Instruments tune in to tradition

SANDPOINT — “Here it is,” Steve Weill said as he pushed open the wooden door to his workshop. “The sawdust factory.”

It takes a few moments for the eyes to adjust from bright sunshine outside to the muted light of the room.

Details emerge and blocks of neatly sawn spruce can be seen lined up on the shelves like oversized books in a library.

Under each window sits a workbench and on each workbench there is a mound of wooden curlicues — the shavings that fall like grace notes from Weill’s wood-chisel as he crafts his musical instruments by hand.

Farther down the wall are the jigs and molds he uses to build mandolins and guitars.

In a shop that speaks of Old World craftsmanship, these heirlooms carry a special significance for the man who spends his days here.

They belonged to legendary Sandpoint luthier R.L. “Bob” Givens, who used them to create many of the 675 mandolins and more than 100 guitars that bore his name before he died in 1993.

Weill, who worked with Givens from 1981-’83 and again from 1990-’92, was an apt student of the eccentric master craftsman.

After Givens’ death at age 50 — an especially sad loss because it came just as the luthier was finally becoming recognized as a star in collectible instrument circles — Weill gained permission from the family to use Bob’s jigs and building plans to carry on the tradition he started. Within a year, he was building A- and F-model mandolins and dreadnaught guitars under the name Givens Legacy.

“I’ve done about 150 instruments out of here,” Weill said. “I built for about six years just doing Givens Legacy instruments before I started branching out to do my own things.”

In the past year, he began studying violin making, adding those instruments to the archtop guitars, electric guitars and octave mandolins he now sells under his own name. Weill picked up the delicately carved top of a violin and tapped it with a forefinger, listening closely for changes in resonance.

Getting inside an instrument, he explained, is like roaming around inside the builder’s head.

“I knew that Bob had studied woods and assembly techniques in his early years,” Weill said. “As I started building violins, I realized there was a lot of overlap between how they were made and what he was doing with his instruments. Evidently, somewhere along the line, he studied violin making as part of that education.”

Weill taps out a rhythm in a diagonal line across the violin top. His face mirrors the changes in tone, like a man listening to a favorite aria or a snippet of art song.

“They say the violin was perfected in the 1550s,” he said as he placed the top back onto the workbench. “I value tradition so highly. Everything I do comes from a tradition, whether it’s the Givens Legacy instruments, my own archtop guitars or mandolins that were originally made at the turn of the (20th) century. They’re all proven.”

Weill has taken his talent into areas his mentor never had a chance to explore. When Givens was alive, his simpler A-model mandolins were selling for less than $1,000, with the more ornate F-model instruments fetching about twice that amount. He developed a market for the mandolins over the years, but, in order to make a living, he had to concentrate on building as many of them as possible.

To break the tedium, Givens became an expert at darts and the undisputed king of local pool tables. He saw the games as more than diversions. They were opportunities to excel. Throwing a dart, for Bob Givens, was real-world research into the science behind the lift and velocity necessary to hit the center of a target. Picking up a pool cue was the first stage for an analysis of the angles and trajectory involved in sinking a colored ball in a particular pocket.

Light reading generally meant diving into a text on quantum physics or a white paper on the inner workings of DNA.

“He was a ‘brainiac,’” Weill said. “I think that’s what entertained him in life.”

Steve Weill, who earns about half of his annual income as a logger, doesn’t need a dartboard or a pool table to break things up. When he wants a change of pace, he heads into the forest to search for the “tone woods” that will become instrument tops. In this region, he has come to prize the tight grain of the Englemann Spruce, as well as certain varieties of pine that find their way into violins and mandolins.

“All of these mystical luthiers have their own theories about how an instrument should be made,” Weill said from behind a tousled walrus moustache. “But it’s really all about the trees. When you find that one in a million tree with just the right grain and the right color, it’s as exciting as giving birth to an instrument and stringing it up for the first time.”

The original Givens instruments are now valued at four to five times what they sold for when they were made. Those who own them, however, almost never let them go.

“We’re now almost 50 years into the Givens culture and there’s a definitive following for the R.L. Givens instruments,” Weill said. “It’s mostly national, but it has gone international, too. I just got a letter from a guy in Japan who owns the No. 5 F-model mandolin and the No. 7 dreadnaught that Bob built.

“They’re highly valued and even more highly regarded,” he added. “You don’t find them on eBay.”

During the years Weill worked alongside Givens, the two came up with a ranking system for instruments that left the shop. The best were categorized as “killer,” while others were rated as “atomic.”

“Everything we turned out pleased him,” Weill said. “They were uniformly high-quality instruments.”

Givens was never a fan of ornate workmanship, preferring, instead, to put his full attention into creating great sound. Weill has carried on that tradition, as well.

“I’m thinking about the musicality of it more than I am the art,” he said.

Considering his sideline business interests in logging and boat building, it’s perhaps no wonder that Weill refers to himself simply as “a woodworker.”

“It’s what I do,” he said, breaking into a smile that lifted his moustache to one side. “I put pieces of wood together.

“I don’t consider myself a master yet,” he concluded. “But I am a pro.”

For more information on Givens Legacy and instruments by Steve Weill, visit: givenslegacymandolins.com