Inside the Complex World of Jacob Nelson

Unlike most luthiers, the one sitting across the table isn’t content to simply make beautiful looking and sounding instruments. No. He needs to dream up and build beautiful instruments no one’s ever seen or heard. He needs to resurrect beautiful 16th-century instruments and bring them into the 21st century. He needs to wed amazingly figured woods with carbon fiber to make delightfully light instruments. On top of all this, he often needs to make these instruments in kit form so people halfway around the world can make their own instruments. Welcome to the beautifully complex world of Jacob Nelson.

An Accidental Journey

I’m visiting the 39-year-old Nelson in his shop nestled in the back corner of an industrial park near the quaint river town of Stillwater, Minnesota. “I wound up in the luthier world by accident,” he explains. “I was working in multi-media productions, and was tired of sitting at a computer all day. I asked a local technical college to send me information about all their programs and they randomly sent me a huge packet about the luthier