How to Build a Guitar

William Eaton

PHOENIX – Everyone knows that if you want to buy a guitar, you go to a store and pick out the model you like. The guitar would come from a factory where it was built by a skilled craftsman.

But have you ever thought about who taught the craftsman how to make that guitar?

There’s a good possibility the guitar maker was trained at the Roberto-Venn School of Luthiery in the Arizona capital city. The school has been teaching the art of guitar making here since 1975 and recently moved from its original location on the south side of town to an existing building on the northwest fringe of downtown.

The resident guitar guru is the school’s director, William Eaton. The Nebraska native is one of four men who incorporated the institution. The others were John Roberts, who died in 1999, Robert Venn, who died in 1991, and Bruce Scotten, who was an instructor that opted to leave the business a few months after it got started. 

Roberts also was known as Juan Roberto and was an executive pilot for a lumber company that imported hardwoods to the United States from Nicaragua. He founded the Juan Roberto Guitar Works apprentice program in 1969, and the Roberto-Venn school grew from that concept.

“It was a nickname and kind of a trade name,” Eaton said of the Juan Roberto moniker. “He (Roberts) started making guitars and, back in those days, if you were any good you were from Spain. So ‘Juan Roberto’ was kind of an upgrade.”

The school offers two five-month sessions per year. The current enrollment is 40. “We have consciously kept our enrollment (at that size) for years,” Eaton said. “It’s what has worked for us. We didn’t want to grow too big so the students would get the right amount of one-on-one attention. Our goal with this facility is to keep it at that number.”

Students are required to build two guitars during the course. The current class is well along on the first one. An electric guitar is the first to be built, followed by an acoustic model.

The “classroom” of the Roberto-Venn building is spacious and has a high ceiling. Rows of work benches are populated by students shaping and smoothing guitar parts. The lengthy school day runs from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., and the facility is open weekends, too.

“Our grading system is a two-tiered system,” Eaton revealed. “The first is a check-off sheet to let us know something was accomplished. The guitar has to be up to a certain level and, if it’s not there, they’ll build that part again. The evolution of a guitar for a student is that guitar is going to have a certain level of craftsmanship and integrity from start to finish.

“The other part of our grading system is what we call occupational aptitude grades. Those are things like attitude, attendance and ability to work with others. That is a grading system we adapted from our employers. As a nationally accredited institution, our goal is to place our students – get them into a job. And the jobs they get are with small companies, large companies, as guitar techs and road techs where they’re going out with various bands (on tour). So there’s quite a variety of jobs they can get.

“When we get calls from these employers, they want to know that they (students) have their chops. But what’s even more important is how they fit into a work environment: are they punctual … what’s their attitude, what’s their daily work routine. Those are (things) they look for because they … want to hire a good employee, and they don’t want turnover.”

When a student graduates from Roberto-Venn, it’s not an end but rather a start of something that promises to be bigger than the education. “If you ask a student why they come here,” Eaton said, “(they’ll say) they want to be a guitar maker or a guitar repairman or a combination. The reality of a five-month course is it’s a beginning, a foundation. We don’t pretend to produce master craftsmen. What we produce is people who have a really good foundation to go to work in a company situation or as an apprentice.

“Some from each class are capable of becoming entrepreneurs from day one. Most of those people have already run their own businesses. They’re much older and more mature and have some life experience that lends itself to what an entrepreneur needs to be in the context of running a guitar shop. For the most part, we work with the individuals and try to figure out where to go next. This is the undergraduate place, and the company is the graduate school where they learn the marketing and business end of guitar production. We know that from experience.”

Eaton remembers with pride alumni like Doug Young, who made a name for himself by building guitars for Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones, and Joe Vallee, who has made guitars for Steve Miller and Doobie Brother Pat Simmons.

When asked if there is a way to teach creativity, Eaton said there definitely is. “It’s one of the parts of the course that I teach,” he explained. “I’ve done a little research on it, and we’ve come to learn that each of us has our own innate creativity. It’s kind of a human skill set to be creative. Environmental situations can help to change that, depending on a person’s development and early school systems and so forth.

“I believe there’s a common belief that some people are creative and others are not, but the truth of the matter is how you go within yourself or outside of yourself to learn techniques that will bring out your creativity. We approach it that every student has an opportunity to express their creativity. That’s one of the satisfying things about running the school … seeing each individual student expressing himself.”

A check of the school’s photo gallery shows that students consistently have produced instruments with beautiful colors, dynamic shapes and impeccable surfaces.

What’s the best entry skill a student can bring with him when he enrolls? “That’s a tough question,” Eaton admitted. “I don’t know if I could pinpoint a physical skill. The reason I say that is because, like myself, most students come without any prior crafts or construction skills or trade skills that help hand-eye coordination. Some of our best students don’t come from that background at all. I would say (the important asset) for those people (is), perhaps, the ability to envision things, to see images holographically and to visualize what a part of that instrument needs to be and how to take a raw material and shape it into that.

“Then it’s a matter of learning the tools – the sanding, the shaping and carving tools. There can be hundreds of tools to use, but we concentrate on 20 or 30. We’d like to screen out the students who can’t excel with them. But we haven’t been able to develop any statistical model to tell us who will be successful. What’s their background? What jobs have they had? Someone will come along and be the exception to the rule, and we’ve had a lot of those students. 

“The students who do well have a good attitude and are persistent and patient.”

With a limited budget and a small niche in the music industry, Roberto-Venn does little in the way of promotion and advertising. Eaton says a staple of his strategy is to place classified ads in the back of magazines like “Acoustic Guitar” and “Guitar Player.” 

“To keep our presence these days the (Worldwide) Web is ubiquitous,” he said. “We have people find us through the Web. So, really, we do little advertising. Knock on wood, we’ve had a waiting list for every class except one in the last 15 years.

“We probably won’t get any bigger.”

For more information, log on to www.Roberto-Venn.com. 

Eaton is no slouch when it comes to creative instrument building. He has designed a guitar harp, a 26-string Elesian Harmonium and a spiral clef, to name a few unusual instruments.

He excels as a performer, too. He plays with renowned Native American flutist R. Carlos Nakai, percussionist Will Clipman and Tibetan flutist Nawang Khechog. He classifies his genre as world music and is planning a tour to Spain and Russia next spring.

Eaton has been nominated for Grammy Awards four times and records on the Phoenix-based Canyon Records label. On his Grammy-nominated recordings he has played 10 different instruments, including 12-string guitar, 26-string guitar, harp guitar and lyraharp guitar. Eaton, Nakai and Clipman were nominated for their album “Dancing Into Silence” in the New Age category for this year’s awards.

Among his students, Eaton said all music styles are represented in their personal interests. “If you polled the 40 students out there,” he said, “it’s pretty much all over the map. But, definitely, rock is right up there.”

OK, now let’s go shopping for a guitar!