Fine Mandolins Emerge from a South Thomaston Shop
If my brother hadn’t decided to treat himself to a first rate mandolin after several years of lessons and faithful practice, like most people, I never would have known that top notch mandolins were being crafted on a farm in South Thomaston. Jim had set his heart on a Phoenix mandolin after spending two hours in a shop on Staten Island, New York, trying out multitudes of mandolins that ranged from $500 to $50,000.
“I had thought I would be after a Gibson, which is what all the big name players use,” he says. “I tried several of them, but then I came across a Phoenix, a mandolin I had never heard of. I immediately loved it and, even after trying a bunch more, I kept coming back to the Phoenix.” The deal was clinched when he visited with Rolfe Gerhardt, creator of the Phoenix line, in South Thomaston, and learned that Rolfe is a dedicated trout fisherman (Gerhardt says that when he gives up building instruments, fly-tying will be his next business) and a fan of Jim’s favorite bluegrass group, the Seldom Scene.
Gerhardt was first attracted to building musical instruments because he loves working with fine wood. His mandolins are made from many of the same woods used for fine violins except that his are primarily of North American rather than European origin. He uses willow, red spruce, highly figured maple and ebony. On the bridge of the instruments, there’s also a small piece of ancient forest maple recovered from Lake Superior. “The logs were lost in logging operations and lay at the bottom of he lake for 100 to 200 years,” he says. “They’ve been salvaged and are used for fine musical instruments and other fine woodworking.
The craftsmanship that Gerhardt devotes to each instrument has been hard-earned through 39 years’ experimentation with every aspect of mandolin building. Not a musician, but always a craftsman — he started building models in his youth and has been working with wood ever since — he built his first mandolin in the 1970s after experimenting with other instruments, including a copy of an antique mandolin-banjo and several guitars. His first mandolin was a reproduction of a 1920s Gibson F-5 mandolin. He wasn’t happy with aspects of the its design, and as has been the case ever since, started tinkering, ultimately producing the first of his Unicorn line.
Working on mandolins whenever he could squeeze in time from his full-time job as a Unitarian minister, he produced 149 Unicorn mandolins before selling his business in 1980. The sales agreement stipulated that for the next ten years, Gerhardt would refrain from building mandolins. He lasted eight years before starting to tinker again, this time working on a new line, the Phoenix (meant to express a return “from the ashes of his days of building Unicorn mandolins.”) That line now includes seven models, which he describes as “a unique extra-light string model for classical, folk, jazz and Celtic music; a highly-refined model for all styles of playing with medium strings and featuring the famous Unicorn vine inlay; a top-of the-line model for medium strings; and three Bluegrass models for medium-heavy strings.” They range in price from $3,000 to $9,500 for the Ultra, which includes a solid ebony suspended finger rest, gold Waverly tuners with ebony buttons and black chrome string posts, black bindings with abalone or Okinawa snail purling, and an elaborate Phoenix inlaid headstock.
An Army brat whose family eventually settled in upstate New York after many moves, Gerhardt was introduced to Maine while attending St. Lawrence Seminary and then being assigned to a church in Pittsfield. He subsequently spent five years in Bangor before moving to San Antonio, Texas, where he produced the Unicorn line. After selling that, he lived for several years in Richmond, Virginia. He and his wife, Susan, who handles the business side of Phoenix, moved to South Thomaston in 1999, drawn here by Maine’s community of artists and artisans. He continued serving as a Unitarian minister, this time in Rockland, until 2003.
The Gerhardts bought a farm on the St. George River and remodeled the barn and garage as his workshop. He discovered that his greatest immediate challenge would be environmental — to maintain the optimum 42 percent humidity that is the industry standard for building fine instruments. “In the winter, we’re pouring water into the building, and in the summer, pumping it out with dehumidifiers.” Recently, he installed a new roof that will help seal the shop from water loss during the winter.
One of his greatest challenges in building the mandolins has been to develop satisfactory finishes. “We’re doing pioneer work with environmentally friendly water-borne finishes that are extremely hard to apply,” he explains. Of the 35 to 60 hours he spends building each mandolin, approximately one-half of that time is devoted to construction, and one-half to applying coats of his hybrid varnish and sanding in between. The entire process, he says, is more high-tech than most people might realize. “We’re using modern epoxies and glue, modern materials and tools with a lot of additional hand work to get the best sound out of the instrument,” he says.
Recently, Gerhardt has taken on a new challenge, learning to program a CNC (computer operated) router. “It works at tolerances of 1/10th of a millimeter and allows me to be much more precise in how the parts are made before I do the hand work to the final dimensions,” he says. “I hope it will help me step up the time for construction. When it’s running right, it can be carving out a top or back while I’m working on something else.” Aided by two shop assistants who work part-time during the year, primarily in summer and holidays, as both are students, he hopes to build 40 mandolins in 2005.
Seven years ago, Gerhardt sent a Phoenix Ultra to a young man he had read about, Ryan Holladay, who, at age five, was already recognized for his skill playing the mandolin. Gerhardt knew Ryan’s family couldn’t afford a top-notch instrument like the Ultra. Recently, Ryan, now 12 and national mandolin champion for 12-and-under musicians, issued a CD, “New Kid in Town.” Gerhardt was thrilled to see that the cover features Ryan holding his Phoenix Ultra.
I asked my brother, “Now that you’ve played your Phoenix Bluegrass model for three years, how does it compare with your earlier mandolin?”
“Mencken’s great line on visiting the Pilsner brewery comes to mind,” he answered. “It was something to the effect of `Pilsner beer towers above ordinary beer as ordinary beer towers above horse piss.’ I’m sure you’ll get the analogy.”
For further information, see www.phoenixmandolins.com.