Ken Whisler, Luthier & Performer

custom build-Cheyne

Ken — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 18:04:05 +0000

Brazilian rosewood w/cedar top

Ken — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 12:45:09 +0000

On my bench right now. I inlaid the cedar top with sections of spalted maple. The Brazilian rosewood I am using for this one has some spectacular figuring. The pieces were very tight against my template, after moving the template around for hours I decided to not fight it, and borrowed an aesthetic the late Tom Humphrey used to do: insert a flame maple wedge. The bindings will also be flame maple to compliment.

In the finishing stage, and I would like to share my new neck joint. The way I am executing this joint, I can easily vary the amount of neck elevation to the customer’s preference.

This guitar is finished, looks and sounds phenomenal, ~~and is for sale at Savage Classical Guitar.~~ Richard has SOLD this!

Jonah Corn

Ken — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 16:26:50 +0000

Wish I had that tone and feel when I was 15….. Jonah playing Whisler #27

“A Fantasie” by John Dowland

Ken — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 12:53:34 +0000

I recently stumbled on this while going through my files, and am making it available here. It is the famous Dowland Fantasie, I made my own transcription while in college. I used colored pens, and assigned each voice it’s own color, as a visual aid to help me hear the individual voices in a linear way, and finger it accordingly. Feel free to copy and distribute freely.

dowland_fantasie0001

Joseph LoDuca

Ken — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 19:40:40 +0000

The award winning film composer and guitarist Joseph LoDuca records with one of my guitars. When Joe received a handcrafted classical guitar from me a little over a year ago, he took it to Angel Studios in London and recorded this for the movie, “The Edge of Love” starring Kierra Knightley:

joseph-loducafire-to-the-stars

He used the same guitar for cues in the TNT movie, “The Librarian: the Curse of the Judas Chalice”. Here are a couple of excerpts:

simones-story-excerpt

sunrise-excerpt

Please pay Joe a visit at http://www.loducamusic.com

1st recordings made with classical guitar #4

Ken — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 19:56:42 +0000

The 1st recordings from the original website:

Want an idea of what one of my guitars sounds like? Help yourself to any or all of the free music selections here. I took one of my guitars, just prior to it’s sale, into a friend of a friend’s recording studio, asked him to turn off any and all dsp’s and eq’s, set all tonal controls “flat”, and then I proceeded to play live into a pair of condenser mics, the mixing console acting only as a preamp into an ADAT. While cutting out the riff raff and mixing down to a cd, the engineer begged me to let him add a touch of reverb. I conceded, as it was quite dry. But other than that, this is as honest of a recording as one can get.

note from Ken: the following recordings were made with guitar #4, a cedar top braced with an open 5 brace fan using sitka spruce, SE Asian rosewood was used for the back and sides. Shortly after the recording, a ban was imposed on the export of rosewood from that region, and only recently has it been made made available again. Of course the price has increased considerably!

The first 4 tracks are from Oscar Chilesotti’s “Six Lute Pieces of the Renaissance”. Tracks 5 and 6 are by the baroque guitarist Ludovico Roncalli. Tracks 7-11 are 4 studies from Matteo Carcassi’s famous collection of 25 Estudios. Tracks 12 and 13 from Segovia’s (in)famous collection of 20 Sor studies. And 14 and 15 are a couple of Romantic era chestnuts from Francesco Tarrega. Enjoy!