Making stringed instruments a labor of love, laughs for Modesto men

The craftsmanship says “fine musical instrument.” The jovial atmosphere says “fiddle.”

As luthiers Steve Thomas and Gary Vessel work in their downtown Modesto shop, Thomas & Vessel Stringed Instruments, on a recent morning, the one-liners fly at an allegro tempo.

On how long he’s been making and repairing instruments, 70-year-old Thomas says: “I’m so old, I don’t remember.”

On why he got into the business after a career as an anthropology professor: “For the high profit ratio.”

Vessel, on what led him to the occupation: “Being a really bad violinist.”

And on how they became business partners more than six years ago: “I was lonely,” Thomas says. “And I was drunk,” Vessel quickly adds.

They’ll be here all week, folks.

But seriously, Thomas and Vessel specialize in repairs and sales of stringed instruments including violins, violas, cellos and mandolins. In addition to a showroom and workshops, their 15th Street property also includes several studios where instructors teach violin, viola, guitar and piano.

Those offerings are the business’s bread and butter, the proprietors say, but making instruments is something they can’t help but do. As Vessel put it in a Bee article a few years back, “It’s really damn fun.”

When he was growing up, Thomas says, he had an uncle who lived nearby and always seemed to be creating something from scratch. “He never finished fourth grade, but if you showed him a picture of something made of wood, he could make it.”

That environment, Thomas figures, helped shape his own life. He once started trying to learn to play the violin but discovered he was more interested in how the instrument was constructed. “I was always fascinated by woodworking,” Thomas says. “I’ve made some furniture.”

When he retired after his teaching career at the University of South Alabama in Mobile, “I moved right into this and carried on.”

As for Vessel, he started playing at age 10. “By the time I was 16, my parents were convinced it was worth their money to get me a better violin than my student violin.” During a couple of visits to San Mateo to try out instruments, Vessel got to know Boyd Poulsen, a master violin maker.

“He could tell I was pretty fascinated,” Vessel recalls, so Poulsen told him about the Violin Making School of America, located in Salt Lake City and offered to help him get accepted.

During Vessel’s senior year of high school, he applied to attend the school, took the entrance exam and was admitted to the four-year program. “I was, and I think still am, the youngest person to attend the Violin Making School of America and graduate,” he says. “When I was there, the average age was 28 and I was 17. I got pretty lucky, I guess.”

After four years, Vessel, now 49, earned his degree – “Obviously, not an academic degree. I can barely read.” – and started his career.

Thomas makes a point of saying, “I did not go to the Violin Making School of America. But I did go to a lot of workshops – more than I care to count.” One of them, he says, even was taught by Poulsen.

When he came to Modesto and began doing instrument repair out of his home, every now and then he would run into a job he didn’t know how to do. “I knew Gary was in town, and he was very generous with his time and talent,” Thomas says.

Thomas was doing instrument repairs for one music shop in town, and Vessel was employed by another. One day, they got to talking about opening a shop together. “I thought it was a great idea,” Thomas says, “and my wife thought it was an even greater idea if I were to get all the stuff that I had out of the house.”

While the men share space, expertise and friendship, they don’t collaborate on the instruments they create. Vessel has concentrated on making mandolins the past couple of years, while Thomas says he sticks to the violin family, which includes violas and cellos.

Nor do they outsource any of the work, save for the making of the strings. Oh, and the harvesting of the wood, which includes maple, spruce and ebony. “There’s a guy in Vermont who does nothing but go out and cut red maple for stringed instruments,” Thomas says. “I bought a lifetime supply of Engelmann spruce from a guy here in town who was 90-something years old and quit making instruments, and I have a big supply of Vermont maple and a pretty adequate supply of Bosnian maple from a distributor.”

When it comes to carving and constructing instruments, there’s little leeway, the men agree. “For me, none really, it’s very traditionally based,” Vessel says. “I want (a violin) to look like what everybody expects it to look like over the last 400 years.”

“But within that,” Thomas adds, “you can make Strad (Stradivarius) models, you can make Guarneri models, Ruggieri models.” The master makers’ instruments “are extremely well documented. If we try to approximate the craftsmanship and the dimensionality of their instruments, we’ve got a fighting chance of it to sound good.”

Vessel says he has used 10 or 11 violin models over the years, about five viola models and seven cello models. “Most makers don’t make as many models as I do,” he says. “You find one that works for you and stay with it. And I should do that. (But) I like them all, I don’t ever try to make comparisons one to the next. They’re all good models.”

Thomas prefers to stick with a model by Guarneri. “If you make a Strad model, they have to be really worked in before they start to sound really good,” he says. But a Guarneri model seems to sound very good right off the start.”

If the shop had no customers – nothing either luthier wants – it would take maybe 2 1/2 months to build an instrument, Thomas says. “But when anybody walks in the door, you’ve gotta take care of them.”

The buyers of their instruments rarely are local. Most of his instruments have sold on the East Coast, Thomas says. He’s sold in the South and right now has just one violin in a shop, in Alabama. Vessel has instruments in shops in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Berkeley.

Vessel’s pieces command $15,000 to $17,000, says Thomas, who sells his own for $8,000 to $10,000. But he says he’d do the work even if there were no money involved. “This is just fun.”

Asked what he thinks the years ahead will hold, Thomas says of Vessel: “He’s the franchise, he’s the future. ... I can see myself winding down, not coming in on a full-time basis.”

Of course, given his sense of humor, that wasn’t Thomas’ first response. No, that was: “Death. I hear there’s no escaping it.”

This story was originally published June 15, 2016 at 8:45 PM with the headline "Making stringed instruments a labor of love, laughs for Modesto men."