J.Swenson Luthier

02/15/2026

Back to building. Small OM style steel string guitar. Huge fan of the Spanish style neck used on the Hauser Classical guitar I made so going to use it on this guitar as well. NOT a fan of bolt-on necks. Want the solid neck body joint. So including neck and neck-heel stiffener carbon fiber rods. Finished the drawing mods Friday and now onto cutting wood.
Rosette inlay finished. Just need to glue it in and finish thicknessing the Sitka spruce top and cut the sound hole. The onto the bracing. - and the neck.

04/28/2025

By far the oldest instrument I have worked on. A 1740 Hofner Violin which came in with the top seam separating. The artist was performing at the Bankhead Theater that evening so we needed at least 6 hours for the hide glue to cure. Usually it takes 12 hours before you should stress the joint, bit because the top joint with the side is not a high stress location. 6 hour cure time should be sufficient. Also did some adjustments to the bridge angle which was showing some signs of a forward lean.

02/22/2025

Lulo Reinhardt's guitar was on my bench today. E String not sounding as loud as the rest of the strings when amplified. G string intonation off - playing sharp. The saddle was so low no break angle in the high E. But the real problem was the saddle was so tight in the beige slot I don't think it was sitting tightly on the under saddle pickup. Made a new better fitting saddle with compensation on the G string. E String nice and loud now. G string intonation much better. Fixed it in time for their concert tonight at the Bankhead. Sönke Meinen's guitar needed work as well but it was just a simple reorienting the output jack which was buzzing. They were kind enough to get us tickets to the show where I am now.

08/08/2024

On the bench today. 5-String bass fret job.

07/16/2024

Check out my website. GoDaddy has some simple tools that makes it easy to build something nice. Getting a good amount of business from it too.

Livermore, CA

07/12/2024

Final update. Violin is back together. giving it 24 hours before I put full tension on the neck. I did some measurements pre-gluing the fingerboard and neck and thought that 0.5 mm tapered wedge would be enough to correct the neck angle or proper fingerboard projection. That turned out to be an underestimation so I had to lower the bridge by 2 mm to get decent action in the strings. Even so happy with the way it came out.

07/10/2024

Update #2 on the latest violin restoration. I reassembled from the two halves of the heel. The break is old and worn, so glue joint was not very good so hyde glue or fish glue could not be used. It was either CA glue or tight Bond and I thought CA glue would be stronger. The two halves of the dovetail did not align completely, so I had to enlarge the dovetail slot. This was a better option since the wedge that I made is larger and stronger than the original dovetail on the heel block. This should strengthen the heel for when I glue back on the neck. Glued the hard maple wedge with fish glue. Nice tight fit. Only took 3 tries to get a proper wedge. Third one 99% shaped with a block plane, then 20 minutes of gentle sanding and resting the fit. Just have to finish cleaning up the neck heel faces and the spruce heel block on the violin, check and tweak the neck angle if needed, and reglue the neck.

07/08/2024

Haven't used some of my recording equipment for a while. Turned on the M-Audio Axiom 61 midi keyboard and controller and other it was. The BSOD! Did my research (on YouTube) and found the culprit is a tiny "Reset chip" which allows the unit to start properly. A very smart YouTuber suggested a simple fix to remove the chip and replace it with a simple RC timing circuit. So you can't go to Radio Shack to buy parts any more so $20 investment into more resistors and capacitors than I can possibly use was how I acquired the right comlonents to fix the keyboard. It still shows a blue screen unless I use the DC power source in addition to the to the USB. USB power alone isn't cutting it. Circuit is likely drawing too much current, so a bigger resistor could be used to slow down the capacitor charging time. But that is for another day. It works again!

07/07/2024

Video of the loose neck before taking apart the neck joint.