Spotlight On ... Gabby Losch ’10

This music major from Wyckoff, N.J. used his semester off last spring to learn the art and practice of luthiery. The Middlebury Campus sat down to find out about how he learned this unique skill.

Middlebury Campus: Guitar making isn’t exactly what you’d call a usual ability. Exactly how did you learn it?

Gabby Losch: I took last spring off, went down to Georgia and took a course at a school there called Atlanta Guitar Works. It was only six weeks so it was rapid fire.  Day one, we designed it.  Day two, we went out to lumberyards and picked wood, and then we just worked everyday for as many hours as we could stand.  I made one electric and one acoustic in the program.  After coming home, I bought a garage full of tools and I’ve been working on it ever since.

MC: When and how did you decide to do that?

GL: I decided at some point in high school I just really wanted to do it, I don’t really know why — I was playing [guitar] a lot and I just wanted to build something.

MC: Can you explain a little bit about your role in the complicated process of guitar making, especially considering you made both an electric and acoustic guitar?

GL: With the acoustic, you don’t really have a lot of options. Any slight change you make affects it in too drastic of a way, so it’s pretty much predetermined with a few exceptions.  But with an electric there are a lot of choices that you can make that are all drastic decisions.  So if you change what kind of wood you want, it’ll completely change the sound of it overall, or if you change what pickups you use, it’ll completely change it also.

MC: Do you have any last words about your experience learning to be a luthier?

GL: It was an unbelievable amount of work, but entirely worth it.  It was something I’ve wanted to do for a long time, [and I] finally fulfilled it in a really epic way.