By Larry Barnett
Out among the industrial warehouses of Eighth Street East sits the home, studio and workshop of Luthier Steve Klein. For over 50 years, Steve has been crafting meticulously designed and constructed acoustic and electric guitars, instruments of such beauty and resonance they are adored by their musician owners and are now so renowned for their superb quality they are copied by counterfeiters in China.
The list of accomplished musicians who’ve owned or played a Klein guitar is extensive, and includes notables such as Joni Mitchell (Photo to right), Leo Kottke, Steve Miller, Lou Reed, Phoebe Snow, Stephen Stills, John Sebastian, David Crosby, Carlos Santana, Phoebe Snow, Country Joe MacDonald, and Jesse Colin Young.
Now 75 years old, Steve Klein continues to ply his craft, making up to eighteen electric instruments yearly, each selling for a hefty price in the thousands depending upon its size and complexity. His workshop is a crowded space filled with machine tools, jigs, materials, and instruments of his trade accumulated, designed, and fabricated over a lifetime. His collection of fine wood, he says, “is large enough to last me for the rest of my life.” In addition, he’s amassed the Mother of Pearl, jade, abalone shell, ivory, and precious metals he needs for the inlaid ornamentation he delicately incorporates into his instruments, itself a stunning expression of Steve’s remarkable artistry.
Not just an artist, however, Steve is both a musician and inventor; many of the innovations he brings to his instruments are his ideas alone, and have deeply influenced the field of luthiers. As he explains it, his guitars are not simply about sound, but about the physical experience of holding and playing them. “It hasn’t changed since the time of Stradivarius. In order for a fine instrument to retain its value, it must continue to be played.”
Steve’s instruments are found in many private collections, and his fame is global. He has several orders from customers in Korea at the present time. His fame is the reason that knock-off counterfeits are being made in China. “Gibson, Martin, Taylor, Fender, all the high-end guitar makers have had components for their instruments fabricated in China for years. It was only a matter of time before the Chinese decided to manufacture their own guitars.”
Although he has worked with other luthiers over the years, today Steve spends most of his time alone in his shop, designing, cutting, routing, steaming, bending, gluing, and assembling guitars. Some of his designs are so striking, such as his electric “harp guitar” that combines a traditional guitar neck with a separate “harp” section, they look impossible to play for anyone with fewer than three hands. “I’ve done many strange and bizarre things,” he admits.
As Steve explained in Paul Schmidt’s beautiful 2003 book about him, Art That Sings, “In the beginning, my fear was that nobody would get it – that what I was doing was just too radical for the mindset of the guitar-playing public.”
The sound produced by an acoustic guitar is not simply a matter of plucking or stroking strings; rather the sound is a complex interplay of tension, string harmonics and the resonance produced within the acoustic chamber of the instrument. The guitar needs to “sing.” The wood must be braced from the inside in such a way as to keep it strong enough to withstand the tension of the steel strings, but not so firmly that the sound is dampened, a matter of aesthetic engineering, thus Steve’s innovative “flying brace” and tone bar designs.
Importantly, Steve custom builds guitars attuned to the playing habits and styles of his buyers, which vary widely, and that’s combined with the type of wood used – Spruce, Ash, Cedar, Rosewood, Maple, Redwood, Myrtle, Walnut, “They all sound different,” he notes – and how the instrument feels physically, its ergonomics – its size, shape, and weight when held in the hands, next to the body, or resting on a thigh. Owning and playing a Klein guitar is an experience of intimacy. He asks, “If an instrument feels comfortable, won’t a musician try to get the most out of it?”
His first guitars were built in the cellar of his parent’s home fifty years ago while Steve was in high school in El Cerrito, but today he still uses some of the same tools he created and used back then. His fret saw, for example, which cuts the grooves in the neck of a guitar needed to accommodate the inlaid frets that determine the notes that get played when a musician presses a string down to them with their fingers, has been modified and upgraded but is still in regular operation. “I used that fret saw for the necks of Jerry Garcia’s guitars,” he noted.
Steve now has a licensing deal with a Japanese company using his designs that makes 500 guitars a day, and another with an acoustic guitar manufacturer; he himself is only building electric guitars. These include his now famous “headless” guitars, guitars without a tuning head at the end of the neck; instead, tuning is done at the bottom of the instrument’s strings at the “bridge” instead of the top through the use of a custom-developed metal structure. Even at 75 years old, he exudes continued enthusiasm for his craft and never stops bringing experimentation and innovation to his work. “I’m not dead yet. I’m still trying to press ahead with other design ideas,” he explained.
As for the counterfeit knock-offs, Steve is philosophical. “Maybe I should be flattered,” he says, “It’s happening to Gibson, Martin, and all the other makers of high-end instruments.” Continuing, he adds chuckling, “And what can I do about a $300 knock-off made in China, anyway?
For more information about Steve and his guitars, visit his website, www.KleinCommunity.com.
Be First to Comment