by Bill Chapin Citizen Patriot
Sunday June 28, 2009, 6:00 AM
By Michael J. Metts Jackson Citizen Patriot
Stephen Ziegenfuss works on a cutout in an acoustic guitar in the basement of his Jackson home. An acoustic guitar can take up to 150 hours of work to complete.
Manufacturing in Jackson isn't exactly booming, but there's one small segment that is growing: hand-crafted guitars.
The Jackson area has at least two custom guitar-makers. After their day jobs, both of them spend their weekends and evenings in home workshops, turning simple planks of wood into musical instruments.
The more recent newcomer to this craft, Stephen Ziegenfuss of Jackson, has completed 10 guitars so far and has another six or seven in progress.
Ziegenfuss, 25, got into guitar-making while he was attending Cedarville University in Ohio. There was a certain bass guitar he wanted, but he couldn't afford it, so he decided to try making a similar one on his own.
"Applying woodworking to engineering has always been a big passion," said Ziegenfuss, a mechanical engineer at SeaLandAire Technologies Inc.
Though he had experience building cedar-strip racing boats at the university, he didn't know anything about building instruments other than a few things he picked up on Web sites.
"That first instrument fell short, but it created a passion to keep working at it until I could create and instrument that I, as a player, could really appreciate," he said.
In addition to bass guitars, Ziegenfuss also has tried his hand at making regular, six-string electric guitars and — with some mentoring from the area's other guitar-maker, Lance Kragenbrink of Vandercook Lake — acoustic guitars.
Like Ziegenfuss, Kragenbrink got into building instruments to replicate a guitar that he couldn't afford. That's a common story among guitar-makers, he said, but they rarely end up saving money in the long run.
"Next thing you know, you've got a lot of money in wood and tools," Kragenbrink said.
Kragenbrink has made about 25 acoustic guitars since 1998, mostly on commission. This year he has to make a few extra to take with him to a pair of guitar shows in Montreal and California.
He also owns and moderates a Web site for guitar builders, www.luthiersforum.com, with more than 4,000 registered users.
He said he has heard several people say that we are in the middle of a "second golden age of acoustic guitars," with a shift away from cheaper, mass-produced guitars as more small-scale manufacturers spring up.
"The bar for excellence continues to be pushed higher and higher," he said. "A lot of that has to do with the ability to share information over the Internet."
Kragenbrink's guitars start at a base price of $4,650, with extra charges for more exotic wood and other custom requests.
Ziegenfuss had been making guitars for customers who covered the cost of materials up front, ranging from $300 to $600 depending on the type of guitar. Only recently has he started to feel confident enough "that I can warrant charging for labor," he said.
His electric instruments start as thick planks of wood that are cut into pieces, glued together, carved and finished.
"With instruments, people tend to hear first with their eyes," Ziegenfuss said, "so you have to work so you present a project that is blemish-free."
Kragenbrink said the process is unique for each guitar.
"Sometimes they almost seem like they build themselves and you're just assisting the process," he said. "Other times you have to fight them tooth and nail.
"The hardest thing is trying to make my guitars sound different from everybody else. ... What I try to shoot for is a guitar to have a nice, even balance across the spectrum — low strings, high strings, and all up and down the neck."
Both said the reward comes in delivering the instrument to a customer.
"When you actually get to play it and hear it, there really is something to that," Ziegenfuss said, "and then when you give that instrument to someone that knows how to play it really well," it's exciting.
That makes one business where picky customers aren't such a bad thing.
