Interview

Nestled in the towering cedars and maples of the Eastern Fraser Valley, near the city of Chilliwack, is (was) the home of Heiden Stringed Instruments. Luthier Michael Heiden is polishing a mandolin one last time before packing it in a shipping box. He spends most days close to the workbench , but today he will abandon his shop briefly to take a trip across the border to a Washington State customs broker. An anxious customer awaits its arrival in California where he will take it to its final destination, Israel. Not exactly in Bluegrass country, but more and more customers from all around the globe are commissioning Heidens’ work.

Having legends like Mark O’Connor and Guy Clark play his guitars exclusively has allowed Heiden to enjoy a huge reputation among musicians. But star power notwithstanding his best advertising tool is word of mouth.
Recently I sat down with Michael in his mountainside workshop and residence to talk about the development of his career and business and the instrument market in general..

At the age of 9 I got my first cheap drugstore variety six string. I was playing Beatles and Duo stuff with my best friend who taught me all the chords and harmonies. I realized very soon that it was really only worth $12 and saved up for a Yamaha FG120. It was used, so I made my first attempt at setting up a guitar… adjusting the neck and dressing the frets. I actually made it play better.
I found Bluegrass through a guy I met in Grade 11 who became a best friend and musical partner for many years (he tradgically died some years ago). Dave had "big ears " and had a great record collection. Bill Monroe, Django Reinhardt, Bob Wills. I had found the music I really loved; brilliant acoustic instruments played by masters.

In 1973, for the first year after high school, I went to live on a farm, a co-op run by several instrument makers and their families. They just kind of took me in… a kid from the city looking for a place to find himself.
I apprenticed in the loosest sense of the word. I made coffee and cut firewood for the wood stove in the log cabin workshop. I watched as they sat hunched at their benches carving dulcimer heads and planing Red cedar tops made from driftwood hauled off the local beaches. Eventually they allowed me to plane my first dulcimer top… I was hooked.
I moved back to Vancouver, got a house/shop space, took up playing the fiddle and mandolin, began building dulcimers while learning to repair guitars, and played in oldtimey bluegrass bands.
Since then I have done much more of the same. Dulcimers led to guitarmaking and Bluegrass to Django and back to Bluegrass. I‘ve played in bands and worked with instruments simultaneously…. you know what I mean. Two jobs. The music has been the main reason I love to make instruments. I love something that has the potential to sound sweet and exciting. The instruments I build are what I like to hear and play.
I spent many years doing repairs as my main income. I’ve restored hundreds of Martin guitars as well as all types of stringed instruments. This gave me an insight into what makes a great instrument work well, and its failings. I incorporate this knowledge into everything I build.

After 25 years of working with players of all kinds I have learned how to parlay their needs and playing style into an instrument that will really satisfy them. Tone and feel are very custom variables. They are very important to a musician’s sense of identity and enjoyment with their playing and performance. Most folks have owned and played at least one instrument, some lots. Some don’t care what it is; it’s just a tool and they don’t get too emotional about it. Others really care and know exactly what it is they need and adore it like a very special friend.
They come to me when they know what it is they want and can’t find it in the stores or want something that is a bit different, if not unique. I feel I do my best work when they can tell me in very clear terms what it is they need.

This leads me to ask about the custom thing. What makes your instruments different?

Well, people tell me my instruments are easy to play…‘player friendly’ is the term that often comes up. Setup is so important… this is the relationship between the neck, the bridge, and the strings.
I believe attention to detail and select cured woods have a lot to do with it, but this is only one part of what makes a good instrument. I think of the blindfold test. If it feels good and sounds good then what it looks like is a bonus. At every level there is one more to go to. This brings to mind a saying..... "You are only as good as when you say ‘that is good enough’.
We are in a Renaissance of luthiery. There are so many really talented makers out there, more all the time. What is so great is that we all do it a bit differently. Buyers have a vast array of choices. I never forget how lucky I am to have a piece of this market but always keep in mind my little place in it all. I work very hard to do the very best work I can and make sure the customer enjoys the collaboration. It is his (or her) money that is buying the experience and I want it to be as rewarding as possible. I get a thrill making an instrument for anyone who appreciates what I do, amateur to professional. Many beginner players want to start out with a good instrument. I wish I had had a good guitar when I started… it was painful and there was no tone to speak of. We all know that you can learn quicker if you have a nice instrument. It has to speak to you and be easy to play, especially in the beginning when you don’t have any calluses.

I see a lot of power tools. Do they take away from the ‘handmade’ aspect of your instruments?

Tools are a big part of my life. Most are standard woodworking power and hand tools. Some are custom made for specific applications. I built for a long time with only hand tools and one electric drill. It‘s very important to be able to build with hand tools. Planing and carving wood to shape is very satisfying but it also gives you the understanding of what the material is about.
Handmade doesn’t mean I clawed and chewed the wood into submission with only my body parts. The hand is the ultimate tool. It directs the other tools to do a job.. There is a lot of debate about when it isn’t handmade anymore. Maybe it’s when a computer navigated cutter makes a bridge without a hand touching it. That tool makes precision parts…. always the same. But that doesn’t necessarily make the right part for a custom instrument. Factories aim for exact clones, not treating each component on an individual basis. To most, handmade means made by the hands of one craftsman.
The final product is the sum of all the parts, with their unique physical properties, carefully put together to get a balance and resonance. Of course, no two pieces of wood are the same, so experience and intuition are necessary to calculate the combined effect once all put together. This is what individual makers do best. We look at components and make an educated choice to determine what to use and how to make each one work best for that instrument. Lots of my instruments’ parts are made from a pattern, as close to each other as possible, (by hand-driven technology), but things you don’t see, like brace size and shape and stiffness, are really selected for a certain quality and shaped to work right for each instrument.
I make batches of tops, backs, necks and all the little parts that go into each instrument. I assemble each particular order from this cache of parts. This makes the actual instrument come together quicker with a good sense of flow and continuity.

One new gadget I have isn’t a woodworking tool, but it has proven invaluable to the custom process. The Digital camera. I have been sending photos via
e-mail to people inquiring about details and to confirm things like color and shape. It’s great. Just recently I sent shots of the freshly stained mandolin back, before the lacquer was on, to the fellow I was making it for in Israel. We e-mailed every day for quite awhile talking about every little detail. It’s the next best thing to coming to my shop and looking and talking. I love old world stuff, but isn’t technology great?

You are primarily known as a guitar maker whose instruments are enjoyed by hundreds of players, amateur and professional. I see mostly mandolins on your workbenches.

I’m making a lot of mandolins… they have become very popular and although they’re really an intense challenge to make, I love to build them. I make them in small batches… two or three instruments at a time.
Mandolins have become my passion. I have spent the last five years studying and developing my F-style mandolin. I am fortunate to have a 1923 Gibson Lloyd Loar mandolin available to study. These instruments are considered by all in the business to be the pinnacle of design and sound. One doesn’t normally like to admit to copying something, but in this case it would be like trying to re-invent the wheel. It’s like an improvisation on a melody…. The melody is the main thing; it must be stated, and the improv is an interpretation of it. I take what is known to work and give pleasure then give it my own touch. Not necessarily better, just different, and custom.
Violin makers have for hundreds of years tried to figure out Stradivarius’ secrets and in order to do this they have to pay close attention to all the details.

Speaking of violins, I know that classical violinists generally play old instruments in concert. Is this the same with other kinds of music?

Yes. Most Bluegrass musicians try to find that perfect vintage instrument with a really warm, sweet and snappy sound. There aren’t many new instruments being played on the professional Bluegrass scene because they don’t have that old, developed sound. There is a tradition to uphold… the music as well as what makes that sound. Players are using custom instruments more because the makers work hard at creating really good reproductions of the finest vintage instruments. I believe a new guitar or mandolin can sound great within a year or less if it is made right and played in properly. Then it just gets better and better with time and use.

Modern builders have an advantage over the pioneers. We have the sounds and looks of accepted vintage instruments to guide us… specific standards. So I try, when possible, to use old wood, for tops especially. You can get a bit of a jump on the aging effect and a more mature sound. After many years the cell content of wood crystalizes, stabilizes….this is the seasoning that is so important. Less seasoned wood can be used once it is dried for a reasonable amount of time, and the rest of the seasoning can be done while it is working and developing on a finished instrument.

That is some very beautiful wood on that mandolin. What is it? Tell me about the materials that go into your instruments.

That’s some mighty fancy quilted Big leaf maple, from the West Coast, here. It’s about 40 years old… I have so many variations of maple from all over North America, I can hardly keep track of them.. Hard, soft, tight figure, broad figure, quilted… they all serve to create that custom look and sound. Same with Spruce for tops. I have every density range in four different types of spruce. On my Dreadnought guitars I have been using Red (Adirondack) spruce, the wood of choice for Bluegrass guitar tops since pre-war times. The Red spruce is harder than other types and takes longer to break in, but when it does, you have an instrument that can be played soft or hard, with strong, clear tone, and not break up, or frap out under hard playing. European wood is medium hard and very white and shimmery. Sitka, which is the most commonly used top wood for stringed instruments, produces a very balanced, crisp sound. Engleman is the softest and probably the sweetest. The width of growth ring, or grain, of any of these types determines the overall stiffness, which in turn is the factor taken into account to brace appropriately. There are many variables so of course these are generalizations.
For guitars one of the most common hardwoods for the back and sides is East Indian Rosewood. It is dark in sound and look…very rich and sustaining. I also use the more bouncy woods like Koa and Mahogany as they produce a quick, punchy response to the tops vibrations.
Brazilian rosewood, disputably the king of the hardwoods, is becoming so rare and expensive that many people can’t justify using it. The over use of it in the last century has helped to contribute to the destruction of the rainforest, so its use is ecologically incorrect to say the least. It’s one of the densest woods with a lovely clear ringing tone. Guitars made with it have a very distinctive tone and power but we are all learning how to make fine instruments with less endangered species.

I share a love of beautiful figured wood with many of my customers. The main concern of course is the type and quality of the wood. When they order a mandolin, or a guitar, they might have a preference for a certain look. We talk about their style of music and technique requirements, what tone we are striving for, and the neck size and shape. Then there are the personalizing touchs like custom inlays, with a variety of materials such as Abalone and Mother of Pearl, highly figured wood, or gold and silver to employ. People like to have some aspect of their new custom instrument that is uniquely theirs. Some like the clean simple look of wood without decoration. Something for everyone…

So much to learn…I hope to keep an open mind, mainly not to think that I know it all. There are always more details to see… I’ve always thought that if I don’t learn something everyday then I’m not paying attention. Every time someone requests an option or detail I’m not familiar with I rise to the challenge and am delighted when it turns out to their satisfaction. I learn a lot from my customers prodding me on.

I want to pursue the whole range of arched-top instruments including Jazz guitars. There’s so much art and design in archtop instruments that it’s as much sculpting as it is acoustic physics. For the time being though I am continuing my focus on mandolins and flattop guitars …. one shouldn’t spread oneself too thin.

I’m often asked if I plan to expand and hire apprentices. That’s never been a goal of mine… it would conflict with my life/work style. Besides, my customers like the fact that I make every part of every instrument.
I consider myself very fortunate… I really enjoy what I do.