About me
Hi. My name is Martin Koch. I'm a selftaught amateur guitarbuilder with three main interests: guitarbuilding, design and writing instruction manuals. Luckily I can combine all of these in my self-published books. Having a family and being busy with my publishing activities I currently have no time for building instruments other than those needed for my books. In short: I make guitars in order to write books about building them.
My start in guitar building
The desire to build my first electric bass started 1983 after reading several articles about British bass builders in a German music magazine. I always loved to work with wood and I loved to play music and the interviews inspired me to do something I never thought of before - building a bass guitar. It was fretless simply because I couldn't figure out the mystery of fret spacings by myself. The headless design simplified building. Curious? Well here's a picture of my first attempt. The hardware is selfmade, only the pickup was bought quite expensive in a music store.
My next project was an acoustic steelstring guitar. I went to bookstores looking for guitarbuilding literature but without success. Then one day I noticed an ad in the American magazine "Acoustic Guitar". A book called "Guitarmaking - Tradition and Technology" was offered. I tried my luck since it also could have been a book full of guitar pictures, history and so on. And how lucky I was. This book was exactly what I needed: Clear and thorough step by step instructions and a lot of photos and drawings.
My acoustic guitar project was saved. The instrument turned out
playable but not so good in terms of appearance (that's not
the fault of the authors!).
The book only had two disadvantages: it was in English and all the
measurements where in inches - a measuring system completely
strange to me. My calculator went hot when I had to multiply all
numbers by 25.4. Such detailed guitar building instruction
books should be also available in German and with measurements in
millimeters.
My start as an author
The very good experiences with the book mentioned above made me write my own. I started writing a German book about building electric guitars. Another one of these authors that write a book after completing one or two guitars was born. The book was amateurish and reflected my knowledge at this time.
My start as a publisher
When the manuscript was finished I sent it to a German publisher. "Too especial", "no market" was the answer and the start of my self publishing carreer.
