[mplpost] Canadian Guitars

[Paul Mills]

Delurking....

I got my first Larrivee in 1972.  I met Jean in around 1970 at a meeting of
the London Guitar Society to which I was invited by my old friend Ray Sealy.
We were both there respectively as guest speaker (Jean) and performer (Me).
Jean and I struck up a conversation that evening.  At the time he was an
apprentice with Edgar Munch here in Toronto and was planning on spreading
his wings as a maker himself.  He said that, although he was only making
classical guitars at the time, he loved the steel string guitar and would
eventually want to start making guitars in this style.  I suggested that
when he was making a steel string that he was happy with, I would be pleased
to buy one.  His price at the time was $400.  About a year later, he called
and I ordered and received my Larivee dreadnaught in 1972. I believe one of
Jean's first steel strings was purchased by Bob Cunningham.  It wasn't all
that great.  Mine was much better and I played it until 1983 when I got my
Laskin.  I played it on all of Stan Rogers' albums ... it served me well.
It sounded great but had some design flaws (which Jean attributed to his
early learning process).  The action lifted and the top split on either side
of the fingerboard.  He tried to fix it but couldn't.  I now use it as a
high-string guitar.  Works OK, sounds great and is a wonderful memento.

Larrivee spawned a whole new generation of steel string guitar design in
Canada and elsewhere incorporating classical elements (wider fingerboard,
rosette around the sound hole, no garish pick guard) with steel string
elements (side geared tuning machines, dreadnaught shape, etc.).  He
deserves a lot of credit and I'm sure that Linda Manser, Grit Laskin, David
Wren and others who worked with him would join in that chorus!

Cheers,

Paul Mills
>

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-maplepost@icomm.ca [mailto:owner-maplepost@icomm.ca]On
> Behalf Of woodway
> Sent: January 28, 2002 11:22 PM
> To: maplepost@icomm.ca
> Subject: Re: [mplpost] Canadian Guitars
>
>
> Hi, all-
>     There was a batch of Larrivees in 1971 (yup, that's right) in
> a dreadnaught style, and Terry
> Jones of Perth County has one: Brent Titcomb, Bob Carpenter,
> David Bradstreet and Paul Mills had the
> others (correct me if I'm wrong!)- very wide, flat fingerboards
> and some of the first guitars with
> that "tight" Larrivee sound, I think. Terry's is still in action
> and sounds great with the Twelfth
> Fret pickup in it. A big, demanding Cadillac of a guitar to play
> but it pays you back! What was the
> connection between Bruce Cockburn and Larrivee? Didn't he get
> everybody on the handmade guitar
> bandwagon around then?
>     -David Woodhead
>
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