The Sound

Made To Be Played ​A Christmas gift led Steve Hinde to build his first guitar. He received a Martin D-18 kit with an Adirondack top and, naturally, Hinde modified the guitar with what he calls the full “Tony treatment”: forward shifted scalloped braces, large sound hole, an ebony fingerboard with no dots, ebony long slot bridge,…

Teaching How to Play Bluegrass Banjo on YouTube If you are a banjo player and explore YouTube as a source for learning how to play the 5-string, you have no doubt run across Eli Gilbert’s videos.  If you search YouTube for “bluegrass banjo lessons,” Eli’s videos will pop up on the first page.  One of the series…

Modern Made Guitars With A Vintage Sound Preston Thompson had a love for guitars and a desire to replicate the tone of vintage pre-war instruments from the 1930s. That passion led him to study the art of lutherie, becoming an individual luthier in the late 1980s.  Years later, in 2013, Preston started his own custom shop…

Old Time in the Big City If you haven’t visited Nashville in a while, let me warn you—things have changed. It used to be you could find a parking spot downtown if you were patient and were the praying kind. These days, I think the last open spot disappeared around 2021. In its place, we’ve…

Photo by Joe Zauner Maggie’s Journal, based on “true life” stories (as Bill Monroe would say) from Valerie Smith’s great-grandmother, was released January 5, 2026. The 30-track double album is a testament to the survival and incredible resilience of an ordinary American woman from Missouri in the post-Civil War era. It’s also one of the…

David Chichester is a bluegrass sound engineer whose profession began as a hobby that evolved into a career. He and his wife, Traci, own and operate GBS Productions (Great Big Sound) out of Ohio. He explained his audio company’s name. “Great big was a catch phrase before social media: “great big hair” or “great big”…