Sir, – I came home from boarding school at Easter 1956, a 14-year-old on fire with the desire to construct my own guitar (cheap Spanish-style guitars in the shops were a thing of the future). With the help of my father, an accomplished amateur carpenter, we set to, but were confounded by the musical principles of the spacing of the frets.
So my father consulted our next-door-neighbour, the young Charles Meredith, already a musical polymath, and he introduced us to the harmonic formula of “the Rule of 18” (or more precisely the Rule of 17.835), whereby the luthier calculates the fretwork of a stringed instrument. We raced ahead and the finished guitar was ready for me to bring back to school for the summer term. I still have that guitar and think fondly of Charles whenever I play it. – Yours, etc,
JOHN CLEMENT RYAN,
Booterstown Avenue,
Booterstown, Co Dublin.