Thomas Humphrey, an American luthier whose innovative
designs and building techniques helped increase the volume,
sustaining power and projection of the soft-spoken classical
guitar, and whose instruments were played by many renowned
concert guitarists, died on Wednesday at his home in
Gardiner, N.Y. He was 59.
The cause was a heart attack, his wife, Martha Costa
Humphrey, said.
Mr. Humphrey's best-known model, the Millennium, is a
visually striking instrument with a gradually tapered body —
deeper at the bottom, thinner at the neck — and a raised
fretboard. The body shape, along with Mr. Humphrey's
experiments in internal bracing, gives the Millennium a
large, richly resonant tone. Its elevated fingerboard lets
players reach the highest notes more easily than on a
standard instrument.
Mr. Humphrey had been making, conventional guitars for
about 15 years when he designed the Millennium in 1985, and
his guitars were already popular among classical guitarists.
But when several young performers — among then David
Starobin, Sergio and Odair Assad, Eliot Fisk and Sharon
Isbin — adopted the Millennium, he stopped making guitars in
the traditional style.
Other prominent guitarists who have used Mr. Humphrey's
guitars include Dominic Frasca, Carlos Barbosa-Lima, the
Newman and Oltman Guitar Duo, Lily Afshar and Roberto Aussel.
"I've always felt a freedom of experimentation, a kind of
creativity which is a very American concept," Mr. Humphrey
told Acoustic Guitar magazine in 1996. "When I discuss
guitar building with Europeans and Asians, they speak of the
tradition of the guitar, but what I see as the tradition of
the guitar is its evolution, the fact that it does change.
And the reason it changes is because of the players, who say
'Give us more.'"
Mr. Humphrey's limited production — 20 to 40 instruments
a year — increased the Millennium's allure: guitarists who
ordered it joined a waiting list of three to five years. In
1989 Ms. Costa began working with her husband, helping to
double the shop's output.
Mr. Humphrey also licensed his design to C. F. Martin,
the guitar company, for a line of instruments that included
one built to the specifications of the rock star Sting.
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Thomas Humphrey was born in St. Joseph Township, Minn.,
on Nov. 13, 1948. Though he usually said he was a cellist,
he played the guitar better than he let on, and he
gravitated toward guitar-making soon after he arrived in New
York City in 1970. After a year as an apprentice to the
luthier Michael Gurian, he established his own shop,
specializing in the nylon-string classical guitar.
He quickly found a clientele among young players, and his
West Side apartment became a Crash pad for guitarists from
out of town. Mr. Humphrey also underwrote performance series
and helped to make connections for talented new players.
In the early 1990s he began experimenting with ways to
address what he saw as the guitar's two biggest limitations:
its poor projection and its lack of sustaining power. One of
his ideas was to produce a guitar with a finger-operated
lever that would be the equivalent of the sustain pedal on
the piano.
The idea for the Millennium came to him in a dream in
1985, he said. More recently he began collaborating with a
painter, Tamara Codor, on a proposed series of intricately
painted instruments.
In addition to his wife, Mr. Humphrey is survived by two
daughters, Gabriella and Adriana; a brother, John Humphrey,
of St. Cloud, Minn.; and four sisters, Rachel Fischer, Suzie
Humphrey, Martha Lenz and Maryellen Fusco, all of St. Cloud.
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