do so one has to adapt the communication of one’s own meanings to its language.