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Business & Tech

Business of the Week: Nazareth Guitar Institute

Nazareth native teaches the fine art of guitarmaking.

A "luthier" is defined as a person who makes and repairs stringed instruments, both of which apply to Dale Unger, the owner of the  and the craftsman of American Archtop Guitars.

Unger began teaching guitar-building in 1996 from his home in Stroudsburg. In 2004, he moved his shop and school back to his hometown of Nazareth and opened the Nazareth Guitar Institute -- in the same building where he made his very first guitar in 1979 while under the tutelage of a craftsman.

“Growing up in Nazareth, I was always intrigued by Martin Guitar,” Unger said. “I always wanted to build [guitars].”

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Unger’s guitars are custom-made under his American Archtop label. The archtop is so named because it features a curve in the body of the guitar, instead of the common flat body.

According to Unger, the archtop is one of the only instruments that was invented in America -- circa 1915.

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Classes at the Nazareth Guitar Institute are eight-day courses and are held five times a year. Each course usually consists of four or five students.

Unger also teaches one-on-one courses that work around a student’s schedule.

Students start with wedges of wood and prefabricated parts, and at the end of a course, students leave with a guitar they created.

“People come from all over the world,” Unger said, adding that a recent student had traveled from Germany. A student from Taiwan will be heading to Nazareth to take the next course, which will be held Oct. 8 to 15.

All of the custom-made guitars, which Unger creates himself, start from a sold piece of wood, usually flame maple imported from the Alps. This type of wood is often used to make high-quality violins, cellos and Gibson Les Paul guitars.

It usually takes Unger about a month and a half to two months to complete one custom American Archtop -- which explains why students at the institute use prefabricated parts to build their guitars.

When it comes to learning to be a luthier, Unger believes you should learn from a craftsman.

“You want to learn from people with experience, people who have made mistakes and learned,” he said.

If you're wondering if Unger is the craftsman who should teach you, keep these two things in mind:

  1. Andy Summers -- guitarist for The Police -- plays one of Unger’s archtop guitars.
  2. Eric Clapton owns an archtop that Unger designed for Martin Guitar in the early 2000s.

The Nazareth Guitar Institute is at 14 S. Broad Street in downtown Nazareth. The institute offers eight-day courses and private, single-student courses. Unger also teaches a two-day pearl inlay workshop with New York artist Tracy Cox.

Unger soon will be launching a line of electric guitars under the Unger Instrument Company label. He plans to add an electric guitar course at his institute in the near future.

For more information, visit www.nazarethguitarinstitute.com and www.americanarchtop.com.

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