How and at what age did you decide you wanted to become a  Luthier? Did you receive any formal training?

I “customized” – (read butchered) – my first guitar, a Dwight Belmont, in  1970 when I was about 14. I apparently thought you could cut a new  pocket for a Humbucker with a wide-blade putty knife, a screwdriver, and  a hammer. This, sadly, was not the case…

Then, after a number of years experimenting, reading what little there  was available at the time, and bugging the heck out of local repairmen to  show me anything they would even consider sharing, I landed an  apprenticeship in, (violin), bow making, and worked for several years  with a collector and restorer who was able to guide me, not only in the  development of my craftsmanship, but my way of thinking and personal  approach to the craft. He was Chinese, having fled to the states during  China’s Cultural Revolution, and he lent an interesting and introspective,  almost Zen-like, method of thinking about these things to my  perspective. His Name was Yuan Tung, and he was the associate  principal ‘cellist in the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. He had more  impact on my life than I was ever able to convey to him.

 When and where did you actually get started in the business of  building guitars?

Though I built my first instruments in the late ‘70’s, Moll Custom  Instruments was “officially” started in 1996 at the height of the archtop  “craze”, and I kept up with the repair and restoration end of the business  until the flow of orders for new archtop instruments simply made that  impossible.

And it was a “craze”. I mean, it almost seemed like even accordion  players were ordering archtops because they thought they ought to  have one. Scott Chinery had commissioned, and then highly publicized  the Blue Guitar Collection, interest in vintage instruments was high,  which fed the new instrument market as well, jazz’s popularity was  coming back around. It was the nexus of numerous independent factors,  and it made for a major spike in the market cycle. That up-turn had to  change and stabilize of course, and now we’re back to a “fairly normal”  product demand. The economy in general has had its impact on  everyone, but back in those days, four or five orders a month wasn’t  unusual.

 Roughly how many guitars do you build each year and  approximately how much time goes into each one?

I’ve built between twenty five and thirty guitars per year for the last  eight years, and for six of those years I was consistently two and a half  years backlogged at that output level. That’s down to about one year  now but, as of this writing; new orders are such that I may push it to one  and a half years soon.

It’s tough to calculate how many hours a single guitar takes, because I  don’t actually “clock in and out” of working on each instrument. In fact,  many of us do a lot of prep and sub-assembly work in large batches to  get a head start. I may cut and glue up two years worth of neck blanks  over the course of a few days, or re-saw and thickness sand seventy  sets of sides. So, a number of those components are brought up to a  certain point and then sit in the storeroom to make things go more  smoothly when they’re needed for a specific order.

While attending one of the Long Island shows, Tom Ribbecke, Steve  Anderson, and I sat around a restaurant table at dinner and tried to nail  down a “time per instrument” number – we’d all been asked this question  about 100 time each that day – and we all agreed on “approximately”  one hundred and fifty to one hundred and seventy five hours per  “average” guitar, not including glue or finish drying times.

That’s why, as a self-employed Luthier, sixty and seventy hour weeks  are more the norm than not!

 What are your favorite woods and wood combinations for an  archtop? Can you describe the tonal characteristics they provide?

Well, in the violin business, maple and spruce have been the traditional  woods for over three hundred years; they’ve also been the traditional  woods for archtop guitars for quite some time, although mahogany was  the choice of C.F. Martin, and Orville Gibson for their first efforts.  Mahogany has been used with success, but the marketplace seems to  prefer the more decorative flamed maples.

What each species of material adds to the overall sound of an  instrument is much less important than what the maker does with those  materials. Books have been, and will continue to be, written about this  subject I’m sure but, the simple answer is that mediocre materials in a  Master’s hands can produce a wonderful instrument, while the best of  materials will certainly be ruined by an amateur. Bob Benedetto proved  the former statement years ago with his archtop made from “Home  improvement store” materials, as did Bob Taylor with the original “pallet”  guitar. Both were made with absolutely the “wrong stuff”, and yet, they  both played and sounded wonderfully.

 What is your ideal wood for an archtop bridge and how does it  affect the overall sound? Many players, myself included, complain  that they have to compromise with the intonation when it comes to  a floating or movable bridge.  A tune-o-matic bridge or even a  compensated bridge will usually remedy the intonation problem.  How much do they alter the overall sound quality of the instrument  and in what way? 

With rare exceptions, ebony is the only wood I use for bridges because it  is tough and very hard. It not only wears well over the years, but  transmits the strings’ vibration to the top with minimal loss of energy.
Where compensation is concerned, many players – and even builders  for that matter – don’t understand that the guitar is built on a “tempered”  scale, meaning, that it is actually mathematically impossible to achieve  perfect intonation. But, we use compensating factors at the bridge and  at the nut to improve these discrepancies, and most players and  listeners cannot perceive the very, very slight “off” notes that remain, to  an exceptionally sensitive ear however, a deviance of even a milli-cent  can send the owner of that ear climbing the walls.

Also, not all guitars are “created equal”. Some are known for intonation  problems, while others seemingly have none. I’m lucky in that mine are  usually in that latter category.

 How do you brace your guitar tops? (Do you use an X brace and a  tone bar?) Also, please tell us what your desirable top thickness is  when carving and how it contributes to the acoustic quality of the  finished instrument.

I almost always use “X” bracing for its warmth and its ability to distribute  energy more equally than parallel braces. I would use parallel braces if a  client insisted, but none ever have.

My finished, (archtop), top thickness is usually between three sixteenths  and one quarter of an inch, depending upon the stiffness of that  particular piece of spruce. The trick is to strike a good balance between  resonance and structural integrity. Each piece of wood is different, even  within the same species – even within the same log. Two tops can be cut  from a log directly adjacent to each other, and have different  characteristics, so each piece has to be treated as an individual.

 Do you have a preference in scale length or do you provide several  options?

I primarily use a 25.5” scale length, but I have a computer program that  will generate the coordinates for any length I enter. I’ve built archtop  basses and baritones, and even a couple of flat top Ukes, and the  formulations for all of those lengths were flawless.

I maintain the longer 25.5” length as standard however, because it’s  long, but still within a comfortable range. Longer scale = higher tension  = more downward pressure at the bridge = better transference of the  strings’ kinetic energy = better resonance = better tone. It really is that  simple, but you have to strike the balance somewhere. Years ago I built  several especially commissioned guitars with 27” scale lengths for a  client. They were all “cannons” – very powerful guitars but, though they  weren’t particularly difficult to play, not everyone would have found them  comfortable.

 How about pick-ups? (Some players prefer a floating pick-up on an  archtop while others like a humbucker built in to the body. Please  tell us what the difference in sound might be. ) Bill, you as well as  other well known Luthiers  frequently include a volume knob and  no tone knob on even your high end archtops. Why is this so?

I use the floating mini-humbucker when the instrument is expected to  have a good acoustic response – because nothing will be touching  and/or damping the top except the bridge, and the full sized cut-in  humbucker when the client wants a more “electrified” sound. I also  recommend laminated plates for the cut-in pickups because I think it’s a  waste of the client’s money to take a perfectly wonderful, and expensive,  piece of solid spruce, delicately carve it, voice it, and hand tune it, then  cut a big hole in it and screw down several ounces of iron to it. Other  that more profit for the builder in the solid top, I just can’t make good  sense of that.

Kent Armstrong personally hand winds all of our pickups, both floating  and cut-in, and they are so fat sounding to begin with that a tone control  is seldom needed or requested. Remember that a passive tone control  isn’t actually “adding” bass; it’s merely “cutting” treble. Remember also,  that every component you put in the circuit between the pickup and the  output jack robs signal strength, and tonality, including the volume  control even when it’s on “10”, so the less “stuff”, the better.

Kent has been trying, for years, to get me to stop putting even simple  volume controls on my guitars because the output would be so greatly  improved, but I keep telling him that that’s sort of a “minimum  expectation” that players have! J

 What is your most sought after archtop model?

I would have to say that the Pizzarelli model is, beyond a doubt, our most  popular model, followed closely by the Classic Custom in the solid  carved line.

I should give credit here that John has, absolutely, put us on the map  and provided us a level of exposure we could have never dreamed of  over the last nine years. The Tonight show, Letterman, Conan O’Brien,  among many, many others – in fact, I built a guitar for Conan O’Brien  because he fell in love with John’s guitar.

The impact that Endorsers – like you Richie, and John – who play my  guitars because they love them, not because they’re paid or sponsored,  is invaluable. They are true endorsements as opposed to the”paid  commercials” you see all too often.

 What can jazz guitarists expect from Moll Instruments in the near or  not so near future?

Retirement… No, seriously – I intend to keep building until I keel over at  my bench. Hey, it was good enough for Stradivari. J

I may scale back a bit, but then, every once in a while we start talking  about growing a little more too so, who knows? The marketplace is  somewhat like a battlefield, in that the situation is always fluid, and you  have to remain flexible – “adapt, improvise, overcome”. I have a very  good assistant now, a former machinist who has already added a lot of  experience and expertise in several areas, and we continue to improve  and refine our instruments.

So, in a nut-shell, I suppose that’s what you can expect from us –  continued improvement and refinement of our quality, while trying to  maintain good value in our prices. As I’ve always said; I don’t feel that  great guitars should require great sums.

 For more information on Bill Moll’s excellent jazz archtops please visit www.mollinst.com

I’d like to take this opportunity to introduce you to my Moll Archtops of which I am a proud endorser – Richie