Steinquest Guitars Workshop Profile

Meet Luthier Adam Steinquist at his guitar workshop in Wisconsin and find out what makes his instruments truly unique works of art.

Transcript

00:00If you wanted to build an instrument as quickly as possible you could build it in about 50 or 60 hours.

00:08But more of what I do is designing a piece of art.

00:13Designing something that has an entire design aesthetic that flows.

00:18And so much of the time that it takes for me to build an instrument is tied up in just looking at it.

00:25I'll design something, I'll put it together, and then I'll set it on my bench and I'll step back 10 or 15 feet.

00:35And just look and think about what it is that I like about the design and what it is that I don't like about the design.

00:42Ideally when I'm done, and I've told other people this,

00:48but what I want with a design is for it to be so subtle that you love it, but you can't explain why.

00:57I want it to be something that someone will look at next year, will look at the year after that, in 10 years from now,

01:04and still be finding little things, almost like hiding little presents in the instrument.

01:10So that you keep discovering elements of what you like and what the design as a whole was meant to be.

01:18It's really fun when I have people over and show them my work.

01:22And they can pick out little things that I thought were my own little secret, you know?

01:27I've had friends come over and say, oh I love that little grain pattern right on the edge there.

01:31I love that you kept that. And it was intentional.

01:34It wasn't something that was an accident that I did without thinking about it.

01:39All of it is intentional. All of it is meant to be there.

01:43So if you see it on my instrument, the reason that it's there is because I kept it.

01:53When you're shaping and forming an instrument, a lot of the design principles are the same as if you were designing an airplane.

02:02Where you want it to be very lightweight, so that there's less resistance for it to be activated, for it to be able to be responsive.

02:11But you want it to be strong.

02:16I've had a number of other guitar builders that I've been able to pick their brain and ask them, how do you do this? Or why do you do this?

02:23And the why is really what is, to me, more exciting and more meaningful.

02:27If you can figure out why something is designed the way that it is or that it's built the way that it is,

02:33those are the things that help you do what you do better.

02:37Because to mimic somebody else doesn't benefit you if you don't know why they're doing what they're doing.

02:42The why is the most important part.