Weekday
The weekly feature page of the University Daily Kansan
March 1st, 1979
Jim Baggett examines the neck of the second guitar he has finished at Michigan Street Music. Baggett says that the process of making a fine instrument cannot be rushed.
Greg Smith held half with an unfinished skill and半肮ily cut into the soft wood with his knife, imlaying wood trim for the inlay.
Willingly setting aside his work to answer questions, Smith typifies an attitude in the shop that seems to say, "An no hurry job."
Smith and Jim Baggett started Michigan Street Music, 647 Michigan St., a stringed instrument shop, about a year ago. With part-time help from Rik Dishinger, associate professor of art, these Lawrence craftsmans carry on the time-consuming trade of making stringed instruments by hand. It usually takes six months to make a single instrument.
Across town another man, Oliver Finney, also spends six months building an other stringed instrument, the harpschneider.
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"The parts of the instrument must fit together with very little tension so that the instrument has a unified voice to give it its best sound." Bagnett said. "They can only do this when the instrument is able to relax."
The neck and top of a guitar, one of three beams is working on, hang from a rack above the cluttered workbench. A violin, a bass, or an acoustic guitar are there.
Smith said, "You can be good with tools, but there is something more to strive for. We try to bring out our personal sensitivities."
"We try to feel something from the wood and try to tune in the wood to see what it wants us to do or make it sing out as it"
It is difficult for these men to talk about their work. They consider themselves artists and, like artists, they have a hard time expressing themselves.
"The wood is the inspiration for the instrument," Dishinger said. "A wood has a certain potential and you have to try to handle it."
Baggett said, "I read a quote that said 'Don't study guitar making, study wood and the variations in the grain.' Any fine woodworker studies the wood rather than the he is making with the wood."
Baggett and Smith remodeled an old gas station to hold their workshop and store. The shop has a feeling of newness. The building is made of brick.
"What we do is very much an art. The artist comes in as you try to see the design of your instrument in your mind and then
build it."
In contrast to the artistic approach the craftsmen at Michigan Street Music have toward their trade, Finkin, the harpspaced accordion player.
Finney said the harpsichord, a predecessor to the piano, was essentially a machine because the keys were joined to levers that plucked the strings, giving the instrument its characteristic pliant sound.
His shop is next to the Kansas River Bridge at 405 N. Second St. The nose of trucks rummble by his small, almost block shop across the street.
first harpsichord in 1920 as he was completing his doctoral thesis in English literature at the University of Kansas. Finney said, "This is much more satisfying than teaching freshman English, because when you finish the semester you never know whether you earned your money. When I finish a harpsichord, I have something physical I can look at and hear."3
Finney uses his harpsichord for $2,000 to $6,000. He got plans for his instruments from drawings of museum instruments.
"One of the most satisfying aspects of my work is when I hear someone play an instrument of mine in a concert," he said. "Then, I know I've done something to help them make their music in a way they couldn't have done themselves."
Photos by Randy Olson and Chris Todd Story by Bruce Thomas
Every piece of Rik Dishinger's violins at Michigan Street Music must be patiently hand-carved from blocks of wood.
Greg Smith, co-owner of Michigan Street Music, works on the Ramirez pattern of bracing on his classical guitar.
Early morning sunlight in Oliver Finney's Harschipson Shop allows him to use the best light of the day to balance the colour and texture of his paintings.