Meet Luthier Adam Steinquist at his guitar workshop in Wisconsin and find out what makes his instruments truly unique works of art.
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00:00If you wanted to build an instrument as quickly as possible you could build it in about 50 or 60 hours.
00:08But more of what I do is designing a piece of art.
00:13Designing something that has an entire design aesthetic that flows.
00:18And so much of the time that it takes for me to build an instrument is tied up in just looking at it.
00:25I'll design something, I'll put it together, and then I'll set it on my bench and I'll step back 10 or 15 feet.
00:35And just look and think about what it is that I like about the design and what it is that I don't like about the design.
00:42Ideally when I'm done, and I've told other people this,
00:48but what I want with a design is for it to be so subtle that you love it, but you can't explain why.
00:57I want it to be something that someone will look at next year, will look at the year after that, in 10 years from now,
01:04and still be finding little things, almost like hiding little presents in the instrument.
01:10So that you keep discovering elements of what you like and what the design as a whole was meant to be.
01:18It's really fun when I have people over and show them my work.
01:22And they can pick out little things that I thought were my own little secret, you know?
01:27I've had friends come over and say, oh I love that little grain pattern right on the edge there.
01:31I love that you kept that. And it was intentional.
01:34It wasn't something that was an accident that I did without thinking about it.
01:39All of it is intentional. All of it is meant to be there.
01:43So if you see it on my instrument, the reason that it's there is because I kept it.
01:53When you're shaping and forming an instrument, a lot of the design principles are the same as if you were designing an airplane.
02:02Where you want it to be very lightweight, so that there's less resistance for it to be activated, for it to be able to be responsive.
02:11But you want it to be strong.
02:16I've had a number of other guitar builders that I've been able to pick their brain and ask them, how do you do this? Or why do you do this?
02:23And the why is really what is, to me, more exciting and more meaningful.
02:27If you can figure out why something is designed the way that it is or that it's built the way that it is,
02:33those are the things that help you do what you do better.
02:37Because to mimic somebody else doesn't benefit you if you don't know why they're doing what they're doing.
02:42The why is the most important part.