Sound craftsmanship Virtuoso’s stamp of approval hit perfect note for amateur luthier’s confidence and sustained success By: David Sanderson Posted: 6:00 AM CST Friday, Feb. 14, 2025 Last Modified: 9:34 AM CST Friday, Feb. 14, 2025 Updates

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This article was published 14/02/2025 (242 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Australian musician Tommy Emmanuel, 69, has twice been named guitarist of the year by Guitar World magazine, and was once hailed as the best acoustic guitar player on the planet by music-technology website MusicRadar.

Given that lofty resumé, Phil Campbell-Enns, a Mennonite pastor who builds acoustic guitars in his spare time, figured Emmanuel would be the perfect person to solicit feedback from, when the Grammy Award-winner was performing at the West End Cultural Centre in 2017.

Ahead of the show, it had come to Campbell-Enns’ attention that, for an additional charge, one could attend a pre-concert meet-and-greet with Emmanuel. He’d also heard through the grapevine that on such occasions, it wasn’t uncommon for amateur luthiers like himself to present Emmanuel with a hand-built model they wanted him to test out.

“At the time, I was just starting to think my guitars were sounding good enough and were being built consistently enough to show to somebody of Tommy’s stature, so I worked up the guts to bring one along with me (to the meet-and-greet),” Campbell-Enns says, seated in his 99-square-foot basement workshop.

Emmanuel, who is again scheduled to appear in Winnipeg at the Burton Cummings Theatre on March 26, was completely amenable to Campbell-Enns’ offer. And although he let his fingers do the talking for the first 60 seconds or so they were side-by-side, he paused long enough to state, “beautiful… good work, man,” before launching into a second round of chords and melodies.

“That was a watershed moment for me, for sure,” adds Campbell-Enns, who later posted a video of their two-minute exchange on YouTube. “After seeing him play the dickens out of my guitar, I was left thinking that maybe at the end of the day, these are pretty decent instruments.”

 

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Campbell-Enns, 56, was 20 years old and attending Canadian Mennonite Bible College, Canadian Mennonite University’s predecessor, when he picked up a guitar for the first time.

Back then, the Steinbach native, who is currently co-pastor at Home Street Mennonite Church, was sharing an apartment with three other students, all of whom played guitar.

After it was suggested he take up the drums for the four of them to jam properly, he let them know if he was ever to learn an instrument, it would also be the guitar.

He mentioned that conversation to his parents a couple of weeks later over dinner, to which his mother replied, if he was truly serious, they would delightedly buy him a guitar for Christmas, which was right around the corner.

“It was a low-end model, a Vantage made to look like a Takamine knock-off, but it certainly did the trick,” recalls Campbell-Enns, whose only previous musical experience had been playing trumpet in the school band from grades 7 to 11.

“My roommates taught me a few chords — that was the extent of my lessons — and although I was definitely a slow learner, it eventually reached a point where I was an OK intermediate player.”

Following three years of Bible college, Campbell-Enns completed his bachelor of arts degree at the University of Waterloo.

Now married to wife Heather, he returned to Winnipeg to take a series of classes working toward a master’s of divinity degree at the University of Winnipeg, before spending eight months in Red River College Polytechnic’s carpentry and woodworking program, simply because he enjoyed working with his hands.

Campbell-Enns was 29 in 1997 when a series of events caused him to contemplate building a guitar of his own. (By that point, he had replaced the specimen his parents gifted him years earlier with a higher-grade Yamaha.)

First, using skills he picked up at Red River, he crafted a master bed for Heather and himself, which led directly to him “discovering the thrill of gluing wood together and having everything look like one piece.”

Secondly, while he was working in a cabinetry shop for a year before becoming a full-time pastor in 1998, he discovered a tome entitled Handbook-Catalog for Stringed Instrument Builders, a how-to manual he proceeded to read cover to cover, multiple times.

Lastly, he and Heather, both ardent fans of the Winnipeg Folk Festival, travelled to Ottawa, where they paid a visit to a since-closed music shop called the Ottawa Folklore Centre.

“There were two guitars there that had been built by an independent guy from Southern Ontario,” Campbell-Enns says.

“It was my first time playing a hand-built guitar and after realizing how much more responsive it was, and, in my opinion, how much better it was than everything else in the store, I decided, why not give it a shot myself?”

Using the aforementioned how-to manual as a guide, Campbell-Enns drew up what amounted to a set of blueprints including measurements and diagrams of what he had in mind.

He then reached out to local luthier Daryl Perry, who had been building classical guitars since 1982, to ask if he’d mind double-checking his calculations.

“No two ways about it, Daryl saved my bacon,” Campbell-Enns says.

“He went over my drawings and began going ‘too much wood here and here…’ He also gave me lots of advice on what I was planning on doing brace-wise (braces are the internal architecture that strengthens a guitar’s top and back) and I swear, if I’d built it the way I’d intended, it would have sounded terrible, I would have been discouraged and it would have been a case of one and done.”

Thirty or so guitars later, Campbell-Enns’ creations, which at various times have been made of Indian rosewood, Engelmann spruce or curly maple, have become much coveted.

Friends and friends of friends, from as far away as South Carolina, regularly inquire about netting one for themselves. Campbell-Enns is always ready to comply, providing those on the receiving end have the patience of a saint.

“It usually takes me about a year to build a guitar, but that’s mainly because I’m not down here for three or four hours a night, five or six nights a week,” says Campbell-Enns, who is also a talented songwriter whose contemporary hymns have become highly regarded in Mennonite circles.

“The thing that I really need to be aware of — and that I’m still learning — is that I need to mentally shift gears when I’m on my way downstairs, because what I do down here has to be so deliberate. Trying to do something that’s rushed can lead to mistakes that can cause weeks of grief.”

Manitoba singer-songwriter Steve Bell, a two-time Juno Award-winner and 11-time Gospel Music Association Covenant Award-winner, doesn’t classify himself as overly fussy when it comes to whatever six-string is resting on his lap.

That said, he claims to know a good guitar when he encounters one, and those made by Campbell-Enns definitely fit the bill.

“A friend of mine, Darryl Neustaedter Barg, had one of Phil’s guitars, and every time I picked it up I’d go ‘jeez, this is a nice guitar; who did you say made it again?’” Bell says, when reached in Santa Barbara, Calif., where he is teaching a workshop.

In December, Campbell-Enns contacted Bell, whom he had met previously, to seek his opinion on a guitar he’d recently put the finishing touches on. Bell invited him to his office, saying he’d be happy to take it for a spin, so to speak.

“It’s somewhat hard to put into words, but what appealed to me most was that there was a balance between the low and the high, plus there was a richness to the tone that wasn’t too bass-y, and a brightness to the treble that wasn’t too shrill,” Bell says, choosing the word “magnificent” to describe what he was hearing.

“I jokingly said he shouldn’t be wasting his time ministering… that he should be building more guitars. Seriously, if one of Phil’s guitars was the only one I could play for the rest of my life, I’d be very content.”

Building on Bell’s “rest of my life” comment, Campbell-Enns sees no reason why he would ever cease doing what is now a cherished hobby, even when he’s old and grey.

It’s soothing, he says, to listen to music or a podcast while he’s sanding a neck or adjusting a saddle.

“Plus, I don’t do this as a job to make money. In fact, the deal for I’d say my first 10 or 12 guitars was ‘why don’t you pay me the cost of the materials, plus a bit more so I can buy my next tool.’”

A word of warning: anybody interested in a Campbell-Enns guitar could have an even longer wait than usual on their hands, as he is about to become knee-deep in his latest project, a true labour of love.

“Our daughters are 20 and 22 and I’m building them a pair of sister guitars out of Oregon Myrtlewood that will hopefully look as close to each other as possible,” he says.

“Our eldest had been keeping my very first guitar in her dorm room, except the lack of humidity there wasn’t doing it any favours, so I figured it was high time to make them their own.”

david.sanderson@freepress.mb.ca