Roberto-Venn School

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Location
Roberto-Venn School of Luthiery
Phoenix, Arizona, United States
Information
Type	Private
Established	1975
Homepage	http://www.roberto-venn.com

The Roberto-Venn School of Luthiery is an Arizona accredited school located in Phoenix, Arizona. It has graduated over 1200 students in its over 35 years of operation. Graduates can be found all across the music industry from guitar repairmen to upper management and owners of large musical instrument manufacturers. Roberto-Venn is considered one of the top schools of its kind in the United States.

1 History
2 Curriculum
3 Guest lecturers
4 Links

[edit] History

The idea for a guitar making school grew out of an apprenticeship program that John Roberts (1921 - 1999) started back in 1969 called the Juan Roberto Guitar Works. Before this, John found himself in the jungles of Nicaragua, flying airplanes for a wood import company. Much of the rosewood and mahogany used at the school was collected with the help of the Miskito Indians and shipped to Phoenix where John began his guitar making endeavor. John Roberts died in the summer of 1999.

Robert Venn (1926 - 1991) joined with John in 1973, and brought custom electric guitar making expertise to the guitar partnership. Bob was one a handful of guitar makers in the 1950's and 60's to wind his own pickups and use wooden pickup covers aesthetically matched with the highly figured hardwoods he used in the body and neck of his instruments. Bob built or repaired for fine guitarists such as Phil Baugh, Maurice Anderson, Tom Morrell, Bud Isaacs, Norm Hamlet, and Tiny Moore.

William Eaton apprenticed with John Roberts in 1971. He wrote a business plan for a guitar making school in 1974, while acquiring an MBA degree from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. The plan became the blueprint for the Roberto-Venn School of Luthiery, which John, Bob, William, and Bruce Scotten incorporated and founded in 1975. William added new elements of stringed instrument design and innovations, creating multi-stringed, one-of-a-kind instruments at the school since 1976. Presently, William is the Director of Roberto-Venn School of Luthiery.

[edit] Curriculum

The Guitar Making and Repair Course consists of practical and theoretical training in acoustic and electric guitar construction and repair. The course runs for five months, 880 hours of class time. Students attend lectures and demonstrations on every phase of building, as they construct one acoustic and one electric guitar or bass.The finest air-dried woods are made available for the students' instruments. They may choose from mahogany, rosewood, ebony, maple, walnut, spruce, cedar, redwood, koa, and other woods.

In addition to guitar construction, sessions are given in: milling and wood selection, guitar design, tool use and maintenance, scale and template derivation, guitar repair, finishing (lacquer, oil, stain, sunburst, and re-finishing), guitar electronics, pickup design and construction, tremolo installation, care and preservation of stringed instruments, and related subjects.

The first five weeks of the course are devoted to specialized training in guitar repair and the 'start-up' aspects of establishing a lutherie business. The course includes special guest lectures from industry professionals, graduates and faculty. Students have an opportunity to do extensive work on instruments provided by local music stores, for the purpose of refining repair techniques and skills. Sessions in small business management are also given, to prepare graduates for operating their own lutherie shops or for work in existing music stores. Road touring "tech" work is also covered.

For students with little or no previous woodworking experience, or for those whose skills may have "rusted" from disuse, they offer a three-day Tool Use and Maintenance Seminar. This meets just prior to the beginning of the semester.

A class on amplification is also offered in which students can build a tube amplifier and speaker cabinet taught by Jim Kramer, an adjunct Roberto-Venn faculty member with more than twenty years experience in the electronics industry.