Me playing one of his early "unsuccessful" creations in a nearby hotel to which he donated the guitar.
I certainly knew, or rather heard, the sound of his guitar before getting to know him. In the few last weeks of 2018, I went back to Vietnam for some opportunities of live playing, but I never expected to meet and discuss a guitar of my own. On my first performance since the day I was back, one guitar that my friend used, which was indeed very well-made at first glance, and even more meticulously crafted when closely inpected, unlike any other Vietnamese guitars, intrigued me profoundly. Nonetheless, it was a shame that I didn't ask who the maker was on the same day. After a few occasions, I encounter the same guitar, and even more guitars made by that same maker, I presumed, as the headstocks of those guitar were the same. This time, I took the initiation of asking more about the guitars. The name Vu Tran definitely appeared in the intricate and sophiticated calligraphic label inside the guitar. Wow! A hand-written label, interesting. Even for famous luthiers, not many even have the dedication and talent to write such sublime texts. Unfortunately, I didn't get anything much about him except for this name. It's still a starting point though.
So lucky that we have Facebook nowadays. After an "intensive" search of my friends' friendlists (sorry if I'm making myself like a stalker), he has a Facebook account. it might be a bit sudden and out of nowhere to message a stranger who you know so little about their personalities or preferences or whatsoever, and that was exactly what I did; and so did I only hope for the best. I cold sent him a brief text inquiring about his location, how he would prefer to get in touch and so forth with basic etiquette. What I did not expect was the fact that he was one of the most pleasant people I have ever known, and I will get back to this later.
I got a ticket to Dalat immediately after I set a date with him. I actually had a bit of trouble finding his place, as the road was so convoluted with all the up- and downhills plus the useless help from Google Maps. Ultimately, I was able to find the house, which I must say with impressuve architectural design following the Vietnamese 90s looks. He greeted me with a naturally optimistic vibe, welcomed into the house and finally turned out to be even a more interesting person.
We started off with some generic convos about how I knew his guitars, what sort of philosophies I was aspiring to achieve in the guitar and his as well. Then he showed me some of his guitars that he was working on at the moment. At this point, I can confidently say that he was one of the best Vietnamese guitar makers, and even in the Southeast Asia. While most Vietnamese "luthier" are still being trapped with the traditional style, that being fan-braced single-top plated-wood and generic-branding guitars, Vu Tran with his self-learning attitude, living on an edge of an solitary mountain, has already moved on to novel creations. His understanding and execution of double-tops, lattice-braces and radial-braces were simply tremendous, given that he was only self-taught. Having said so, he still maintained a very self-aware stance toward the weaknesses of his guitars, which matacogitive and humble processes I think is extremely valuable but unfortunately elusive in learning (anything). He didn't brag about how good his guitars were, which was portrayed by how he only give the description of the sound created by the guitar, without any additional inflation from his ego. Something like this:
I made my radial-braced guitars almost completely based on the blueprint by Simon Marty. What he [Simon] achieved I couldn't fully understood, about how he precisely shaved the braces or positioned them. I simply think that only experience could fix this. Simon was able to create was a punchy, rounded sound and the implification of the volume, while this guitar, although still sounds quite punchy, but is not yet comparable to the great, being rather traditional with a added volume size.
Something like that.The above was neither a literal translation nor a verbatim transcription of the conversation, but only my recollection of what Vu and I had talked (or rather would have talked). I believe it was enough to show the humble personality of the luthier. We chatted a bit more, and I got to play around four or five guitars, which were all incredibly made. The two I liked most were both double-tops, and I would like to conclude my rather digressive text here with a video I played on of the two guitars badly in the freezing weather of Dalat.
An extraordinary luthier and an extraordinary human being.