Larry Staudt is a retired engineer who has spent lockdown grafting away in a small workshop at the back of his house redesigning the acoustic guitar .
Having played guitar since the age of 14 Larry must have been delighted when he came to live on the Chord Road – just like Guitar George, he knows all the chords!
Larry is originally from Vermont but, apart from three years voluntary work in Israel, Drogheda has been his home since 1985.
An engineer by profession, he was one of the leading proponents of wind energy and heat pumps long before alternative power sources became so prevalent. He is the person responsible for the iconic wind turbine at DkIT.
Larry is retired from all that now but he still retains his interest in guitars both as a player and as an engineer.
He always favoured electric guitars over acoustic because they have knobs and switches and different ways of adjusting the sound, things that engineers find really interesting.
The traditional design of acoustic guitars didn’t make any engineering sense to him though. There are beautiful guitars around but, because of their traditional methods of construction, mostly originating in the 19th century, the sound they make is impaired.
So, after his retirement, Larry decided to try his hand at building his own guitar incorporating the improvements he thought necessary for the purest sound.
“The idea has been rattling around my head for several years” Larry told Drogheda Life. “But now that I’m retired it’s amazing – I can do things!”
For the past two years or so Larry has been engrossed in the project and after three or four efforts his first eureka moment came when it dawned on him that the sound hole of traditional guitars is in the wrong place.
He explained that the sound of a guitar is created by the vibration of the strings causing the soundboard or top of the guitar to vibrate which amplifies the sound and sends it out into the room.
“Why would you want to cut a hole in the soundboard? He asked himself. You need a sound hole somewhere but the soundboard, is not the place for it. That just reduces the volume and the quality of the sound.”
“It was done back in the days before materials that are available to us now were invented. The body has to be strong because of the huge forces that come into play when the strings are tightened, essentially the guitar wants to rip itself apart.”
Using modern materials such as ABS and 3D printing, Larry has come up with a guitar design that can withstand the extreme pressures of the taut strings thus doing away with the traditional framework which was formerly used to provide strength but at the cost of sound quality.
The sides of Larry’s guitars come in one piece and are produced in Austria using 21st century 3-D printing technology. The end result is a guitar body that is lighter and stronger than the more traditional wooden framework
The unique, slightly wedge-shape of the guitar’s body makes for a deeper sound and a smaller body which means they van be more easily played by smaller people and women.
Asked about his plans for the future of his guitar making exploits Larry says that at the moment it is still a hobby for him. He has made and sold a dozen or so guitars and give four away to family members but he admits to still “obsessing over the engineering”.
“I hammer away, hammer away and occasionally the light shines forth!” he said. I think we may well be hearing much more from Larry and his “Staudt” brand of guitars.
Here’s what the latest model Staudt guitar sounds like:
