Draft:Dale Cameron

Dale Cameron (born February 2, 1952) is a Canadian luthier and musician from Edmonton, Alberta known for being the only C.F. Martin & Company factory-trained master craftsman in Canada.

Career

In 1975, Cameron was hired on to apprentice at the Martin factory in Nazareth, Pennsylvania, training under master craftsmen such as Donald Dech, himself an apprentice to foreman John Deichmann who helped design the Dreadnought guitar. Cameron was one of the firm’s few employees to achieve master craftsman status(*) and returned to Toronto in 1975 to run Martin’s Canadian warranty repair shop.

Later, in 1979, he opened Cameron Guitars in his hometown of Edmonton, where he repaired and sold guitars, including doing Martin warranty work, and rapidly earned a reputation as the “go to” guitar mechanic for professional musicians performing in the area. Redd Volkaert(**), Martin Simpson, and “King of Country Music” Roy Acuff, among many others, relied on Cameron’s expertise to repair their guitars while touring in Canada.

Cameron was a contributing editor at Tempo, a music trade magazine, and also wrote columns for Canadian Musician and the Edmonton Journal, including a syndicated special report on the 50th anniversary of Fender Musical Instruments Corporation in 1996(***).

As a musician Cameron founded and played guitar in The Shroud of Memphis and The Sherpas of Love. He was an honorary member of The Imagineers performing alongside Vancouver singer-songwriter Robin James Hunter on the musical score for the Canadian film “Two Brothers, A Girl, and A Gun” (1993) which was nominated best musical score at the Rosie Awards, the 20th Annual Alberta Film & Television Awards held in 1994.

Upon retirement, Cameron moved to Canmore, Alberta, becoming a professional fly fishing guide.

References

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