Acoustic guitar building, electric guitar making, archtop guitar building, violin making, dulcimer making, mandolin building, banjo building, or any other type of lutherie; pickup winding and rewinding; drum making; flute and recorder making and repair; brass instrument building and repair; and more. We invite you to participate on the Musical Instrument Makers Forum, an interactive forum for the discussion of musical instrument construction, design and repair; welcoming builders of all instruments at any skill level from expert to wannabe. For ten years the web's premier site for instrument builders.
Who Are We And What Do We Do?
The Musical Instrument Makers Forum is an online community of people who build or who want to build musical instruments, and have questions to ask or information to share about construction, design or repair. Our ranks include those who have not yet built any instrument, those who are just starting out in instrument making, dedicated hobbyists, and part-time and full-time professionals. After eight years online we have a large Library of archived discussions containing over 10,000 files. You must register as a MIMForum member to gain access to our Library, but registration is free. If this is your first visit here and you are new to instrument building, we suggest you start by reading our New Builders' miniFAQ: answers to the questions most frequently asked by those who are new to the art and craft of building musical instruments.
Whether your interest is electric guitar building, acoustic guitar making, building a mandolin or a mountain or hammered dulcimer, or turning a recorder, we hope you will find the answers you need on the Musical Instrument Makers Forum.
What's New?
Hurricane Katrina Relief!The staff, advertisers, and members of the MIMForum worked together to raise over $19,000 for hurricane relief, some of which was earmarked for repair to a New Orlean's musician's home. We were also awarded a $3,000 Home Depot Community Impact Grant towards this repair effort, for which we thank them. Read about the project to help rebuild a musician's home in New Orleans, led by MIMForum staff member Amy Hopkins with a team of volunteer carpenters!
The MIMForum Bass Project has come to a successful end! A number of MIMForum members jointly built a 4-string fretted electric bass, which we auctioned off to a very satisfied buyer on eBay to raise funds to support this website. See the story and pictures. Thanks go out to everyone who participated in the planning and construction process!
Larry Davis of Gallery Hardwoods
Bill Moll of Moll Custom Instruments
Mark Swanson of Mark Swanson Music
Amy Hopkins of Stringed Instrument Repairs
Jason Lollar of Lollar Guitars
Bill Machrone
Larry Clinton
Julian Barton
Barry Daniels
Dale Belcher
And MIMForum sponsor Stewart-MacDonald's Guitar Shop Supply.
This was the result of their hard work:
Featured Discussion:
We have many talented members. Here is this month's featured discussion, an example of Amy Hopkin's original inlay work. Click on the discussion title to read the whole discussion and see all the pictures.
Amy Hopkins and the amazing technicolored snakefiddle: a photo-essay on designing and inlaying very large and complex inlays into a violin back, top, fingerboard and tailpiece.
SERVICES on the MIMForum:
Of course there's our Forum, but in addition to that....
Buy a set of plans. We have the following sets of full-size plans for sale, contributed by MIMForum members:
The MIMForum New Builders' miniFAQ! Answers to the questions most frequently asked by those who are new to the art and craft of building musical instruments, written by the MIMForum membership.
The MIMForum BuzzFAQ! We help you find and fix that pesky buzz!
Read some selected files from our archives.
Read product revies and how-to articles.
Help support the MIMForum! You can help support this worthy endeavor by making your online purchases from the MIMForum Bookstore and MIMForum Tool Store.
Order your woodworking tools and supplies from the
MIMForum Tool Store and help support the MIMForum!
Get your product reviewed! If you would like your product reviewed by our staff, and the review posted on this website as an article external to the MIMForum, please e-mail us. Any item submitted for review must have a minimum retail value of $100, so that it's worth our staff's time to write the review. You must give us your product free of charge, and note that we do not guarantee a positive review. Negative reviews will not be published online but will be e-mailed to you for use in improving your product.
Purchase advertising. Vendors, businesses, or organizations can purchase commercial or sponsorship ads on the MIMForum.
Using the MIMForum:
There are no requirements or
fees to use our Forum. Guest users have full read/write privileges, but do not have access to the MIMForum Library of archived discussions and contributed files and plans, nor can they post classified ads. We do suggest that if you visit us often, you use
the register and login option as it enables features of the
software unavailable to guest users.
The MIMForum New Builders' miniFAQ has answers to the questions most frequently asked by those who are new to the art and craft of building musical instruments, written by the MIMForum membership. If you're a newbie, please read the miniFAQ before you ask your questions on the MIMForum.
Students, and parents of students: if you don't yet know what kind of instrument you want to build, visit the MIMForum Bookstore for two good books on the subject: "Great Wood Folk Instruments to Make & Play" by Dennis Waring, and "Making Simple Musical Instruments" by Bart Hopkin. Both books are oriented towards simple projects for children and young adults that require very few tools. You might also be able to find them through Inter-Library Loan. Thoroughly browse our Links Pages for many, many sites with instructions for building simple instruments, especially simple wind and percussion instruments. Use search engines to find online information about the instrument you're investigating before you ask your questions on the MIMForum.
We have instituted a voluntary subscription to the MIMForum, using the PBS model. If you find the Forum useful, we ask you to subscribe and help pay the costs of keeping the Forum online. You may use this secure form, but you should spend some time on the Forum first.
Please read our MIMForum
Policy Statement and user agreement, and MIMForum FAQ if you're new here.
Please DO NOT e-mail your instrument-related questions directly to the sysop, who will not answer them! Post them on the Forum. Thanks.
Deb Suran, sysop.