Most days at Maple Leaf Music we see stringed instruments walk in the door in need of help. Some call for slight adjustments while others require complete overhauls. Nearly all of it gets sent to our trusty local luthier, Tucker Barrett, whose years in the instrument building and repair industry have made him the go-to guy for players all over the region, from beginners to hobbyists to professionals.
Barrett’s career working with instruments began in the mid-1970’s just up the road at Marlboro College, where he enrolled in a woodworking course with Gib Taylor. Between studies with Taylor and Michael Gurian, a pioneering luthier whose shop was located in nearby Hinsdale, NH, Barrett quickly took to the woodshop and switched his major. Like many musicians drawn to instrument making, he was intrigued by the idea of building his own guitar: “I built a dulcimer and a banjo and a guitar, and then I was hooked”. The Gurian Guitar shop was the local hub for budding luthiers, and though Barrett never worked there, he spent a lot of time hanging around, getting to know employees like Michael Millard, who would go on to start Froggy Bottom Guitars. Marlboro also produced several fine luthiers who still live and work in the area, including classmates of Barrett’s like Scott Hausmann (Whetsone Guitars) and Will Fielding (Fielding Banjos).
After graduating, Barrett moved near Woodstock, NY to work for furniture makers Howard Werner and Ben Mack, who would quickly connect him to Ken Parker, a luthier who was looking for a paid apprentice. Parker would eventually go on to international fame with the Parker Fly Electric Guitar, but in the late 1970’s he was building custom instruments and doing repairs for the Stuyvesant Music Store in downtown Manhattan. Barrett got the job, and though he had never stepped foot in Manhattan until his interview with Parker, he found the shop and the city to be a vibrant, inspiring environment. “It was immensely intimidating but very exciting,” Barrett said of his New York years. For the first year and a half of his stint working under Parker, Barrett exclusively focused on repairs and restoration. “[Stuyvesant] had something called the meat rack, which was several hundred guitars that were just all up on a rack… Some of them you took parts off, some of them you’d say ‘oh, I can fix this’, and if while doing that you made a mistake, it wasn’t as tragic as working on a customer’s instrument… That’s where I learned the foundation and basis of my repair skills.” Ken was building archtops when he could, but ended up mostly building custom electric “stage” instruments: “guitars that had flamingo necks, glitter, feathers,” for bands like Chic. “It was as much sculptural and visual as it was about the sound,” an idea that stuck with Barrett for years after. While assisting Parker in the construction of these highly customized instruments, he learned how to play with optics and how to work with unusual instrument materials like Lucite, which they used to craft, among other things, electric violins.
After four years, Barrett and his wife Beth, a potter whom he met at Marlboro, decided to leave the city and return to Vermont, where they lived with three other woodworkers and one other potter, on a large property in Putney. Barrett saw an opportunity in the industry for handcrafted electric violins and began to pursue building them on his own, while still doing occasional repair work. Following in the footsteps of his work in New York, Barrett violins were designed not only for function, but for show as well. Some instruments sport brightly colored translucent acrylic materials, while others make use of highly figured woods. The shapes are modern interpretations of the violin mold. Many of his violins were four stringed, but he built ones with 5 and 6 as well, in addition to violas, cellos, and the occasional bass. 
After leaving Putney in 1990, Barrett and his family moved to Westminster Station, VT, where he continued to build. Barrett Violins were made from the mid-1980’s through the mid-00’s, with production peaking at around 70-100 instruments a year, all the while remaining a one man operation. Early on in this period he established a relationship with Larry - Fishman of Fishman Transducers to help develop their first electric violin pickup. He would also work closely with Rich Barbera of Barbera Transducers for many years. The high quality craftsmanship, tone, and striking looks made Barrett Violins among the most respected in the industry, and consequently they continue to be played by many professionals, including both the current and former violinists in Kansas (David Ragsdale and Robbie Steinhardt), Miriam Sturm (of John Mellencamp), and Eugene Friesen.
In the early-00’s, Barrett reconnected with Michael Millard of Froggy Bottom Guitars, who were located in Newfane, VT at the time: “I had known Andy [Mueller] and Michael for a long time… They were looking for some help and I was kind of burned out on just doing my violins all the time and wanting to at least work in somebody else’s shop and get some human company… I worked there two days a week… I really loved getting immersed in acoustic guitar making and we all got along great.” During these years the demand for Froggy’s increased dramatically. “Scott [Hausmann] started working there a couple days a week so we were splitting a full time position.” After years of building, the demanding, sometimes hazardous process was beginning to wear on Barrett, and he decided to stop working for Froggy, and stop building violins as well. Barrett and his family moved to a home in Brattleboro, where he began to focus on repair full time. In spite of this, he still utilizes many of the skills he developed during the
Michael Millard of Froggy Bottom Guitars building process: “[I] can look at something that’s really broken or needs some real woodworking and make a new bridge or repair a whole in the side of a guitar or make a new peghead… I’ve always valued having that stuff in my back pocket even though I’m not building anymore.”Since about 2005 Barrett has become the main repair person for the region. Between two shops and customers who come to him directly, Barrett has a steady flow of repair work, and the variety of tasks that come with the job seem to suit him well. On any day he might handle children’s guitars, shiny new hand-built instruments, and vintage instruments, which are admittedly some of his favorite things to work on. “I set up a lot of new instruments, but I really like old stuff, because I really like to resurrect it. I relate to vintage and antique things. I collect a lot of vintage and antique things. I might be in the wrong century. I really like early 1900’s stuff, doesn’t matter what it is. I like handling old wood.”
But whatever it is, the goal is always the same: to make it work as well as it can. The work that Barrett does is of the highest standard, no matter what the instrument is: “I get to work on a wide variety of stuff. Some of it’s not so great, some of it’s incredibly nice… I get more of a kick in some ways, just trying to salvage a fifty-dollar guitar than working on a twenty-thousand dollar guitar… I respect all that, but I really love taking stuff that’s marginal and funky and turning it back into a workable instrument. It’s challenging and satisfying to me.” Repair work for Tucker Barrett can be dropped off anytime during store hours at Maple Leaf Music in Brattleboro, Vermont.
