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July 2022

Call Us: 1-706-896-0909 Email: [email protected] About Us Don Rickert, Ph.D. Don Rickert, an Ergonomist, Industrial Designer and Luthier, has, for the past 15 or so years, been designing and building custom musical instruments. Before that he was deeply involved in the invention of Interactive TV, Internet Banking and teaching Design Research Methods in the Industrial Design department at Georgia Tech. He earned his Ph.D. at the George Washington University, School of Business. Don founded D. Rickert Musical Instruments in 2007. Jesse Hale, Ed.D. Jesse (AKA Randy) Hale, whose guitars are branded “J. Hale”, is also a song writer and publishing... Read more →


Ordering Information While semi-standardized, each Sessioneer Bouzouki is built for the individual buyer, at least for now. If you wish to discuss buying one of these instruments, give us a call or send an email. Looking forward to talking! Phone: 1-706-896-0909 Email: [email protected] Note: If you are a highly-skilled player with a history of high-quality videos on YouTube, we are open to discussing a discounted price in exchange for demonstration videos of our instruments. Let’s agree up front that there will be no hurt feelings. I mean, I am a player, but at nowhere near the skill level necessary for... Read more →


Introduction Before I start, what are the criteria for judging the sound quality of musical instruments? I hope that the reader can agree that this is largely subjective, and often, culturally relative. Take the Great Highland Bagpipe. That there are two kinds of people in the world; those who love the bagpipes and those who hate them has been attributed to many, including, as I recall, Winston Churchill. Many of us love (at least in limited doses) the uillean pipes; however, I have known many Irish, meaning those who actually live in Ireland, who refer to them as “rat-chasers”. Finally,... Read more →


Tap-tuning is an art (grounded in science) that is shrouded in mystery. While some luthiers tap-tune only by ear, computer-assisted tap tuning allows the luthier to actually see a computer-generated frequency spectrum graph when muting a specific spot on the plate (e.g., top or back). Computer-assisted tap tuning has only been possible for a few decades. Until very recently, it was too expensive for most luthiers, as the software required used to cost many thousands of dollars. Finding the correct spot to mute is way beyond our scope here. There are known “ideal” fundamentals (i.e., note perceived by the human... Read more →