Life With Strings Attached

Today on Life With Strings Attached , I’m joined by Adrian Bagale of Northfield Mandolins and Guitars. Adrian’s path begins in Rochester, New York, surrounded by jazz and guitars, and moves through Elderly Instruments, instrument development in Asia, and eventually the founding of Northfield. We talk about what decades spent studying, building and playing instruments have taught him, why Northfiel...

Today on Life With Strings Attached, I'm joined by Hozen Yong, the founder of Hozen Guitars and a builder whose mission it has been to bring boutique-level responsiveness and craftsmanship to a wider range of players. His path started in Singapore, surrounded by his family's piano business. But rather than take over the family business, he chose his own path in guitars, teaching himself...

Today on Life With Strings Attached, I sit down with filmmaker and storyteller Tim C. Johnson for a conversation about what guitars, animation and great stories have in common. From the creative worlds behind films like Ants, Over the Hedge and How to Train Your Dragon, to the radical beauty of instruments by builders like Ulrich Teufel and Eric Weigeshoff, Tim explores why the most meaningful art...

Today on Life With Strings Attached, I'm joined by Marcel Fehse, a German guitar maker whose instruments challenge almost every assumption about how a guitar should be built. Drawing on a background in metalworking, he's developed a striking all-aluminum approach that's not just about changing materials. It's about rethinking the instrument from the inside out. We talk about cr...

Today on Life With Strings Attached, I'm joined by Ola Strandberg, the guitar designer, innovator, and creative force behind Strandberg Guitars. We talked about the small design decisions that make a huge difference, from neck materials and tremolo systems to serviceability, ergonomics, and the long road from the first idea to a finished instrument. Along the way, we also get into creativity,...

You can see the Two Towers in person right now on the BGS enTour 2026. Find dates and locations here: https://www.boutiqueguitarshowcase.com/about-entour In the summer of 1911, a 19-year-old J.R.R. Tolkien hiked through the Swiss Alps with a group of friends. What he found in the Lauterbrunnen Valley, with its 72 waterfalls, sheer cliffs and snow-capped peaks, would stay with him for the rest of h...

My guest today is Jerome Little, founder of Torzal Guitars and the mind behind the Natural Twist. Jerome’s story begins in the Sierra Nevada mountains, where making things, solving problems, and figuring things out for yourself were simply part of growing up. He started playing bass as a teenager, studied music and acoustics at Hampshire College, and eventually brought those interests together whe...

Today's guest is luthier and architect Simon Padalka, a guitar maker with few peers. In this conversation, we talk about the dramatic events that unfolded at the end of the 2025 Boutique Guitar Showcase enTour season, when the Padalka guitar that sold on tour was caught in a truck fire in Phoenix, Arizona. Thought lost, then to everyone's surprise, the guitar popped up again for sale a f...

In this episode, I speak with Lisbon-based artist, musician, and instrument designer André Gonçalves of ADDAC System. For sixteen years, André has explored modular synthesis, experimental music, and the physical interfaces that make electronic sound feel immediate and human. His ADDAC120 Four String Series brings those worlds together, integrating guitar strings, pickups, motors, bows, and resonat...

In this episode, I sit down with Chris Griffiths, someone I’ve known for nearly twenty-five years and whose remarkable career I’ve had the opportunity to see unfold firsthand. Chris opened his first guitar shop at nineteen, trained as a guitar maker and went on to found Garrison Guitars, where he developed an entirely new approach to building an acoustic guitar. His path has since taken him throug...

Welcome to Life with Strings Attached. I'm your host, Jamie Gale. Today's guest is Nik Huber, one of the most well-respected guitar makers in the world. 30 years is a remarkable milestone for any guitar maker. It's long enough to build thousands of instruments, earn the trust of musicians around the world and prove that quality could stand the test of time. Nik Huber and I first met...

Welcome to Life With Strings Attached. I'm your host, Jamie Gale. My guest today is famed archtop guitar maker Cristian Mirabella. This episode is the result of an impromptu conversation at the end of Cristian's biography episode. After our first recording, Cristian and I kept on talking, and it became clear that there was another thread worth following, the history of the archtop guitar...

Every guitar James Trussart builds carries far more than steel, wood, and craftsmanship. It carries the influences of a life lived across France, Louisiana, and Los Angeles, a fascination with history, and an unwavering belief that every instrument should contribute something new to the ongoing conversation of the guitar. We talk about freedom, creativity, memory, music, travel, craftsmanship, and...

Welcome to Life With Strings Attached. I'm your host, Jamie Gale. This episode was filmed live on location at Tom Anderson Guitar Works in Southern California. My guest today is Markus Spohn, co-owner of Tom Anderson Guitar Works. Born in a mining region of West Germany, the story begins far from the guitar workshops in Southern California. Markus first came to Anderson as a player and a cust...

My guest today is famed archtop guitar maker Cristian Mirabella. Cristian's story begins in New York, on Long Island, in a family shaped by music, resilience and a deep sense of purpose.  At just 10 years old, Cristian started working at Ronnie's guitar shop, where he swept floors, polished instruments, learned repairs and found himself surrounded by working musicians, vintage archtops,...

Today's special biography episode with legendary guitar maker, Steve Klein, was filmed live on location in Northern California. Steve's story begins in San Francisco in 1949. It's a story shaped by Austrian immigrants who were ski instructors, scientists, artists, and the generation that came of age during one of the most creative periods in California's history. Over the next...

Today's special biography episode with legendary guitar maker, Ervin Somogyi, was filmed live at a location in Northern California. Ervin's tour begins in Budapest during the Second World War. The son of parents whose lives had been shaped by conflict and displacement, his early years carried him across Europe, through Cuba and Mexico, and eventually to the United States.  Along the way,...

This episode is filmed live on location at Anderson Guitarworks in Southern California, where I sat down with the company's co-owners Tom Anderson and Markus Spohn. Now, in their fifth decade, Tom Anderson Guitarworks has earned one of the best reputations in the guitar world. Tom speaks with the clarity of someone who has spent decades refining an idea, not simply chasing perfection, but sho...

This episode was filmed live on location in Tuscany, where we sat down with David Sutkin, founder of Bass UpFront. A global community of more than 36.000 bass players, builders, collectors, people who care deeply about the instrument. David is known for his remarkable collection, the Bass UpFront studio and the conversation he's held built around bass culture. He brings a player's ear, a...

This episode was filmed live on location in Tuscany, where I sat down with revolutionary guitar maker Sheldon Dingwall to document his biography.  He'll be the first to tell you that he didn't invent the multiscale concept, but he recognized what it could solve for the bass, replied it with purpose, and in 1993 brought the first production multiscale bass to the market. From there, Dingw...

Today's episode was filmed on location in Northern California at the headquarters of EMG. Our guest is Rob Turner, founder of EMG pickups, a company that helped change the sound, function, and possibility to the electric guitar, becoming synonymous with some of the most famous musicians in the world. Rob grew up in Long Beach, California, in a family where engineering, music, electronics, and...

Today's special biography episode was filmed on location at Tom Anderson Guitarworks in Southern California, with a man whose life's work is so interwoven into the modern history of guitar that it becomes difficult to see the forest for the trees. That man, of course, is Tom Anderson.  Tom's story starts in Southern California. Surf music, the British invasion, a transformative Dick...

My guest today is Eli Lester, owner and CEO of Two-Rock Amplifiers and Divided by Thirteen. Eli is someone deeply obsessed with sound, craftsmanship, history, and the idea that the smallest details still matter.  From vintage gear and vacuum tubes to photography, hot rods, and building amplifiers component by component, his world is driven by curiosity and an unwillingness to settle for “good enou...

In this episode, I'm sitting down with legendary guitar maker James Trussart in his workshop located in Echo Park, California. From growing up on a French horse farm near the border of Luxembourg to discovering American music through nearby airbases, to hitchhiking with aspirations of becoming a vagabond. James' story moves from farm life and American military influence to building his f...

In this episode, I’m joined by Linnea Sundberg who's joining us from Brooklyn, where she’s working at the intersection of music, technology, and the evolving artist economy.  From her early days in Sweden to Oxford, to investment banking at Goldman Sachs, and into the heart of Spotify’s rise, Linnea has been part of some of the most defining shifts in modern music. Today, she’s with UnitedMas...