>> The following is a presentation of KBTC Profiles.

[ Guitar Plays ] >> I've always wanted to honor the craft of lutherie, and I've always wanted to do good work.

I've always wanted to be of service to people, and I've tried to hold on to that idealism and try to provide some good service to the community.

It's hard to imagine doing anything else.

[ Guitar Plays ] My name is John Thayer.

I'm a luthier.

A luthier is somebody who builds or repairs stringed instruments.

It could be violins, violin family instruments, guitars, mandolins, banjos, so basically anything with strings.

I'm from Bremerton here.

My parents moved here with the Navy, so I was born and raised here in Bremerton.

This is my shop, kind of hole-in-the-wall retail space, but in back, I've got my workbench and my woodworking shop, and this is where I spend my day building and repairing guitars.

My friend David got me playing guitar at 14, so we got together and tried to have a band, but it didn't take long for me to realize I was much better at working on guitars than playing guitar.

Graduating high school, I really didn't know where to go.

I had already been trying to build guitars in high school in my parents' garage, and so my mother found the school Roberto-Venn in Phoenix, got me pointed in that direction, and I was excited about it.

That's where I went.

Ervin Somogyi is a master luthier, and I would say he is the most renowned steel-string guitar maker.

His guitars are not just musical instruments, but they are beautiful, artistic pieces of work.

When I worked with him, that's where I started learning the next steps to trying to work towards a responsive guitar and a guitar that had the results I wanted to see.

Some people are very artistic and, I don't know, like, esoteric about it, where it's just all about feel, and then some people get very into the physics and math, and they will construct a guitar according to, like, a sequence of figures that they want to see in each piece so that they can get predictable results.

I think I'm kind of in the middle.

I get the predictable results through a touch memory and hand memory, so I feel the wood and I feel how it's moving and I kind of change it accordingly, and then there's maybe just some intuition from experience that comes that I can kind of get predictable results that way.

[ Guitar Plays ] >> My son plays guitar locally.

He told me about John, so I had a need to have some work done, and I came up here and met John, had him just do what's called a top and crown, basically, level the frets and stuff, and the job he did was fantastic.

He has a guitar hanging up out there right now.

I had a chance to play it while I was waiting, and I was like, "Oh, my gosh.

You know, just a couple of strums, and -- man, this thing sound -- did you build -- " you know, it says his name on it, but I still go, "Did you build this?"

You know, and it was amazing, so I got to thinking and thinking, and I went, "Okay.

I'm going to have him build me -- " I've never had anybody make a guitar for me.

That's when I went to John and said, "I'd like you to make me a guitar."

And that's totally on him because of the workmanship he does.

I mean, there's a point where guitars don't get better; they get different.

>> Working for Butch Boles has been a really satisfying experience because he's a very talented musician, and he knows what he's looking for.

So he's somebody who can utilize my talents and push me to achieve what he's looking for.

In the handmade custom world, there's this last little two to 5% that you can get out of a guitar, so that's where it gets to the next level, where you're just doing that last little bit to make it really special.

I try to make a very responsive guitar that has clear high end, but a good projecting low end.

>> John did a great job, and I think was very sensitive to -- even though I said, "This is on you.

Do what you want to do," I think while he was building it, he was thinking about the person who was going to play it.

And that's the big difference between a guitar, like, John builds and going into the store and buying a name-brand guitar.

It doesn't have that extra amount of time where they're literally taking a chisel and removing a little bit of wood here, a little bit of wood there.

>> When it comes to music and guitars, it's all about what you want to hear.

You can't really say there's a best guitar, but you can optimize vibration and responsiveness.

I've been very fortunate to be able to do this.

I feel very lucky and fortunate.

It's hard to imagine what else I could be doing.

[ Guitar Plays ] >> Funding for this edition of KBTC Profiles provided by the KBTC Association.

>> KBTC Profiles are available at kbtc.org.