Last Thursday, two students in an apprenticeship class worked near the front of the Hawkins Guitar shop, one crafting an acoustic guitar and the other, an electric. Nearby, a former student, now a luthier himself, worked on a custom order.
Luthier Brian Hawkins has created a community of students in the school and workshop, which are tucked inside an office park near Strawbridge.
Hawkins has been building custom guitars for nearly three decades. He used to work on them at night and on weekends while working in sales until he could go off on his own.
He opened the school in 2019. He teaches by talking through goals and by doing. He repaired a guitar for a customer while the students worked, checking in when needed.
The most consistent sound this Thursday was sanding. Depending upon the program, tuition can cost thousands but learning is self-paced – students may work a year or more on a first guitar.
“They’re in it until they finish their work or they quit,” Hawkins said. “Students come in here, they build to the top of their ability and then they move on.”
Ana Velez of Virginia Beach is in an apprenticeship class. She’s played for years, becoming more serious in the past few. This year, she started building a smaller acoustic “parlor” guitar, her first.
“It's really cool to see something made of wood, especially, and it being a vessel for beautiful sounds,” Velez said.
She loves making things and hopes to play for family and friends.
“I’m going to have a special place right in my living room, just easy for me to grab and play when I'm just sitting there and just feeling, ‘Oh, I just want to play guitar.’”
Much of the learning is in understanding the wood and mastering the technique of building and putting it together.
Generally, Hawkins said, rosewood, mahogany and koa are right for the body of a guitar. Softer woods such as spruce or cedar might make the top. One student is incorporating wood from his father’s childhood home into a design, and he and Hawkins determined the maple could make a suitable guitar neck.
Hawkins Guitar repairs and teaches players how to adjust their instruments to sound better, and Hawkins also builds custom guitars from rare and aged woods.
But the luthier school is the main business.
Learning the craft involved trial and error and a growing desire to keep learning and improving. Building one guitar made him want to build another.
He wants his students to have that same desire. A big focus is planning the steps, thinking through something before doing it.
“You just do it, and, if you push yourself, you keep doing better, you know,” he said. “You make yourself fix the things you did wrong and fix them well, fix them better than you were doing them the first time. Otherwise, you don't learn.”
Kai Dickson, 15, has been working on his first guitar over the past couple of years. Kai first took classes about winding pickups and improving the “setup” of his electric guitar. He initially considered building another electric then went another way.
“Acoustics, they seem to stay with you longer, hold a little more feeling than electrics,” Dickson said on Friday while working on his guitar.
Student Fred Davidson was working on guitar on Friday. He appreciates how Hawkins coaches each student through each step. Students at different levels talk about building while they work together.
“It’s nice having a group,” Davidson said. “Everybody’s thinking along the same lines.”
Hawkins hopes the school will grow and some of the students will grow as teachers.
He said people gain confidence when they build something by planning, working through problems and improving.
“It's a great thing to watch people's minds grow, and their patience grow, and their abilities go to a place that you know most people don't think they can do,” he said.
