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Paul Woolson (Woolson Soundcraft)

FEATURED BUILDER OCTOBER 08

Guitar Gala recently sat down for an interview with professional guitar builder and life long guitar enthusiast Paul Woolson to discuss his interest in guitars and his business Woolson Soundcraft.

GG: Hello Paul, could you provide a little background information on yourself and your interest in guitars?

PW: I grew up in a very musical family. It seems like there was always some sort of instrument being played in our household. When I was very young, I traded a bunch of GI JOE stuff for a friend's electric guitar. (I'm sure it was worth about $29 new). The first thing I did when I got home was rip the thing apart to see how it worked. I had aspirations of refinishing it and getting it working but, alas, I was 8 or so and didn't have the know-how. But that is my first memory of being interested in guitars. My parents gave me a guitar for my High School graduation present. I found myself wanting to tinker with that one too. Though not as dramatically as I did on the little electric guitar, I installed a pickup and adjusted the action. Pretty minor stuff but it felt big at the time.



GG: You attended the American School for Lutherie. Do you believe that education has given you any unique advantages in your guitar building process compared to a hobby guitar builder?

PW: Indeed. If nothing else, it jump-started my building and decreased my learning curve by years. But there was a lot more to it. Charles encouraged us to think outside of the box and try new and different things. That encouragement has really helped me in my building career.



GG: For anyone new to Woolson Soundcraft guitars, how would you summarize your guiding philosphy for guitar building? Additionally, what could a first time Woolson guitar player expect in terms of your signature sound?

PW: I think of every guitar I build as an individual work of art. The process is very similar to that of a painting or sculpture. Each guitar is built one at a time and I never do any "batch" building at all. If you look at my bench, I've got one guitar at it from start to finish. Then I dive into the next one. This process is much slower and dramatically less efficient but I find much more joy in working that way. My guitars are very simplistic in that I don't care for a lot of adornment. I let the wonder of the materials speak for themselves. There are so many incredible things available to us, with just using woods, that I find it sad to cover them up with lots of shell inlay. There's no way to describe my signature sound. What is warm and woody to me might be dark and muddy to someone else. What I consider bright, someone else might consider brassy.



GG: Are there any guitars, past or present, that you admire either for build, sound, or overall playing experience?

PW: Factory guitars don't do much for me. Which is a good portion of why I'm doing this in the first place. As far as hand built guitars go, I can admire pretty much all of them for various reasons. But the one person I admire most for his building is Fred Carlson. He does some harp guitars that are the closest things to sculptures I've ever seen.



GG: Ive come to learn to you have been dabbling in building double top guitars. Could you explain a little bit about what a double top guitar is, and what you are doing at Woolson Soundcraft with that form?

PW: I've had some very fortunate success with my double toped guitars. The first one I built was sent out on a road trip. Basically I wanted honest reviews of a technique that has very little track record. When those reviews started flowing in, they were wonderful. So that inspired me to keep running with this process. Now I do just about twice as many double tops as I do standard solid tops. A little about the process: As the name suggests, there are literally two thin skins both of solid wood. They are then laminated around a Nomex honeycomb inner core. Nomex is a material used in the aerospace industry. It's typically used as a core in laminated aircraft wings. The structure of the Nomex is just like a cross-section of a bee hive with 1/8" cells. What that translates to, when laminated, is a very fine internal brace every 1/8" in all directions. This makes for a very stiff, very lightweight top. Because it's so stiff, it doesn't need to be braced as much as a standard solid top. This allows the top to vibrate as a hole unit much better than a traditionally braced guitar. The bottom line to these double tops is that they are very responsive and have a broader dynamic range. I find it really fun to watch people make the first strum on my smaller bodied double tops. Their eyes get huge at the surprise in the amount of sound coming from such a small box.

Hear one of Paul Woolson's Double Top guitars in action. Played by Larry Pattis.



GG: If you were to give any tips to someone just beginning guitar building, what would they be?

PW: The major thing is that a builder can't be in this craft for the money. Because there really isn't any. Even a builder doing very well and having a long wait list isn't getting rich. If a person decides to enter this field, they have to do so because they truly love the craft.

You can find out more about Paul Woolson and Woolson Soundcraft at http://www.woolsonsoundcraft.com/.