Special tools, techniques and ideas from
Dan Erlewine
© Frank Ford, 9/15/01

If you don't know Dan Erlewine, you should.

I first met Dan in late 1994 when he came to visit repair shops in the San Francisco Bay Area. Before that time I knew Dan from his monthly column in Guitar Player Magazine, his guitar repair video series, his "Trade Secret" articles and tool development for Stewart MacDonald, and his association with A.S.I.A. and the G.A.L. I figured that meeting the world's best known guitar repairman would be something of an intimidating experience, but (as so often) I was dead wrong.

I consider that October day to be a turning point in my career because Dan pushed me really hard to get into sharing techniques and info, teaching, and becoming active in the lutherie associations. I'd always heard that teaching was about the biggest learning experience you could have, but I hadn't experienced it myself. Thanks, Dan, FRETS.COM wouldn't be here without your early encouragement!

For obvious reasons, I can't simply reprint his textbooks right here on FRETS.COM, and I can't give intimate details of Stewart MacDonald products he's developing, but I can present some of Dan's special stuff, some of which doesn't appear (yet) in his writings.

Here's a list of Dan's special FRETS.COM pages, most of which are items I grabbed from him at our various lutherie conventions:

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