Konkoly guitars?

[@lagatrix]

Hi All,

This isn't the first time this has come up here, but it appears to have been a while since this was asked...

From what I have gathered, Joe Konkoly was the much admired head of repair at Elderly's until very recently, with the making of faithful reproductions of Golden Era Martins as a side project. Did he make a lot of these? What if anything distinguishes his builds from other luthiers who make fine reproductions of historic steel string flat tops, like for example John Slobod or Roy McAlister, or fill-in-the-blank?

[@lagatrix]

Tossing this to the top again… someone here has got to have an even slightly informed opinion on Joe Konkoly and his output, no?

[fitness1]

Originally Posted by @lagatrix

Tossing this to the top again… someone here has got to have an even slightly informed opinion on Joe Konkoly and his output, no?

For reference - I've been a customer at Elderly's since the late 70's, living between 60 and 90 miles away.

I was a frequent flier at the repair shop and would always nod and say hello to all the repair guys. I worked with T.J. Thompson until he left, then Scott Gierman after T.J.'s departure.

All this to say - I knew he was the manager of the repair shop, knew his face and chatted with him a few times. But, I didn't even realize he built on the side until about 3 or 4 years ago - and if I remember correctly it was because one of his instruments ended up on the Elderly used listings.

Not long after I approached him about building me a custom dread, and he declined. Not sure why.

If I had to wager a guess, I'd say he likely didn't build too many instruments.

[fitness1]

I found an article done in '13 (15 years after he began building) that stated he had built about 35 guitars.

https://www.mlive.com/lansing-news/2...e%20each%20one.

And his Facebook page - other than a couple random posts in the last year unrelated to his guitars, hasn't been added to since '19 when a couple of his guitars came back to the store.