Mike Long Guitars

by David Dugas

Note: This is the full-length version of the article in the September/October 2004 issue of Flatpicking Guitar Magazine.

    What can I say about a guy whose guitars are played by Roland White, is married to and recorded with Gloria Belle, who is a former member of both the Jimmy Martin and the Charlie Monroe bands? What I can say is I’ve been hearing about Mike Long’s guitars for many years, but until today I had not had the opportunity to play them.
    As I visited with Mike I had the privilege to playing several of his 28 and 18 style guitars in addition to his wonderful old Martin D-28 herringbone collection. It’s not often that I get to play several examples of a builders work when conducting an interview, but this was a great day for this non-redeemable GASaholic.

DD: How did you start building guitars?

ML: I started building guitars out of necessity. I had a couple of really old Martin guitars, which I really liked, but I wanted a good sounding modern mahogany guitar, which I couldn’t find at the time. So, I decided that I’d try to build one. I wanted to build a really good mahogany guitar because at the time it seemed that the lead pickers were playing mahogany guitars, so it just seemed the logical thing to do if I wanted to break into guitar building.

DD: When you started building you were more into playing than building instruments?

ML: Yes, at the time I had just retired from my government job and I was looking for something to do to occupy my time so I just started building guitars and it just kind of mushroomed from there.
    I became fascinated with Martin guitars back in 1963. At that time there were only a few music stores in Nashville where you could get a Martin guitar. I was on the waiting list at Hugley’s music store for two years to get a Martin guitar because their allotment was only two guitars a year. The Hank Snow music store was in town at that time, as were L.C. Tiller and also John Miller Music store. Every one of those stores is now defunct. At that time the Martin Guitar Company was a relatively small company compared to today. I think the allotment for Hugley’s Music store was two 28-style guitars and one 18. At that time you didn’t have all the models that you have today.

DD: When did you build your first guitar?

ML: I built my first guitar in late 1996.

DD: Do you still have it?

ML: No, I had to sell the guitar to get the money together to buy more material for the next guitar. I sold many of my original guitars at lower rates just to get my name out there and to get the money to buy the materials, machinery and the tools that I needed to build more guitars.

DD: How many have you built so far?

ML: I've built 103 instruments so far.

DD: Do you build instruments other than guitars?

ML: I also build banjos upon request, but I mostly leave that to Steve Huber. [Laughter] I build banjo necks and resonators for Lynwood Lunsford over in Eden, NC. Lynwood has a music store called Draper Music. I built about five banjo resonators and necks for him and another eight banjos for various people prior to that.

DD: Who are your influences? You mentioned earlier that you wanted an 18-style Martin dread style guitar.

ML: Yes, that’s correct. Well this all goes back to about 1967. Roland White and I were great friends. Roland White, Sandy Rothman and Doug Green (Ranger Doug) and I were all friends and lived here in Nashville (I’ve lived here my whole life) and we’d travel down to Muscle Shoals, AL to Rual Yarborough’s music store. At that time, Randy Wood worked for Rual Yarborough. Randy has been one of my biggest influences in building instruments. We became great friends and I was absolutely fascinated with the way he could work wood. Eventually, Randy moved to Nashville and had the old time picking parlor. Initially he started out with GTR, which was George (Gruhn), Tut (Taylor) and Randy. I hung around that shop at least two or three times a week and sometimes at nighttime to watch him work. I was just fascinated with it and I wanted to try my hand at it.
    Melvin Tucker and Also Frank Neat have influenced me.

DD: Let’s talk a little about your construction methods you use to build your instruments. Do you use jigs, routers, or CNC on any of your guitars?

ML: I don’t use any CNC. We do everything by hand. I buy some of the brace stock that I use from Martin as well as some of their B-quality wood. I also buy from Luthier’s Mercantile, Stewart MacDonald and also from Euphonon up in New Hampshire.
    I only have two jigs that I use for my guitars, one jig for a dreadnought and the other jig for a 000. Everything else is done by hand.

DD: How many different styles of guitars do you build?

ML: I build a dreadnought and a 000 size guitar. I cut all of my braces out with a band saw then sand all the braces by hand. As a matter of fact, I completed a set of braces that I’d like to show you before you leave today.
    From an engineering standpoint, I’ve been a student of the Martin guitar for 40 years. I’ve studied those Dreadnought brace patterns thoroughly. I own a ’37 herringbone and a '46 herringbone. There are different configurations in the bracing patterns. I like the sound of the herringbones from 1939 and later herringbones where they moved the braces from 1 inch to 1 inches away from the soundhole. I also studied D-18s and of course they made the same move of the braces on the D-18s as they did the 28s, but after they moved the braces on the mahogany guitars, they just didn’t seem to have that punch, they didn’t seem to have that sound that I really liked in the 28s. I liked the rosewood guitars, so I kept examining why they didn’t have that punch and why the D-18s were a little thin sounding in the 40s, so I decided that I would make my X-pattern 1 inches from the soundhole, Now, if you measure back 3 inches from the soundhole that should be the exact horizontal point that your bridge pin holes are going to go through under the bridge. I try to make that right in the center of the bridgeplate. Well, you’d be surprised at how much separation at that point in the X-bracing there is compared to the models prior to 1939. It measures out at about 5 7/8 inches of separation at that point whereas in the modern day models from 1939 on it’s 4 inches of separation. When I’m speaking of volume, I’m speaking of area. Well, prior to ’39 you had this bigger area of vibration or response that you could get across that area, so I determined that was a big factor since the modern guitars were only 4 inches. So, I made mine 1 inches, which gives me 5 inches of separation between the X-braces at that point. So far it has worked out pretty good for me and at the same time the structural integrity and the strength of the top has increased a little bit by not having quite as much separation as they did prior to ’39. So, basically that’s my theory on construction.
    I have also been known to move the scallops on the braces, particularly on the bass side. If you want more bass out of the guitar, you can move the peak of the scallop of an inch; however I would not go more than an inch towards the edge of the guitar. That seems to give some more bass. Sometimes if a person is looking for a wide neck, it tends to bulk the guitar up a little and it gives the guitar more bottom, more of a bassy sound.
    I make my bridge plates out of maple and they are the exact same size as the bridgeplates from the 30s.

DD: Are you using “vintage spacing” at the bridge?

ML: No I’m using the 2 1/8 inch spacing, which is the modern spacing. If someone wants 1 inch at the nut, I’ll ask them what spacing they want. I can use 2 inch or 2 5/16 inch spacing.

DD: Have you heard any difference in the sound between the different spacing, other than the extra bulk from the neck?

ML: I think you get more volume from the wider spacing and the tone is better. I think it gives the guitar a lot of punch.

DD: And that’s because there is more vibrating area behind the bridge?

ML: Absolutely. You’ve increased the area for vibrations between those X-braces. You just get more umph and punch out of the guitar that way.

DD: What else do you do within the body that’s different than a standard 28 or 18 style martin?

ML: I’m not using anything else that’s different other than using hide glue, which creates a thinner barrier between the two pieces of wood. Anytime you decrease the barrier of glue than I think you’re going to get better vibrations, better response, better tone, and better everything.

DD: Is going along the theory that everything in the instrument should vibrate as one unit?

ML: Yes, that’s what I’m trying to do. A lot of people ask “why don’t the guitars of today sound like the old ones from the 30s and 40s?” If you want one to sound like that then you’re going to have to make it like was back in the 30s and 40s. That’s why I had cut and hand-sand all of my braces. Today, the larger builders have those programmable discs that go in the CNC machine and it just cuts the braces out and there isn’t any hand operation and fine tuning in the process at all.

DD: What do you think that hand operation gives the luthier?

ML: If you go back and study the original braces in those old guitars were rounded, there were no sharp square edges. When I was in the recording studio with my wife I came across a theory. I noticed that there were no sharp edges in the recording studio, no 90 degree turns in the walls. I thought it must stop the sound from bouncing off of one wall into another and get a more solid, more humungous tone. So I decided that I wouldn’t put any more sharp edges in the braces of my guitars. I rounded everything off. I think it’s a combination of a lot of little things.
    That’s what I hear from a lot of the builders I’ve spoken with over the years – it’s not one individual aspect, it’s the whole unit – how one piece reacts to another which gives the sound.
    Well, you know, I’m probably one of the few guys out there today still using a dovetail joint. A lot of people have gone to bolt on necks and those guitars sound good, but I like the dovetail joints. I don’t know, I just think that I get a little better vibration up the neck. I can feel the neck vibrate when I play. I don’t know if I’m right or wrong, but you go with what’s working for you as a builder.

DD: How about the truss rod?

ML: I’m using a two-way truss rod. We have a local guy here in Nashville, Steve Smith that started up a business, Cumberland Acoustics. He supplies truss rods for many of the builders. I think that a two way truss rod is the way to go because it’s the simplest and most efficient. The weather is a factor around here. When we have high humidity your neck can change a 32nd of an inch. There are so many session, studio pickers around here and intonation is important to them. With that two way truss rod you can usually correct whatever the problem is in a matter of minutes.

DD: Would you explain the truss rod that you use and how it works?

ML: To my knowledge the modern day Martin truss rod is a one piece truss rod and you can tighten or loosen it. The two-way truss rod has two rods, one above the other.

DD: Is this similar to the one that Stew-Mac sells?

ML: Yes. It’s identical to that. The reason I use Steve Smith’s rod is because he’s here local and I can go in and get the exact length truss rod that I want from him. I don’t know the length of the Stew-Mac rod, but mine is probably inch shorter. Steve will build the truss rod to the length that I need.

DD: You build both 18 and 28 style dreads? What appointments do you use on your guitars?

ML: Both my rosewood and mahogany models are predominately trimmed with herringbone. I don’t know if anybody else is building a D-18 style guitar with herringbone trim or not, but I’ve always done it. I think it looks good and it looks traditional.
    I use the open back Grover V-97 tuners. I don’t like the Grover Rotomatic tuners. The Rotomatics are much heavier than the vintage style 97 Grover tuners that I like to use. I think the style 97 tuners give a better balance to the guitar and some people are of the opinion that they just change the tone of the guitar. I like the vintage looking butterbean tuners. The Grover 97’s are fairly economical and no trouble whatsoever.
    In most of the guitars I use the diamonds and squares inlays on the fingerboard, which are ebony. I use a tortoise looking material pickguard that are beveled around the edges.
    I also like the long, straight through bone saddles. Some people think that you get better distribution of vibration and sound across the top with the through saddles. It certainly gives the guitar the old vintage look and it seems to be what everybody likes, so that’s what I use in all of my bridges.

DD: Do you hear a difference? Have you tried drop in saddles versus long, through saddles?

ML: I’ve tried the drop in and personally I don’t hear a whole lot of difference. I think the drop in might be a little stronger. Eventually with age the straight through saddle is going to lean towards the soundhole and eventually they have been known to break. They’ve been known to crack the ends of bridges. But, people seem to want that saddle even with those problems, so I put in what the customers want.

DD: What kind of sound are you trying to achieve with your instruments?

ML: Currently I’m building about eight mahogany guitars to one rosewood guitar. I want a big punchy sound at the same time not have an overbearing bass. You need some brightness in lead playing and many lead pickers have been leaning towards mahogany. They’ll call up and ask for a mahogany guitar five or six times before they’ll ask for a rosewood guitar. I think that in modern recording studios with the modern microphones, the mahogany guitars record better. They aren’t as boomy. I myself have recorded with the old 30’s and 40’s martins and the recording engineer had to put baffles all around me to keep from bleeding into another microphone.

DD: Were you using a 28 or an 18?

ML: I was using the old 28 herringbones that I have. In the last four or five years that I recorded I’ve used the mahogany D-18 style guitars.

DD: What style of music do you play?

ML: I’m married to Gloria Belle, who used to be with Jimmy Martin and also Charlie Monroe. She’s had a band for about 9 or 10 years and I play the guitar and do a lot of the lead and harmony singing in her band. I’m not known as a lead picker, but I do play enough lead to accompany her style of music which is mostly the Appalachian style of bluegrass music. She does a lot of the old Molly O’Day gospel numbers. We do probably 60 -70% gospel numbers. We play the straight ahead style of Bluegrass gospel music.

DD: How did you get into the old, vintage prewar Martins?

ML: I acquired m first 1937 D-28 herringbone in 1968. A friend of mine came down from New York and he hocked that guitar to me for $500 so he cold buy a car and go to Colorado. He wound up playing fiddle with Goose Creek Symphony.
    The 1946 D-28 herringbone I acquired from George Gruhn in 1970. I had an almost mint condition 1954 D-28 that I traded to George (plus $100) for the 1946 herringbone. It has been my favorite guitar through the years.

DD: Do you still own the herringbones?

ML: I still own both of them. We also have two 1949 D-28s that belong to my wife. They are excellent guitars. I have always liked the Martin D28s from the late 40s through early 50s. That was an era where you could buy a Martin guitar and it would sound good right out of the case. You didn’t have to wait 10 years for it to open up.

DD: That’s a great segue into my next question. I’ve spoken with many luthiers over the years on how a guitar should perform new. Some luthiers tend to build on the heavy side and are confident that their guitars will sound great in 10 years. There are other builders that believe that the instruments should be 80 to 90% of what it is going to sound like right out of the box. What are you thoughts on this?

ML: I agree with the 80% right out of the box. I don’t think that you should have to wait 10 or 15 years for an instrument to sound good. If it doesn’t sound good right out of the case, it’s not ever going to sound great. Some of the tone and response will be enhanced over a period of time, but in my opinion, it’s never going to be great. I think that when you pick that new guitar out of the case, that’s about 80 to 85% of the sound you’re going to hear for the rest of your life from that particular guitar. I’ve had several comments by some very notable people that my guitars sound good right out of the case. I’m asked “what are you doing?” Well, I can’t really tell them what I am doing except that I take my time and patience and do everything by hand.

DD: Do you build your instruments on the lighter side, or more towards the heavy side and do you think it makes any difference?

ML: Most folks think my guitars are light. There’s no point in putting broomsticks in there for braces! They just vibrate better. I think you get far better vibration from a lighter guitar as well as better tone and better response, better everything. Basically, you have a hot rod guitar! [Laughter]
   There are builders out there that just tap tone everything, which I’m not into. My theory is that I build the body, the box part of the guitar and I start testing it to see how much air it will pump out the sound hole. When I’m sanding on the top and I get it to pump a good bit of air through the soundhole then I know it’s where I want it.

DD: How do you test that?

ML: I thump all across the body, the top where the bridge is located as well as slightly behind the bridge. I thump right in between those X-braces and that pushes and pumps that air out of the soundhole.

DD: Let’s talk about the building materials you use.

ML: I have built three guitars out of Brazilian rosewood. I really don’t like to build guitars out of Brazilian because the wood we are getting today is predominately slab-cut Brazilian with a high degree of oil in it because I assume it was the leftover culls from the 60s and if Martin and other companies rejected it back then, it can’t be much better today. I’ve had problems with it cracking even after I completed the guitars, particularly the backs cracked. I’ll spray a Brazilian rosewood guitar and it will look great then the next day I walk out there and it has a crack in it. There’s no way to fix it except to open the crack up with a razor blade and fill it with super glue then I have to refinish it all over again.
    I’ve had a great deal of success with what we call Mexican rosewood. I’ve built guitars out of Honduran rosewood and we’ve built one guitar out of Amazon Rosewood. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to get any more of that wood. Then there are the variations of mahogany. I’ve used Honduran mahogany and some of my best friends really love African mahogany, which is a dense, porous type of mahogany. I have one here that’s Sepele mahogany, which is a beautiful instrument.

DD: You’re not using the standard appointments that Martin uses on your mahogany 18 style guitars. You have herringbone on your 18s and you have diamond and squares on your 18-style fingerboards.

ML: Right. I’ll use diamond and squares or what was the original 42-style snowflake upon request, but the basic standard mahogany or rosewood comes with diamonds and squares on the fingerboards. I have that in mother of pearl and abalone. Whichever the customer wants, I have it.
    I’ve used dark binding on some of my mahogany guitars. I’ve also started binding the headstock with a tortoise style binding. It’s a little tougher to bend, but it’s quite attractive.

DD: What top wood are you using for your instruments?

ML: I tend to leave that up to the customer. I am blessed with having a good deal of 10-, 12-, and 15-year old red spruce, some with bear claw, which is mostly tight grained. I also have red spruce that’s wide grained. The other top wood that I use is Sitka spruce. I like Sitka and I think it gives a good punchy sound. I’ve built a few out of Engelmann, but I basically leave it up the request of the customer.

DD: What differences are you hearing between the spruces?

ML: They all sound pretty good to me. I think the red spruce probably gives you a little warmer sound at the same time you have to play it 15 to 20 minutes before it really starts to “turn on” and sound great. I think Sitka is al little quicker to wake up. Sitka is probably a little more durable over a 15 to 25 year period of time and a little stiffer that red spruce and certainly stiffer than the Engelmann, which isn’t very stiff.

DD: Have you noticed any difference between tight-grained and wide-grained red spruce?

ML: On a brand new guitar, I favor the wide-grained red spruce. I’ve also had good luck with tight-grained red spruce.
    If you go back and examine the older Martin guitars from the 30s -- the 18s and the 28s -- most of those were tight grained red spruce. I haven’t seen many wide-grained red spruce guitars from the 30s. But, I have seen a 1938 D-28 that was Sitka spruce, so Martin didn’t use only red spruce in the 30s, they used Sitka too. I like the wide-grain red spruce on the rosewood guitars and the tight-grain red spruce on the mahogany guitars. It gives it a little brighter sound, which the lead pickers are looking for, but at the same time you still have enough bass.

DD: It sounds like you are able to get the sound you are looking for from whatever wood you are using?

ML: Well, from what my customers have been telling me, my guitars are pretty consistent. Some guys will call up and they won’t even consider anything other than red spruce. That might be a trend right now, I don’t know.

DD: Do you do any repairs in addition to building guitars?

ML: No, I’m not into repairs unless it’s a close friend of mine because it takes away time spent on building my instruments.

DD: What is your current waiting list?

ML: I have four or five orders right now, which is about four or five months of work for me.

DD: How long does it take for you to build one instrument?

ML: I can build a guitar in a week or so, but what takes all the time is spraying the finish. I don’t have a spray booth, so I spray in the front of my workshop in my garage and I’m at the mercy of the weather. That brings up an interesting story about the first two guitars I ever built. I didn’t know what I was doing, so I hung them on the clothes line for just a few minutes after I sprayed them to get the lacquer tacky. It takes two or three minutes for the lacquer to get tacky where it won’t run. A big puff of wind came along and blew them over in the grass and they rolled over and over in the grass. I had weeds and grass in the finish. [Laughter] So, I learned my lesson not to hang any more guitars on the clothes line! [Laughter] You have to watch out in April and May because all of the green haze (pollen) is blowing around and that doesn’t do the finish any good! [Laughter]
    When I first started building there were very few people out there that would help me learn. I went through a year or a year and a half trying to find compatible thinners and worked with various lacquers. It was a big job learning which combinations of thinners and lacquers wouldn’t pit or run. Randy Wood, Frank Neat and Melvin Tucker were incredibly helpful with me when I was learning to build guitars.

DD: Are any artists playing your guitars?

ML: Well Roland White owns one of my guitars. Raymond Fairchild owns one of my guitars. People seem to not know how good a guitar player he is. His guitar has a western cedar top. Roland White’s guitar also has a western cedar top because that was what was on the last guitar that Clarence owned, The Mark Whitebook.

DD: What do you hear in the cedar top that is different than the spruce top guitars?

ML: Immediately, you get a real bright sound and a lot of volume with not much bass. My opinion is that it doesn’t change for the better with age. The down side is that the western cedar top dings easily and is very soft.
    Some of the other people that are playing my guitars are Karl Shiflett, Steve Gulley of Mountain Heart, Valerie Smith, Brandon Rickman of the Lonesome River Band and Sammy Shelor plays one song on the guitar and he uses one of mine. Tim Austin has one of my guitars.

If you would like to contact Mike Long:
615-834-2139
www.mikelongguitars.com