posted 03-02-2004 06:01 AM            

quote:

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Originally posted by jgreven:
Just for the record, my total production to date is NOT in excess of 1400 guitars, it is only 1285 and that includes not just guitars but every instrument I have made since 1963. There are several hundred banjos in that number as well. I make an average of 50 guitars in a year, many of them going overseas (Japan mostly). I looked over my invoices for the last 20 odd years and discovered that there are about 400 of my guitars in the land of the rising sun.

I'm a bit prolific, but not THAT prolific.
John

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Thanks for clearing that up for me John. My memory was off. I could care less how many actually. I just think your instruments are fantastic regardless.

posted 03-02-2004 08:32 AM               

quote:

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Originally posted by rforman15:
There you go again. Just by nature that someone made 600 guitars in ten years means nothing. They could all be lousy. How about ten great guitars in ten years. I would hardly bragg about output as it just does not seem connected with quality and in fact seem almost counter to quality. In Greven's case there is quality, but might the quality have been even better had he cut his production in half. Again, this is not about Greven, but rather questioning the assumption that more is better and that more is desirable.

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Of course I never expressed that view at all.
However, even 50 guitars
yearly, of consistently
high quality (which I tacitly assumed)
IS an impressive feat.

John's efficiency accounts for the
affordability of his products.
I have acquired two outstanding instruments
at the cost of not even one by certain
builders; less of a gamble and more variety.

So maybe there was a loose fret creating
a dead spot in one of my axes; it was
easily dealt with and John promptly
answered my fax offering his advice.

I don't
know how he does it, but my guess
is he knows exactly what parts
of the process need more care and more
hands, and which can be safely machined
or even automated. As he is an infrequent
visitor in this forum maybe he can
offer his remarks on that.

It would seem superfluous to remark
that I am not that impressed
by Korean factories churning out guitars
by the thousands.

But neither am I in awe
of builders finishing one instrument
per month and charging $20.000.

posted 03-02-2004 11:03 AM               

John sells guitars for half the prices of some luthiers who have been building them for half as long (follow that?). Unless his prices have gone up considerably, you can get a standard Greven, handmade by one of the best builders in the world, for about what you pay for a "small shop" boutique instrument.

They are a bargain I wish I could afford. If you've got...what?...$3.5K or so to put in a guitar, you aren't going to do any better than a Greven. Just different.

posted 03-06-2004 03:52 PM            

A recent post asked about Greven guitars. While I haven't played many of them, I have played one of them for nearly a quarter century. So I thought I'd add my thoughts to a discussion that I'm so pleased to see, because it means that John's guitars are getting the attention that they so richly deserve.

My 1980 maple Greven F has been my musical companion for nearly 24 years. The top is highly-silked Sitka spruce. A pearl bucktooth lion and John's banner on a simple black background complete the headstock on the ivoroid-bound maple neck. The guitar is John's herringbone deluxe in most ways, but didn't come with the abalone rosette.

One difference in my Greven is that it is a short-scale (24.9".) John recently told me that only 20 of the guitars he's built have short scales. Could mine be the only short-scale maple Greven F?

With the short scale and maple sides maybe you'd call it a L-00 on steroids (16" across the lower bout, but shallower than a dread) or an uber-000 sorta guitar. The great blues troubador Roy Bookbinder told me once at an Elderly Instruments seminar that 'your left hand is your brain and your right hand is your personality' and the maple F seems to fit my personality perfectly.

Depending how hard I play I can get a very staccato sound out of the F, damping the strings at the bridge for the percussive feel or it can have a very sweet sound if played with all flesh over the soundhole. It's definitely a 'drier' sound than my Martins, but with comparable sustain. It has a very rich 'thick' treble on the high b & e strings with no nasal sound even when picked hard.

People are also stunned by its looks, oohing and ahhing when I flip it over to show the fairly rare three-piece back. Hmmm, maybe I have the only Greven 3-piece back, short-scale maple F herringbone with a buck-toothed lion on it. And a pyramid bridge. And a partridge in a pear, er, oops, wrong forum.

Recently the F spent a few months in Oregon where John widened the neck for me. He built a new neck shank out of even more beautiful maple than it had originally, and 'grafted' the original headstock fascia and ebony fretboard onto the new neck. Then he built the fretboard out to the new 1 3/4" width (it started 1 11/16") with slightly wider binding. Please don't scoff — an experienced player can definitely feel these width variations.

Even with the bridge spacing still at 2 1/8", it now doesn't feel quite so narrow when I mix it up with my other guitars. I took this fairly radical step, with John's help and incredible skills, because I worried that if I became accustomed to my Martins, which all have 1 3/4" x 2 5/16" dimensions, I would not use the Greven as much. It's too good a guitar and means too much to me to have as a 'backup.' I want to have it in the mix for the folk gigs I conjure up in my Walter Mitty fantasies, you know, where you reach back and change guitars every couple of songs! Besides, it's been with me for nearly half my lifetime, helped me pull off the 'sensitive folk singer' routine that helped persuade my wife to marry me, and has always challenged me to play more and better.

I would buy another Greven F in a heartbeat. It has aged and opened up beautifully. It’s structurally perfect. It’s not how many guitars John has built that counts – it’s how that one guitar you cherish sounds after you play it and play it and play it…

--Craig Porter