
27 Sep A Creative Spark
After a successful career as a furniture designer and builder, Randall āSparkyā Kramer has developed into one of the best luthiers in the business

Randall Kramerās Truckee home, which includes a well-appointed workshop on the lower floor, photo by Ryan Salm
Nestled in a quaint corner of Truckee, a two-story building clad in rusted corten steel resides harmoniously among its surroundingsāaspens quaking gently in the breeze, sturdy pines stretching skyward, a bountiful garden.
In many ways, the modest structure is a reflection of the man who designed and built it from scratch.
Indeed, Randall Kramerābetter known as āSparkyāāis every bit as unpretentious and hardworking as his home and workshop, where a humble yet functional exterior gives way to a well-appointed interior with every tool a woodworker could ask for.
āI basically built my dream shop with a house fit in upstairs,ā says Kramer, describing his home, which he built with a crew of friends in 1987 and ā88, as an āowner-builder, finish-before-you-die kind of project.ā
Kramer has spent countless hours in the three and a half decades since skillfully crafting wood from the cozy confines of his shop. But after building a reputation around Truckee and Tahoe as an expert furniture maker, the 73-year-old, nearly lifelong woodworker has carved out a successful career as one of the best luthiers around.
āHeās good. He goes to all the shows and brings his guitars, and they line up with the best guitars probably in the world,ā says Steve Kershisnik, a longtime Truckee resident and professional musician.
Achieving āsuper luthierā status, as Kershisnik credits his friend, did not happen overnight. Nor did it come easily or without some good fortune. While Kramer has long possessed the ability to perform such a skilled profession, it wasnāt until he got into the shop of a master teacher that he gained the knowledge and foundation to become what he is today.
Now, some 20 years after building his first guitar, Kramerās instruments are a sought-after commodity for those seeking the ultimate in quality, while his restoration work is second to none.
āHeās the top dog,ā says Kershisnik. āEverybody goes to Sparky.ā

Kramer’s Truckee workshop, photo by Ryan Salm
Long Before Becoming a Luthier
Kramer has enjoyed working with his hands since he was a child growing up in Southern California, where he says Popular Mechanics and The Boy Mechanic always had a prominent place on his familyās bookshelves.
āMy mom bought me some woodworking tools when I was a kid and kind of turned me loose,ā says Kramer, who quickly took to the craftāto the point he was soon building his own wooden toys.
Although mostly self-taught, says Kramer, he further honed his skills in junior high shop classes. He went on to buy a Ford woodie in high school and before graduating had replaced all the bad wood and refinished it himself. āI never thought I couldnāt do something, so I just did it,ā he says.
After high school, Kramer worked as an auto mechanic while attending Riverside City College with thoughts of becoming an architect or engineer. But he scrapped the plan when he realized he would not be happy spending his days inside an office.
He instead became a whitewater rafting guide, working on rivers from California to Idaho to Alaska during the summer months. The gig allowed him the opportunity to delve into a hobby he only dabbled in previously: playing guitar.
āI played guitar off and on since junior high school, but when I was river guiding I played a lot because that was something we did,ā he says. āI ended up working for a company that had a lot of musicians, so we would sit around the campfire after dinner and we would play music, and people loved it, and we loved it.ā
Eventually, however, Kramer longed to settle down with his then-girlfriend.
āI kind of did this evaluation of, āOK, what are you good at? What are you going to do? You canāt be a river guide your whole life.ā I was good at woodworking, so I put my heart and soul into it and ended up in Truckee eventually,ā says Kramer, who moved from Sonora in the foothills near Yosemite to Truckee in 1983 to help a friend build a house.
Kramer, who started his own woodworking business while living in Sonora, bought a 3-plus-acre property bordering Sierra Meadows in 1985. A few years later he was churning out furniture from the shop he built by hand.
In addition to furniture, Kramer performed cabinet work and got into building bar tops and tables for local restaurants, including Pianeta, Cottonwood and Christy Hill, to name a few. Among the highlights of his work, he notes creating inlaid checkerboards on several tables for Squeeze Inn in downtown Truckee, as well as abstract musical notation embedded in a bar top at The Passage (now Moodyās Bistro Bar & Beats).
āI heard that the contractor who did the remodel to create Moodyās kept the bar for his own home,ā says Kramer.

A custom Randall Kramer Guitar, photo by Ryan Salm
Acquiring a New Skill
Kramer has long been a fan of Norman Blake. So when he saw that one of his favorite musicians was playing at the Millpond Music Festival outside of Bishopāāthis must have been back in the 1990s,ā he saysāhe made the trip south for the three-day show.
Thatās where he met Mark Blanchard, who would change the trajectory of his career.
āMark Blanchard had a little display with the first six guitars that he had built. So he was in his infancy of guitar-building, but heās the kind of guy who will hit the road running,ā says Kramer. āMy wife and I spent a fair amount of time in his booth playing his guitars, and I was just totally floored by the sound he was getting out of them.
āEverywhere I go I play peopleās instruments, and I had never met anyone who could consistently build a good guitar,ā adds Kramer, who considered himself somewhat of a guitar collector at the time. āIt was always a crapshoot. Itās why I never really pursued building guitars, because I wouldnāt have known what I was doing to get a good-sounding guitar. At that point I figured I could buy a good-sounding guitar.ā
Kramer remained friends with Blanchard and continued to follow his work over the years. When Blanchard mentioned he would like to teach someone how to build a guitar, Kramer jumped at the opportunity. Due to his busy work schedule, thoughāKramer says he had a two- to three-year backlog for his furnitureāa few years went by before the two connected in 2001 for a two-week guitar-building lesson at Blanchardās Crowley Lake shop.
āSparky was great to work with,ā says Blanchard. āBy the time he came to me he had decades of furniture-making experience. So he arrived with his own tools, which was nice. We did the teaching in my workshop, but it was great because he had these woodworking skills, and I could just say, āThis is what you need to do,ā and send him off to the machines and I didnāt have to worry about him coming back with a finger missing or something.
āSo in that respect it was really a pleasure. All he really needed to know was the particulars of how to put a guitar together. He was already familiar with the materials and the tools. He was a perfect subject.ā
By the end of the two-week session, Kramer had āpretty much built a guitar,ā which he brought back to his shop for some finish work before returning to Blanchardās to finalize the project.Ā
āI still have that guitar,ā says Kramer.
Although he did not anticipate becoming a luthier, after making that first guitar, he figured heād better build another one before he forgot what he had learned. So he did. In the process, he says he spent about 80 percent of his time building all the necessary toolsājigs, templates, bending forms, etc.
āReally that second guitar was building all the fixtures to build the guitar. And then once I had those, I figured I might as well build another one, and then one thing led to the next,ā says Kramer, who also spent a significant amount of time on the phone with Blanchard asking for advice. āMy goal with building my third guitar was to complete it without calling Blanchard.ā
The following year Kramer had business cards printed, and in 2003 he showed his work at the Healdsburg Guitar Festival. He had officially, though unintentionally, become a luthier.

Kramer, known by most as āSparky,ā holds one of the 70 or so guitars that he has built since 2001, photo by Ryan Salm
Mastering the Craft
While Blanchard taught Kramer nearly everything he knows about building guitars, perhaps the most crucial takeaway from their training session was the understanding of Chladni plate tuning. Itās complicated, but the techniqueāborrowed from violin makersāis a method of tuning based on the vibrations of a resonating instrumentās top and back. By manipulating the wood used to build the guitar, a luthier can achieve the desired resonant frequencies throughout the instrumentās vocal range.
āOne of the big things we did was I taught him what I knew about voicing a guitar,ā says Blanchard, referencing the tuning method. āItās one thing to just do the woodwork and put a guitar together; itās another to know how to manipulate the tone of the instrument. And thatās all done through the way you construct itāthe dimensions, the bracing patterns, the wood thickness and all that kind of stuff.
āI had developed my own little system for that, and I taught that to Sparky. And to this day, you can play one of his guitars and one of mine and there are some fundamental similarities, which I think is kind of cool.ā
Kramer further explains that certain types of woodā spruce, for example, is coveted for its stiffness and low densityāare better suited for a given playerās style. Whether that musician plays aggressively or with a light touch determines how Kramer constructs the guitar, and with what type of wood. In addition, if a customer is seeking a guitar to accompany singing, Kramer also considers how the instrumentās sound pairs with that musicianās voice.
āThat guitarās voice has to be compatible with their voice,ā he says. āSo if Iām building a guitar for a singer, Iām getting him to sing and play guitar, and Iām looking at what kind of voice is going to accompany their voice best. A lot of singers never think about that, but a lot of times theyāre playing a guitar thatās competing with their voice. Itās not complementing their voice at all.ā
And that is what sets Kramerās and Blanchardās guitars apart from the average instrument.
Kershisnik, a multi-instrumentalist and private music instructor who plays with numerous local bandsāThe Blues Monsters, Brian Hess Music, Mike Schermer Band and Everyday Outlaw, among othersāsays he was tuning a piano for a friend one day when the friend asked if heād ever played one of Kramerās guitars. He had not.

Musician David Goldman plays Kramerās Prairie Grass 12 Fret model guitar with an Italian spruce top and koa back and sides
āHe brought out this guitar, which was beautiful, and it was one of the best guitars Iāve ever played,ā says Kershisnik. āIāve played Martins and Taylors and Gibsons, the whole nine yards. So I could tell he had that attention to detail that you need (to be a good luthier).ā
Kershisnik, who describes his friend as a āsuper nice, soft-spoken cat with a sly sense of humor,ā has since had a guitar and bass repaired by Kramer. āI could have probably fixed the bass myself, but it wouldnāt have been perfect,ā he says.
Such reports from satisfied customers are key to Kramerās success. Heās earned his reputation from both local referrals and guitar shows across the country. For example, he recently returned from a show in Chicago called the Fretboard Summit. While he didnāt sell any of the guitars he brought, he met a lot of musicians and guitar aficionados who are now familiar with his work.
āItās all about making contacts and getting your stuff in the hands of players and keeping the buzz rolling about you as a builder. Youāve got to get people talking about you. Thatās kind of how the orders roll in,ā says Kramer, whose guitars are spread far and wide due to the number of shows he attends nationally (the next one on his calendar is the Woodstock Invitational Luthier Showcase in New York in late October).
With Kramerās reputation for high-end work established and his skills ever-evolving, his guitarsāboth new and restoredāwill continue to find happy homes.
āIāve built almost 70 guitars now,ā he says. āIām not as prolific as some of these guys are, but I donāt want to be.ā
To learn more about Kramer and his work, visit randallkramerguitars.com.
Ryan Salm is a photographer and writer based on Tahoeās North Shore. Sylas Wright is TQās Truckee-based editor.Ā
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