{"id":32979,"date":"2023-07-10T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-07-10T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/mandolins-of-the-mountains\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T02:05:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T08:05:12","slug":"mandolins-of-the-mountains","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/mandolins-of-the-mountains\/","title":{"rendered":"Mandolins of the mountains"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Bobby
Bobby Wintringham, owner of San Juan Mandolins, inspects the craftsmanship on an octave mandolin he is building in his shop north of Cortez. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

LEWIS \u2013 Bobby Wintringham, the sole, steady and unassuming hand behind San Juan Mandolins, prefers to be in the background.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s putting the finishing touches on instrument No. 84, a guitar-shaped octave mandolin (tuned one octave below a mandolin), that he hopes to sell at an upcoming music festival later this month.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have felt, through the years, that I have gotten to points where I thought, \u2018Oh man, now they\u2019re starting to get good.\u2019 After 15 (years), and then in the 30s I thought it was a really big jump,\u201d Wintringham reflected. \u201cBut I just really don\u2019t feel like I fully got it until the pandemic.\u201d<\/p>\n

He builds just four instruments per year, some on order, others to sell at festivals. He built his first mandolin in 1994, and the hobby became a full-time profession with the birth of San Juan Mandolins in 2002. Today, his standard mandolin sells for close to $8,000.<\/p>\n

The luthier speaks with humility, not in that he feigns naivet\u00e9 of his talent, but that he is hesitant to ruminate on it. So much so, one might forget, or not even suspect, that the mandolins that come out of his shed of a shop north of Cortez are played onstage by titans of the bluegrass world \u2013 names he would rather not air to protect their privacy over promoting his own fame.<\/p>\n

\"Bobby
Bobby Wintringham, owner of San Juan Mandolins, is patient and detailed in his concentration, although he says the work does not demand patience because he enjoys every step of the process. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

But Wintringham, a furniture maker turned self-taught luthier, has spent nearly 30 years working to make the best bluegrass mandolin he can. Most of his instruments are an F5 model, a scroll-adorned mandolin designed by a sound engineer who worked for Gibson in the 1920s by the name of Lloyd Loar.<\/p>\n

To most bluegrass mandolinists, the very highest echelon of instrument comprises the F5s that Loar himself worked on and signed, produced between the model\u2019s release in 1922 and Loar\u2019s departure from Gibson in 1924. These instruments, known as \u201cLoars,\u201d sell for anywhere between $100,000 and $200,000.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love what a good mandolin sounds like, the Loars, and this is all I need \u2013 what\u2019s in here tells you what you need to know to build one that could sound as good as a Loar,\u201d Wintringham says, pointing to the copy of Roger Siminoff\u2019s \u201cConstructing a bluegrass mandolin,\u201d from which he first learned his trade. \u201cI\u2019m perfectly happy to see how far I can take what\u2019s already been done, of course making it my own, but within the traditional parameters. I\u2019ve had a lot of people compare the sound of my mandolins to Loars.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Bobby
Bobby Wintringham, owner of San Juan Mandolins, looks over blueprints of an archtop guitar, the plans for which he is using to build an octave mandolin. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

He adds, \u201cit feels pretty good,\u201d with a modest smile.<\/p>\n

Wintringham worked from the book to build his first few instruments, before he began to stray from the directions.<\/p>\n

\u201cDoing stuff like this, you\u2019ve got to be self-taught,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s like playing an instrument \u2013 people can show you some stuff, show you how they do it, but you can\u2019t help it, you\u2019re gonna find ways to do it, and that\u2019s the way you\u2019re gonna do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The F5 is not an instrument inclined to suffer a fool of a luthier. The parts are hand-carved of pricey and increasingly uncommon tone wood into the arched back and top; the instrument has an asymmetrical body shape, contrasting angular points with soft rolling scrolls figured in three dimensions.<\/p>\n

\"Wood
Wood shavings of red maple on the table in the shop where Bobby Wintringham, owner of San Juan Mandolins, is building his 84th instrument. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

The red maple, which is milled to create nearly identical slabs which sit together like the pages of an open book, costs $650 for just one instrument\u2019s worth of wood. Wintringham is slow and methodical with his work, and prefers to be alone in his shop for certain high-consequence building steps.<\/p>\n

But his gentle and unrushed hands serve him well.<\/p>\n

Not once, he says, has he shaved a brace too thin. The slats of spruce glued underneath the top of the instrument must be strong enough to shore up the structural integrity of the instrument but not so thick that they muddy its tone.<\/p>\n

He uses a jeweler\u2019s saw to cut out each intricate piece of the shimmering inlay by hand \u2013 another process some might consider laborious and slow.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor me, it\u2019s not a matter of patience,\u201d Wintringham says. \u201cI enjoy almost everything, every process here. And with this, I just want it to look good.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Bobby
Bobby Wintringham\u2019s personal mandolin is No. 25-35, meaning it is the 25th F5 he built and the 36th instrument. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>
Bluegrass seeds in fertile ground<\/div>\n

Although he built his first mandolin in Tuscon, Arizona, Wintringham\u2019s career began, in a way, at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival.<\/p>\n

\"Bobby
Bobby Wintringham, left, in a photo with bluegrass mandolinist Sam Bush after Wintringham asked Bush to play the first mandolin Wintringham ever made. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

In 1985, he attended the festival for the first time, where he saw amateur pickers wail off bluegrass riffs in the campground and thought \u201cI want to learn how to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was also there he met Michael Hornick, a boutique guitar builder, who proved to Wintringham that it was possible to make his own instruments.<\/p>\n

And it was in Telluride that Wintringham watched two bands jam by the river; they would soon unite to produce the polyethnic-cajun-slamgrass sound now known as Leftover Salmon. The band\u2019s mandolinist, Drew Emmitt, became an early supporter of San Juan Mandolins.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s such a great guy, you know? Just really supportive of what I\u2019m doing, he really believes in me,\u201d Wintringham said of Emmitt.<\/p>\n

It is in Telluride, among the peaks of their namesake, that Wintringham says his mandolins live up to their name. Despite the dry mountain air in which other instruments are liable to shrink and move, rendering them unplayable, San Juans don\u2019t budge.<\/p>\n

At this year\u2019s 50th Telluride Bluegrass Festival, Wintringham showed up with one instrument for sale. By midday Saturday, it had sold. It was the best-sounding mandolin he has built, but Wintringham says he still prefers his own mandolin, No. 25-36 (meaning the 25th F5 he had built and the 36th instrument overall).<\/p>\n

\"Bobby
Bobby Wintringham, owner of San Juan Mandolins, says his own mandolin is not the best sounding instrument he\u2019s every built, \u201cbut it\u2019s my favorite.\u201d (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Seated in a chair outside his kitchen, Wintringham picked out a quiet tune on the gig-worn instrument.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s my favorite, just because I\u2019ve been playing it for so long,\u201d he said. \u201cIt feels really good and I\u2019ve developed a sound based on that instrument. So I\u2019m never gonna sell this.\u201d<\/p>\n

rschafir@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

\"The
The back of Bobby Wintringham\u2019s F5 mandolins are hand-carved out of red maple. The style is among the hardest instruments to make. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

a shed at the foot of the San Juans, Bobby Wintringham is crafting top-tier instruments<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":32980,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[363,1357,44,28,559,2077,97],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-32979","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-arts","tag-contests","tag-dolores","tag-headlines","tag-music","tag-profiles","tag-telluride"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32979"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32979\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":82006,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32979\/revisions\/82006"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32979"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=32979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}