Life With Strings Attached

This week on the podcast, English guitar maker Rosie Heydenrych talks about how she started Turnstone Guitars, why she's drawn to using non-traditional woods, and what fuels her curiosity as she continues to grow her business. As well as crafting beautiful and refreshing instruments, Rosie has created a family business that prioritises what's most important and motivating for her, so it&...

This week, I'm joined by Finnish master guitar maker Juha Ruokangas to talk about the future of guitars, music and his own business.  With over three decades of experience in the game, building some of the finest quality instruments available on Earth, Juha certainly has an interesting perspective on the changing world of the guitar.  It was fascinating to hear his thoughts on the culture and...

Unsurprisingly, when you talk to someone who’s a designer, professor, writer, musician and multimedia artist, your conversation covers quite a lot of ground. Ed Keller’s career and projects span an incredible breadth of work across many fields. Often with an interdisciplinary approach, he’s taught and run centers at prestigious institutions around the world, founded architecture firms, consulted w...

Having served for more than a decade in the Army, received an MBA and worked as an executive in a Fortune 500 company, Jason Kostal was already highly accomplished when he came to guitar building – and it’s now yet another area in his life where he’s achieved excellence. Bringing such a varied experience into his work gives Jason a uniquely informed perspective on running a business, being the bes...

Guitar builder Randy Parsons joins me to share some incredible stories on this week’s episode, including working with Jack White, using a cattle skull for the bracing of a guitar he made for Jimmy Page, how he came up with the 50,000-piece Red Queen in a single moment of spontaneity, how he moved his workshop from a former Hell Angels hideout to a century-old church in rural Kansas – and lots more...

I’m pleased to announce that my guest this week on Life With Strings Attached is guitar maker Michael Greenfield. Michael is passionate about tone. Great tone. FAT tone. Squeezing every last molecule of tone out of his instruments. Prior to making the commitment to build full-time, he spent 20 years repairing and restoring vintage instruments. He has also been a player for 60 years; so perfect fee...

This week on Life With Strings Attached, we’re exploring the intersection of neuroscience, music and advanced AI. Our guide through these topics is Dr. Gabriel Axel Montes, a neuroscientist, entrepreneur, author, musician, and researcher and practitioner of consciousness development.  With a focus on AI, Gabriel works both hands-on and at the thought-leadership level in guiding the beneficial deve...

I’m very pleased to have Legendary instrument designer Ned Steinberger as our special guest on this week’s episode of Life With Strings Attached. With a remarkable 40-year legacy, Ned Steinberger has been at the forefront of innovation, with instruments that have revolutionized the industry and set new standards for performance and ergonomic comfort. Those instruments have been adopted by an impre...

I’m pleased to have Murray Kuun as our special guest on this week’s episode of Life With Strings Attached.  Murray says that a transformative trip to Italy in the 1990s, punctuated by a visit to Michelangelo’s David and a serendipitous encounter with a Luthier, ignited his desire to craft musical instruments. With only a poorly written book as guidance, he painstakingly fashioned his first violin,...

We talk a lot about tone – but what's the science behind the sound of our stringed instruments? To tackle this topic, I can think of few better people to talk with than Tom Nania. As well as his work as an acoustics engineer with D'Addario, Tom is a member of the Violin Society of America’s Oberlin Acoustics Workshop. Prior to joining D’Addario, he also worked as a luthier and acoustics...

Robin Stummvoll of Verso Instruments was recently explaining to me how big an influence Ulrich Teuffel was for his guitar designs. And when it became clear that the two had never met – despite coming from the same region in Germany – I felt I had to change that.  Luckily, they agreed, and I had the pleasure of bringing the two guitar innovators together in Uli’s workshop to discuss design, entrepr...

I'm very pleased to have Omer Deutsch of OD Guitars on this week's episode of Life With Strings Attached. Originally trained as an industrial designer, Omer worked in product design for seven years before starting his guitar making business in 2016. Since then, he’s made guitars for many artists, mostly in the world of metal, including players such as Roman Ibramkhalilov of Jinjer and Da...

This week's episode of Life With Strings Attached was recorded on location in Northern Ontario, Canada – actually, in my backyard, by special request of today's guest, Mike Sankey.  Mike has been creating one-of-a-kind guitars for over 25 years in his workshop in Ottawa, Canada. While better known for organic yet futuristic electric instruments, his work has always been informed by a dee...

This week's episode of Life With Strings Attached was filmed on location in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, with marine biologist Richard Sears. Sears is a Franco-American who founded the Mingan Island Cetacean Study in 1979 to study marine mammals in the Saint Lawrence, with an emphasis on baleen whales. He worked with the pioneers of whale research, from whom he learned that in order to know whal...

In Part 2 of this conversation, Ulrich Teuffel goes deeper into the discipline, repetition, and mindset behind building guitars over decades. From the intense development of the Birdfish to the quiet satisfaction of refining small details over time, this episode explores mastery, doubt, and the realities of working as an independent luthier. ▶ Explore Ulrich Teuffel: https://www.boutiqueguitarshow...

Today's episode of Life with Strings Attached was filmed on location in southern Germany, in the workshop of Ulrich Teuffel. Since 1988, Ulrich (Uli to his friends) has been crafting electric guitars unlike any other luthier. In bringing together a unique blend of his training as an automotive mechanic and his studies in industrial design from the 1990s, he's created innovative models—Bi...

Aerospace engineer Giulio Di Donato met with me just outside of Bologna for this week's episode, where we explore the fundamentals of aerospace engineering and aerodynamics, and see what learnings we can take to other topics and disciplines.  Giulio works in research and development for a prestigious super sports car company, taking responsibility for the thermal management of the vehicles fr...

I visited Giulio Negrini of GNG in his workshop in Switzerland to talk about his guitars, and inevitably we ended up talking about far more: the role of fantasy in our culture, the allure of thematically dark or morbid art, and the magical elements that go into instrument making. An Italian master luthier, trained in the Cremonese style of Stradivarius, Guarneri and Amati, Giulio pursues perfectio...

I've known Nik Huber for many years – since almost the very beginning of my work in the guitar industry. While we were catching up in a restaurant during the Montreux International Guitar Show, I wanted to dive back into some of the stories that have defined his hugely successful career as a guitar maker. So, a bit less of a podcast, this episode is more like sitting in on dinner between two...

For this week’s episode, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Sheldon Dingwall outside of the ancient Osaka Castle in Japan.   Sheldon is the founder and CEO of Dingwall Guitars. The modern champion of the multiscale bass, Dingwall boasts an artist roster including Lee Sklar, Adam “Nolly” Getgood of Periphery, Jacob Umanksy of Intervals, Jean-Michel Labadie of Gojira, Ali Dean of Architects, an...

Zackery Belanger is an expert in the form and material of acoustic architecture. For most of his career, he has questioned the dominant approaches in acoustics, convinced that intuitive, creative approaches are possible. He is the author of the essay Acoustic Ornament, which argues for consideration of non-acoustic surfaces and objects. In 2017 he founded the Detroit-based studio Arcgeometer. Bela...

For this week's episode of Life With Strings Attached, I joined Michael Spalt at his home and workshop in Portugal, where he recently relocated from Vienna. For decades, Michael's work has developed at the intersection of art, design and instrument making, pushing boundaries and experimenting with surprising materials. Whether in series like his Totem guitars featuring resin tops, or in...

For this week's episode of Life With Strings Attached, I had the pleasure of joining my good friend Bruno Bacci in Tuscany, where he has forged an enviable career as a guitar maker. With a background in design, Bruno talks about how his whole life has actually led him to guitar making, how he's managed to establish a successful guitar business, and how his passion for working with musici...

For this week's episode, I sat down with Adriano Sérgio of Ergon Guitars in Portugal.   It's always fascinating to speak with skilled craftspeople about their work, but it would be remiss to only talk about guitar making in an episode with Adriano. Fleeing his homeland as a child; serving as the equivalent of a Navy SEAL in Portugal; gaining a degree in jazz performance; touring in music...

From producing Fight Club and screenwriting for the BBC to partnering with UNICEF and creating films about some of the world's most important environmental projects, Ross's work has many threads. But they're all connected by a single mission. As a writer, producer and director, Ross has harnessed the power of storytelling to make an impact, and as an educator, narrative consultant a...