Community Notebook

Thomas Humphrey’s Classical Guitars
Come to Life

Thomas Humphrey builds guitars. Other verbs also come to mind: sculpts, harnesses, innovates, challenges. Certainly “guitar maker” seems a wholly insufficient description of who he is. His innovations have literally turned the classical guitar world on its end. The esteemed classical guitarist Eliot Fisk has boldly compared Humphrey to such creative, groundbreaking inventors as Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell.

Classical Guitar described him as “leading luthier and successful innovator.” The list of top guitarists to play Humphrey’s Millennium guitar impressively includes the Assad brothers, Ricardo Cobo, and Carlos Barbosa-Lima. Sharon Isbin, the American virtuoso has said of the Millennium that “it has a roundness and warmth,” while also touting its ability to have increased volume projection. “I have used Humphrey’s guitars since 1981, and I own three. If that isn’t a sign of loyalty, I don’t know what is.”

Humphrey believes the classical guitar never became a concerto instrument or was never fully honored by the great composers due to its sheer lack of volume. Its absence from most orchestral musical literature by the greatest of composers seems to support that claim. “The body of the guitar contains perhaps two-thirds more sound than is projected,” Humphrey said. Releasing that sound without compromising quality is Humphrey’s driving force. With an artist’s attention to detail and aesthetic, and a hunger for inventiveness, Humphrey is constantly trying to revolutionize the classical guitar. Humphrey sees “the tradition of the guitar as its evolution; the fact that it continues to change.” Perhaps that may seem a conflicting goal, to want to challenge an object that can already be regarded as a model of “perfection”. Yet due to his drastic alterations, his Millennium guitars have been heralded as “masterpieces”, as “classics”, even. Coveted by many of the most important players in the classical guitar world, his $8,000 guitar is back-ordered to a well-respected clientele who will wait loyally for up to three and four years.

A child on his knee, two small dogs yapping playfully underfoot, Thomas Humphrey is down to earth, gentle, quick-witted, a story teller. He is still, 30 years into his art, full of enthusiasm and joy when speaking of the guitars he creates. The Humphrey home in Gardiner, which he personally designed using recycled stone and wood, is his “tribute to the Colonial houses of Ulster County.” It was there, accompanied by his wife, Martha, and their two daughters, that he spoke about the history of guitar makers and the future of the instrument’s design. With an easy laugh and a deeply philosophical, gentle manner, Tom Humphrey revealed his passion for what he does and how the Millennium came to be.

In the early ’70s a long-haired, skinny-hipped, amateur cellist from Minnesota’s north woods had been booted from a New York restaurant job that was temporarily closed for tax purposes. With a recently acquired busted guitar slung over a shoulder, 20-year-old Humphrey stumbled upon a small guitar-making shop in Soho owned by Michael Gurian. It was under Gurian’s tutelage that Humphrey soon found his direction. He had learned to work diligently, how to move in a workshop and how to build a traditional, classical guitar. After a year he began working on his own, continuing to adhere to the designs of the Spanish masters, while furthering his understanding of technique and tool sense.

Then sometime in 1985, Humphrey was startled awake by a dream that evoked a whole new way of approaching the guitar’s design. He sketched his idea in the night, and soon after set about actualizing his signature concept for a sloping soundboard and elevated fretboard. Humphrey acknowledges borrowing some of the technology from the harp, which shares a steep angle of the strings to the soundboard. His revolutionary Millennium design renders the guitar more playable while enhancing the sound projection and performance of the guitar. “The elevated fingerboard, which results from the high neck angle, allows incredible access to the upper register,” said Humphrey. This, in simple terms, allows the guitarist’s hand a greater range and ease of motion while also persuading the more subtle sounds to emerge.

Drawing from a rich heritage of guitar building, Humphrey seamlessly integrates past and present. Never complacent, he continually reaches for the future. “How far can we push the guitar? How much can we actually get out of it?” Humphrey, driven to continue the curve of development, could not settle for one well-respected epiphany. In order to remedy the fact that heavy internal bracing causes the high notes to lose their sustain and volume, Humphrey says, “I had another idea about a year ago now, an idea of how to brace the inside.” This newer design, with its unique, lattice style bracing, further increased the volume projection while allowing for a wider spectrum of sound and increased sustain. “Making guitars is not mindless work because it’s not repetitious for me,” he said. “I’m on a mission to really solve and unlock the mysteries of the instrument. It does need growth. It’s screaming for growth.” While respecting the great builders of the past, he also gives kudos to other contemporary builders willing to create ideas more than mere novelty, openly embracing their innovations, such as Gregg Smallman’s use of graphite in the soundboard.
Surrounded by the landscape paintings of his father (a WPA artist and liturgical silversmith), his guitars, a blend of antique furniture and cherished objects from his wife’s native Brazil, Humphrey’s convictions fell effortlessly from his tongue. “I am known to be a controversial thinker and innovative guitar maker. I don’t believe I’m a controversial thinker. I just think the way I think. I don’t recognize the controversy as it exists outside of me. But I’ve heard that quoted so many times in books and articles, so it must be true. You see, my latest theory of guitar building is, if it’s conceivable, not only is it possible, it’s probable. I believe that we will make a guitar that performs like a piano—with the ease of a piano, the response, and is as loud as a piano. I just don’t believe we can do that next year, although we might. I’m willing to say that it might take a thousand years.”

Humphrey’s innovation comes from always approaching challenges head on through trial and error, without fear of failings. “I honestly don’t think enough people do enough experimenting. They copy and get caught up in traditionalism. What they don’t realize is that the players are not. In fact, the players are way ahead of the builders. They want to do wild and outrageous things and have guitars to play that will give them far more than they’ve been getting: more volume, sustain, clarity, balance, ease of playing, voice separation, depth.

More than 400 of Humphrey’s guitars have sold internationally, and demand continues. In the last year his wife Martha rejoined him in the workshop after years of full-time mothering. Humphrey said of his wife, “Working with Martha again, is a really wonderful thing. She does really great, meticulous work. We don’t bring other stuff into the workshop. We just sit quietly and work. And it is great that no matter how many guitars you’re doing, when you have somebody working with you, you always know there is something moving forward. It’s like riding a freight train. Even though you’re moving very slow, at least you know you’re going. And it’s that feeling of rolling along which is very nice.” With her help, Tom Humphrey will produce as many as 40 guitars per year, almost doubling his output from years past.

In the workshop there are the bones of the guitars ready to be assembled. In the presence of such beautiful guitars, woods, finishes, Humphrey spoke of his pick of the litter of his most recent batch, and how certain guitarists will be drawn to a particular guitar as if chemistry is at work. I wondered how the personalities of each guitar seem to emerge, at what stage of the process and if it even begins with the wood itself. “You would really think so,” Humphrey offered, “because these woods from Brazil, the United States, Central America, Europe and Africa are going to rub up against each other for the first time. They’ll start to know and sense each other, and you’re going to know it too. Certain woods will just feel right together.”

The Millennium guitars are built primarily of Brazilian Rosewood, Western Red Cedar, German Spruce, either American Englewood Spruce or Rocky Mountain Spruce. Cedar guitars have been made upon request. Humphrey says that while the various woods will produce distinctly different sounding guitars, amongst even the most competent high-level players there is no consensus on the definitive wood. “There’s not even a way to say that for different circumstances, one for touring, one for recording etc., there is one favorite.”
Humphrey uses different distributions of those woods mentioned for the soundboard but the backs and sides are made exclusively of Brazilian Rosewood, the necks are of Spanish Cedar, and the fingerboards are ebony.

So if there is no “favorite wood” then why the continued demand for the endangered Brazilian Rosewood? The answer seems to lie more in tradition than proven increased acoustic quality. Despite the 1969 ban on its use, Rosewood acquired before the ban is legal. Humphrey’s large supply pre-dates the ban, wood that was cut and stored in workshops and warehouses for 50 to 100 years. He uses it “simply because I have it.” But reiterates that there are many woods capable of making great sounding guitars.

“I’m particular about the seasoning of the wood I build from, but wood type isn’t as important as the design, construction, and function of the instrument.” He adds that probably the most determinate factor is that of air quality, namely humidity and temperature. “The greatest contributor is probably the environmental control.”

To the question of where the classical and acoustic or steel stringed guitars diverged, Humphrey explained how both are direct descendants of the lute and how prior to the early 20th century, all stringed instruments were made with gut strings. The use of steel strings in the acoustic guitar increased tension, therefore allowing for greater volume, but it also meant that the instruments could be bigger, had to be braced much heavier, and adjustments were then made to the rods in the neck and the bridge to accommodate the added frets which followed. Of course, the gut strings of the classical guitar have been largely replaced by the use of nylon, resistant to the fraying and breakage so problematic of the natural strings.

Fueled by the demand for a less expensive guitar than his Millennium and faster turnaround time, Humphrey joined forces with the C.F. Martin Company and Sting in early 1987. The CMHS blends Humphrey’s trademark elevated neck and fretboard, and his lattice bracing system design with Martin’s respected name and Sting’s “playing requirements.”

When Humphrey was asked about his favorite aspect of guitar building, he answered without delay, “Oh, I’m Gepetto the guitar maker for sure. [When] you see yourself working in your workshop, and you can say to yourself, ‘How could it be any better than this?’ To work with the various woods and then bring them together into something that serves a medium as wonderful as music—in a way, it’s the true samurai existence, to serve the Lord of the art. There is definitely something to be said for liking what you do. I feel that; Martha and I both feel that way. We are very lucky that on a beautiful, cold winter morning, we can quietly listen to music, while working in the workshop.”

And so, like Gepetto, Thomas Humphrey’s brings his innovative vision to life, carving the possibility of music out of wood.

— Jenny Wonderling