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When Ben Taylor listens to one of the priceless old guitars he repairs, the Carmel-based builder and repairman says he hears a link to the past.
"You hear a sound you know they heard back in the 1800s. You have a sense of time travel," Taylor said.
The former vice president of V-marc Inc., a now-defunct computer design and engineering division of Pictorial Inc., decided a few years ago to commit himself to making things that last.
He decided to jump with both feet into lutherie, the craft of making stringed instruments. His grandfather had been preparing him for the vocation since he was 5 years old--although Taylor didn't know it at the time.
Today, Taylor, 43, is one of the most respected guitar repairmen in Indiana. He's praise for his innovations, such as a classical guitar model he plans to unveil to a wide market this year.
He hopes to ride the crest of an ongoing acoustic guitar renaissance the likes of which guitar experts say they've never seen.
Taylor's grandfather built and repaired guitars in Bedford in the early part of this century. It was the time of the last guitar renaissance, when builders like Nazareth, Pa.-based Martin and Kalamazoo, Mich.-based Gibson guitar companies were turning out models that collectors now fight over.
Some Martins that went for $275 or so in the 1930s today routinely fetch $20,000.
Puttering around the workshop with his grandfather, Taylor says he knows now "that I was being apprenticed. I didn't think about it at the time, because I was just playing in bands," doing the typical teenage thing, growing up on the southside.
One day he decided he wanted a classical guitar, and approached the...