Life With Strings Attached

Today on Life With Strings Attached, I’m joined by Adrian Bagale of Northfield Mandolins and Guitars.

Adrian’s path begins in Rochester, New York, surrounded by jazz and guitars, and moves through Elderly Instruments, instrument development in Asia, and eventually the founding of Northfield. We talk about what decades spent studying, building and playing instruments have taught him, why Northfield operates differently from most instrument companies, and how relationships between builders and musicians continue to shape what comes next.

We also get into Northfield’s move into guitars, including The Rival, a compact archtop that grew naturally from years of experimenting with octave mandolins. For Adrian, it is less a departure from the mandolin than a return to where his own musical life began.

Along the way, we talk about tradition, technology, curiosity, collaboration, and Adrian’s belief that building new instruments can help musicians create new music.

I thoroughly enjoyed my conversation with Adrian Bagale, and I hope that you do as much as I did.

Watch the video version on YouTube:
🔗 YouTube Channel – Life With Strings Attached

Learn more about Life With Strings Attached, Boutique Guitar Showcase, and Jamie Gale's work in the guitar industry:
🔗 Boutique Guitar Showcase
🔗 Jamie Gale

Thank you for listening and supporting the ongoing conversation between music, makers, history and the future.

Today on Life With Strings Attached, I'm joined by Hozen Yong, the founder of Hozen Guitars and a builder whose mission it has been to bring boutique-level responsiveness and craftsmanship to a wider range of players.

His path started in Singapore, surrounded by his family's piano business. But rather than take over the family business, he chose his own path in guitars, teaching himself the craft through relentless curiosity, experimentation and listening to musicians.

After building Maestro Guitars into a large operation, he found his way back to a smaller, more personal approach, creating exceptional custom instruments with a close-knit team, now under the banner of Hozen Guitars. We talk about the life behind the work, what makes a guitar truly responsive, and how asking better questions can shape both an instrument and a career.

I thoroughly enjoyed my conversation with Hozen and I hope that you do as much as I did.

Watch the video version on YouTube:
🔗 YouTube Channel – Life With Strings Attached

Learn more about Life With Strings Attached, Boutique Guitar Showcase, and Jamie Gale's work in the guitar industry:
🔗 Boutique Guitar Showcase
🔗 Jamie Gale

Thank you for listening and supporting the ongoing conversation between music, makers, history and the future.

Today on Life With Strings Attached, I sit down with filmmaker and storyteller Tim C. Johnson for a conversation about what guitars, animation and great stories have in common.

From the creative worlds behind films like Ants, Over the Hedge and How to Train Your Dragon, to the radical beauty of instruments by builders like Ulrich Teufel and Eric Weigeshoff, Tim explores why the most meaningful art requires insightful observation before you can meaningfully challenge expectations.

Together, Tim and I talk about creative curiosity, the power of music to shape emotions, and why the guitar remains one of the most personal and endlessly evolving instruments in the world.

I thoroughly enjoyed my conversation with Tim C. Johnson and I hope that you do as much as I did.

Watch the video version on YouTube:
🔗 YouTube Channel – Life With Strings Attached

Learn more about Life With Strings Attached, Boutique Guitar Showcase, and Jamie Gale's work in the guitar industry:
🔗 Boutique Guitar Showcase
🔗 Jamie Gale

Thank you for listening and supporting the ongoing conversation between music, makers, history and the future.

Today on Life With Strings Attached, I'm joined by Marcel Fehse, a German guitar maker whose instruments challenge almost every assumption about how a guitar should be built. Drawing on a background in metalworking, he's developed a striking all-aluminum approach that's not just about changing materials. It's about rethinking the instrument from the inside out.

We talk about craftsmanship, prototypes, finding the right balance of strength, weight and tone, and what it takes to keep moving forward when you're building something people haven't seen before and didn't ask for. Along the way, we also get into the value of curiosity, constructive criticism, and the importance of showing up in the right places.

I thoroughly enjoyed my conversation with Marcel. I hope that you do as much as I did.

Watch the video version on YouTube:
🔗 YouTube Channel – Life With Strings Attached

Learn more about Life With Strings Attached, Boutique Guitar Showcase, and Jamie Gale's work in the guitar industry:
🔗 Boutique Guitar Showcase
🔗 Jamie Gale

Thank you for listening and supporting the ongoing conversation between music, makers, history and the future.

Today on Life With Strings Attached, I'm joined by Ola Strandberg, the guitar designer, innovator, and creative force behind Strandberg Guitars.

We talked about the small design decisions that make a huge difference, from neck materials and tremolo systems to serviceability, ergonomics, and the long road from the first idea to a finished instrument. Along the way, we also get into creativity, AI, production constraints, and why thoughtful limitations can lead to better design.

Ola also shares what's next as he returns to a more open, experimental way of working.

I thoroughly enjoyed my conversation with Ola Strandberg and I hope that you do as much as I did.

Watch the video version on YouTube:
🔗 YouTube Channel – Life With Strings Attached

Learn more about Life With Strings Attached, Boutique Guitar Showcase, and Jamie Gale's work in the guitar industry:
🔗 Boutique Guitar Showcase
🔗 Jamie Gale

Thank you for listening and supporting the ongoing conversation between music, makers, history and the future.

You can see the Two Towers in person right now on the BGS enTour 2026. Find dates and locations here: https://www.boutiqueguitarshowcase.com/about-entour

In the summer of 1911, a 19-year-old J.R.R. Tolkien hiked through the Swiss Alps with a group of friends. What he found in the Lauterbrunnen Valley, with its 72 waterfalls, sheer cliffs and snow-capped peaks, would stay with him for the rest of his life. Decades later, he wrote to his son: "The hobbit's journey from Rivendell to the other side of the Misty Mountains is based on my adventures in 1911."

More than a century later, Italian luthier Giulio Negrini and Jamie Gale returned to that same valley to talk about what happens when a guitar becomes more than an instrument.

Giulio's Two Towers installation is two guitars built as one art piece, created for the 25th anniversary of the Lord of the Rings films and the 20th anniversary of Negrini Guitars. It captures a single moment from the book: the only flicker of light in the darkest chapter of the story. Isengard falls. Gandalf is rescued. Hope survives.

This is a conversation about Tolkien, craft, pop culture, what it means to build something that takes everything out of you, and why a guitar that can be played should never be chained to a wall.

To learn more about Giulio Negrini of GNG, click here https://www.boutiqueguitarshowcase.com/giulio-negrini-guitars-gng?rq=gng

Watch the video version on YouTube:
🔗 YouTube Channel – Life With Strings Attached

Learn more about Life With Strings Attached, Boutique Guitar Showcase, and Jamie Gale's work in the guitar industry:
🔗 Boutique Guitar Showcase
🔗 Jamie Gale

Thank you for listening and supporting the ongoing conversation between music, makers, history and the future.

My guest today is Jerome Little, founder of Torzal Guitars and the mind behind the Natural Twist.

Jerome’s story begins in the Sierra Nevada mountains, where making things, solving problems, and figuring things out for yourself were simply part of growing up. He started playing bass as a teenager, studied music and acoustics at Hampshire College, and eventually brought those interests together when he began asking a deceptively simple question: why should a musician have to adapt their body to an instrument?

That question became his college thesis, the Natural Twist, and the beginning of a career that would put Jerome in the company of some remarkable instrument makers. He worked with Ken Parker during the production years of the Parker Fly, later joined Bill Collings in Austin, and carried lessons from both into a design philosophy that remains distinctly his own.

Our conversation moves through those formative experiences, the mentors who shaped him, the realities of ergonomics and repetitive injury, and his continuing search for better ways to build instruments, using materials intelligently, challenging convention, and never treating tradition as the end of the conversation.

Jerome is curious, thoughtful, and, perhaps most importantly, a maker who actually does something with his ideas.

I thoroughly enjoyed my conversation with Jerome. I hope that you do as much as I did.

To learn more about Jerome Little and Torzal Guitars, check out https://www.boutiqueguitarshowcase.com/torzal-guitars

Watch the video version on YouTube:
🔗 YouTube Channel – Life With Strings Attached

Learn more about Life With Strings Attached, Boutique Guitar Showcase, and Jamie Gale's work in the guitar industry:
🔗 Boutique Guitar Showcase
🔗 Jamie Gale

Thank you for listening and supporting the ongoing conversation between music, makers, history and the future.

Today's guest is luthier and architect Simon Padalka, a guitar maker with few peers.

In this conversation, we talk about the dramatic events that unfolded at the end of the 2025 Boutique Guitar Showcase enTour season, when the Padalka guitar that sold on tour was caught in a truck fire in Phoenix, Arizona. Thought lost, then to everyone's surprise, the guitar popped up again for sale a few weeks later, thickening an already unusual plot.

We talk about how to handle the tough situations that we inevitably encounter in business and life, the importance of keeping it cool when things get tough and how to make a Phoenix rise from the ashes of destruction.

If you care about boutique guitars, guitar designs, rare instruments or the human side of making and repairing things that are meant to last, this one is packed with insights, stories and a few moments you won't hear anywhere else.

I thoroughly enjoyed my conversation with Simon Padalka, and I hope that you do as much as I did.

To learn more about Simon Padalka and Padalka Guitars, check out https://www.boutiqueguitarshowcase.com/padalka-guitars

Watch the video version on YouTube:
🔗 YouTube Channel – Life With Strings Attached

Learn more about Life With Strings Attached, Boutique Guitar Showcase, and Jamie Gale's work in the guitar industry:
🔗 Boutique Guitar Showcase
🔗 Jamie Gale

Thank you for listening and supporting the ongoing conversation between music, makers, history and the future.

In this episode, I speak with Lisbon-based artist, musician, and instrument designer André Gonçalves of ADDAC System.

For sixteen years, André has explored modular synthesis, experimental music, and the physical interfaces that make electronic sound feel immediate and human. His ADDAC120 Four String Series brings those worlds together, integrating guitar strings, pickups, motors, bows, and resonators into a modular synthesizer environment.

Our conversation moves through the future of musical instruments, the importance of touch, the emotional connections we form with our tools, and why technological exploration so often leads us back to strings.

This is a conversation about experimentation, physicality, and creating the instruments you want to use.

I thoroughly enjoyed my conversation with André. I hope that you do as much as I did.

Watch the video version on YouTube:
🔗 YouTube Channel – Life With Strings Attached

Learn more about Life With Strings Attached, Boutique Guitar Showcase, and Jamie Gale's work in the guitar industry:
🔗 Boutique Guitar Showcase
🔗 Jamie Gale

Thank you for listening and supporting the ongoing conversation between music, makers, history and the future.

In this episode, I sit down with Chris Griffiths, someone I’ve known for nearly twenty-five years and whose remarkable career I’ve had the opportunity to see unfold firsthand.

Chris opened his first guitar shop at nineteen, trained as a guitar maker and went on to found Garrison Guitars, where he developed an entirely new approach to building an acoustic guitar. His path has since taken him through Parker, Dingwall and a range of influential music-industry companies, before leading to his current work at D’Addario as Chief Sales Officer and Director of Innovation.

Chris brings together the practical understanding of a maker, the instincts of an entrepreneur and the perspective of an executive responsible for one of the most complex businesses in our industry.

We talk about design, manufacturing, leadership and the patience required to turn an idea into something genuinely useful. We also explore how meaningful innovation often begins with a simple question: why does it have to be done this way?

I thoroughly enjoyed my conversation with Chris. I hope that you do as much as I did.

Watch the video version on YouTube:
🔗 YouTube Channel – Life With Strings Attached

Learn more about Life With Strings Attached, Boutique Guitar Showcase, and Jamie Gale's work in the guitar industry:
🔗 Boutique Guitar Showcase
🔗 Jamie Gale

Thank you for listening and supporting the ongoing conversation between music, makers, history and the future.