Page 31 - Flathead Beacon // 4.29.15

FLATHEADBEACON.COM
BUSINESS MONTHLY
APRIL 29, 2015 | 31
GUITARS
Continued from page 29
crafting the instruments for himself, then his children, and then many family members. It was a nice gift, he acknowledged, but quickly followed up with a joke that those family members were also guinea pigs for his new hobby.
Though the fire to build guitars waxed and waned over the years, Knadler is about to have plenty of time to pursue this passion. At the end of this school year, he will retire, and he and his wife Melanie, a teacher at Glacier High School, will move back to Oregon, where they were teach- ers for 12 years.
It’s also where the couple’s granddaughter lives, Knadler said, and the call of being near the youngest generation of their family is pretty strong.
Starting a new chapter in their lives means he’ll have more time to devote to his own music, as well as his guitar-making business, Joel Gui- tars.
“That’s going to be my focus,” Knadler said.
Knadler’s creations are high-end pieces, running at about $2,400 per guitar, and he also builds custom instruments. After 10 years of re- pairing and building guitars, Knadler has a sense of which materials can accomplish making the sound an artist might be searching for. It can be tricky, he said, because the guitar has to be built
before it can be tested, and making adjustments on a finished piece is difficult.
“The art of it, in my opinion, is balancing it,” he said.
There’s also the aspect of tailoring an instru- ment to its owner, he said.
“Any guitarist will create a different sound, even with the same instrument,” Knadler said.
Being able to build his own instruments also allows Knalder the opportunity to test his own musical theories, like those on how the thick- ness of the wood in a guitar affect the bass and the sound.
Generally, he puts his theories to work, and gives the resulting instrument to local musi- cians for test runs. The musicians then return the guitar with their comments and critiques, and Knadler then knows what he must fix.
Since getting his luthier certification, Knadler estimated he’s built close to 40 guitars in the last decade, and hopes to continue with a steady pace of one per month during retirement.
And like any true artist, Knadler said he con- tinues to learn about his craft, especially the mu- sical side, using multiple aspects of his life as in- spiration.
“I’ve learned so much from everything I do,” he said. “Especially teaching kids how to play mu- sical instruments.”
For more information on Joel Guitars, visit www.joelguitars.com.
[email protected]
A custom guitar created by Joel Knadler. GREG LINDSTROM | FLATHEAD BEACON
“ANY GUITARIST WILL CREATE A DIFFERENT SOUND, EVEN WITH THE SAME INSTRUMENT.” Joel Knadler
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