Beautiful Guitars Sound Better than Ugly Guitars

[JoeCharter]

Most full time musicians that I know wouldn't care for Tree mahogany or pearl inlays as these are expensive options that are way down their priority list.

But similarly most of them nowadays would rather not be seen with a Dean, Ibanez or Gibson Flying V.

Looks still matter to everyone albeit on a different scale. Most reasonable musicians wouldn't want to spend their earnings for the next 20 gigs on a pretty piece of wood.

[M Sarad]

Today's challenge:

Build a guitar out of ugly wood.

[Mark Hatcher]

Originally Posted by M Sarad

Today's challenge:

Build a guitar out of ugly wood.

Well, the better the luthier, the less ugly wood there is. Similarly, the better the player the less bad sounding guitars there are.
Except, no matter how well you play that ugly old thing you ain't gonna make it purdier

[Mark Hatcher]

Originally Posted by runamuck

But microphones don't have eyes.

Microphones don't buy guitars

[Mark Hatcher]

Originally Posted by JoeCharter

Most full time musicians that I know wouldn't care for Tree mahogany or pearl inlays as these are expensive options that are way down their priority list.

But similarly most of them nowadays would rather not be seen with a Dean, Ibanez or Gibson Flying V.

Looks still matter to everyone albeit on a different scale. Most reasonable musicians wouldn't want to spend their earnings for the next 20 gigs on a pretty piece of wood.

Thanks for your comments Mau. You have a very welcome propensity for casting a shade of grey into a sometimes too black and white world.

[Mark Hatcher]

Originally Posted by jaymarsch

Thanks for starting this discussion, Mark. Interesting topic.

I have always been a very visual person and loved both music and the visual arts growing up. I was told in grade school that I could not sing by an angry nun so my love for music waned and I focused on visual arts for a long time while playing my music alone at night without anyone knowing.

I share all this to say that visual aesthetic appeal is important to me and while I have not purchased an instrument based upon looks alone, I think that it did influence my decision when I was shopping for luthiers. I wanted an guitar that sounded wonderful, felt wonderful to play, and appealed to my sense of visual aesthetics.

I think that neuroscience is fascinating and we are learning so much about the human brain and mind that have all sorts of implications. Thanks for posting the TED talk links. I will check them out.

I feel so fortunate to be living at a time when there are so many beautiful sounding and looking instruments available to us.

Best,
Jayne

Thanks for sharing your personal story and how it relates. In one of my young, overwhelmed, and all around bad parent moments I told my daughter her singing wasn't that good. It shut her down immediately and we talked it through and I apologized. I don't think she even remembers that anymore but, I'll go to my grave regretting having done that.

[IBKuz]

Mark,

I understand the point you are trying to make but have trouble with some of the semantics of your original title statement. As they say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, yet this is very subjective and trying to get any agreement between ten different people on a definitive answer would likely yield ten different answers. There is commonality in the features that people judge a guitar on to get to a definition of "Beauty", but each would weight them differently. In this day and age, I also find it hard to believe that anyone would try to build a "ugly" guitar (though it's now been put up as a challenge here in the thread ... lol).

I am not the best at verbal gymnastics, but it might be better restating this as "Fancy guitars get more attention than plain guitars" or "Highly detailed guitars are more interesting to the mind then simpler instruments". If the question is "what is it that draws the person in?" to perk their interest enough to try a guitar, perception is an important aspect. A visually well made guitar is the first thing that one judges a guitar by as we usually see a guitar before we try it. How this then colours our perceived value of a guitar, is somewhat different.

As to what actually makes the buyer complete the purchase of a guitar, this gets more complicated as to my thinking there are many more factors then just looks (perception) alone. Since a guitar is also a tool, Tim's comment on the sound being more important to some is also a very relevant point. There is a third leg to this stool so to speak, and that is the playability. These three factors together, are for me, the decision making tool to how much I enjoy a guitar, or judge its value, no matter how much my judgement is coloured by the visual perception. (A fourth leg could also be its required usage, a guitar for a beginner would skew the importance of each of these aspects differently then the requirements of a professional player).

Each person will likely value each of these aspects differently. As to what proportion of each that will be weighted into your decision making process, this again will be up to the individual. In general terms, if you have high perceived values in all three aspects, this would likely be a "keeper". If you have any two out of any three aspects rated highly, you will have some misgivings but the experience will be enjoyable and here the visual aspects may carry the most weight. If the guitar to your mind only has one of the three aspects, then that feature would need to have real perceived value to the individual to make the purchase.

As to the precise value of creating what you perceive is a beautiful object, this is very much in the eye of the beholder.

[Mark Hatcher]

Originally Posted by IBKuz

Mark,

I understand the point you are trying to make but have trouble with some of the semantics of your original title statement. As they say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, yet this is very subjective and trying to get any agreement between ten different people on a definitive answer would likely yield ten different answers. There is commonality in the features that people judge a guitar on to get to a definition of "Beauty", but each would weight them differently. In this day and age, I also find it hard to believe that anyone would try to build a "ugly" guitar (though it's now been put up as a challenge here in the thread ... lol).

I am not the best at verbal gymnastics, but it might be better restating this as "Fancy guitars get more attention than plain guitars" or "Highly detailed guitars are more interesting to the mind then simpler instruments". If the question is "what is it that draws the person in?" to perk their interest enough to try a guitar, perception is an important aspect. A visually well made guitar is the first thing that one judges a guitar by as we usually see a guitar before we try it. How this then colours our perceived value of a guitar, is somewhat different.

As to what actually makes the buyer complete the purchase of a guitar, this gets more complicated as to my thinking there are many more factors then just looks (perception) alone. Since a guitar is also a tool, Tim's comment on the sound being more important to some is also a very relevant point. There is a third leg to this stool so to speak, and that is the playability. These three factors together, are for me, the decision making tool to how much I enjoy a guitar, or judge its value, no matter how much my judgement is coloured by the visual perception. (A fourth leg could also be its required usage, a guitar for a beginner would skew the importance of each of these aspects differently then the requirements of a professional player).

Each person will likely value each of these aspects differently. As to what proportion of each that will be weighted into your decision making process, this again will be up to the individual. In general terms, if you have high perceived values in all three aspects, this would likely be a "keeper". If you have any two out of any three aspects rated highly, you will have some misgivings but the experience will be enjoyable and here the visual aspects may carry the most weight. If the guitar to your mind only has one of the three aspects, then that feature would need to have real perceived value to the individual to make the purchase.

As to the precise value of creating what you perceive is a beautiful object, this is very much in the eye of the beholder.

Thanks Ian. I agree with everything you are saying. There are problems with the way I worded the title, Beautiful guitars sound better than ugly guitars. Speaking in absolutes like that tends to invite trouble. Absolutes by their nature tend to be fight'n words.
This title can be interpreted in several ways. What I meant was beauty improves the sound, as perceived, by the player. The opening statement is my effort to back that up.
As a custom guitar builder it is part of my job to understand what the client feels is beautiful and to try to understand what their expectations are. So it doesn't matter what other people think beauty is in the process of building this guitar. Unless, of course I am being asked to create a guitar that might sink my career if anyone else sees or hears it!

[runamuck]

Originally Posted by Mark Hatcher

Microphones don't buy guitars

I think that's true mostly but not always. Ask a recording engineer or any recording artist. In the studio, the way an instrument records is the only thing that matters.

Jim

[Mark Hatcher]

Originally Posted by runamuck

I think that's true mostly but not always. Ask a recording engineer or any recording artist. In the studio, the way an instrument records is the only thing that matters.

Jim

Point well taken Jim. Charlie Chronopoulos is a studio artist that has played for a number of my guitar sound clips lately. I've also been to his studio to have some recording done. You are absolutely right, it's a different world with a different language. When Charlie plays one of my guitars that he really likes his greatest compliment is; "I'd love to hear this well recorded". I'm going to make him a recording guitar and look forward to all I'll learn in the process.

[Alan Carruth]

As the variety of responses in this thread shows, this is a complicated subject.

It is certainly true that 'better looking' guitars tend to be preferred, and are often felt to sound better. By the same token, 'ugly' ones tend to sound better when you can't see them. I've had that experience with several of my acoustic 'test mules', such as 'the corker'. These are no-frills instruments, often made of leftover parts, that I use to test various acoustic features, such as 'sound ports'. Several people have made comments along the lines of : "It's a pretty nice guitar if you don't look at it!".

Another aspect of this is the fact that it doesn't matter how good an instrument it is if nobody will take it off the wall.

Different people have different takes on aesthetics, of course. When I asked one customer about it, he told me to do what I liked so long as the bass side of the back of the neck and fret board looked good: that's all he sees when he's playing.

I'm reminded also of one finding in a study of violin acoustics that I heard of. It was a 'blind' test, where listeners were rating recordings of fiddles in terms of various tone descriptors. They found that different people used the terms, such as 'bright' or 'open', differently, even though each person was consistent. However, the most interesting finding was that if there was some aspect of the tone that the person did not like, they would simply be unable to rate it in terms of other descriptors. People get so hung up on the thing they don't like that they are deaf, or blind, to other things.

In the end, people hear what they expect to hear. People tend to think of 'beautiful' instruments (or people, or baked goods) as being 'better', and that is how they are perceived. This is why we use 'blind' tests; to separate (if you will) 'truth' from 'beauty'.

One could go on forever; each thought leads to another.

[Mark Hatcher]

Originally Posted by Alan Carruth

As the variety of responses in this thread shows, this is a complicated subject.

It is certainly true that 'better looking' guitars tend to be preferred, and are often felt to sound better. By the same token, 'ugly' ones tend to sound better when you can't see them. I've had that experience with several of my acoustic 'test mules', such as 'the corker'. These are no-frills instruments, often made of leftover parts, that I use to test various acoustic features, such as 'sound ports'. Several people have made comments along the lines of : "It's a pretty nice guitar if you don't look at it!".

Another aspect of this is the fact that it doesn't matter how good an instrument it is if nobody will take it off the wall.

Different people have different takes on aesthetics, of course. When I asked one customer about it, he told me to do what I liked so long as the bass side of the back of the neck and fret board looked good: that's all he sees when he's playing.

I'm reminded also of one finding in a study of violin acoustics that I heard of. It was a 'blind' test, where listeners were rating recordings of fiddles in terms of various tone descriptors. They found that different people used the terms, such as 'bright' or 'open', differently, even though each person was consistent. However, the most interesting finding was that if there was some aspect of the tone that the person did not like, they would simply be unable to rate it in terms of other descriptors. People get so hung up on the thing they don't like that they are deaf, or blind, to other things.

In the end, people hear what they expect to hear. People tend to think of 'beautiful' instruments (or people, or baked goods) as being 'better', and that is how they are perceived. This is why we use 'blind' tests; to separate (if you will) 'truth' from 'beauty'.

One could go on forever; each thought leads to another.

Thanks for chiming in Alan! This is helpful. You're right, this is a complicated subject although I'm happy how far down the track we're taking this train without going off the rails!

[IBKuz]

Originally Posted by Mark Hatcher

Thanks Ian. I agree with everything you are saying. There are problems with the way I worded the title, Beautiful guitars sound better than ugly guitars. Speaking in absolutes like that tends to invite trouble. Absolutes by their nature tend to be fight'n words.
This title can be interpreted in several ways. What I meant was beauty improves the sound, as perceived, by the player. The opening statement is my effort to back that up.
As a custom guitar builder it is part of my job to understand what the client feels is beautiful and to try to understand what their expectations are. So it doesn't matter what other people think beauty is in the process of building this guitar. Unless, of course I am being asked to create a guitar that might sink my career if anyone else sees or hears it!

Mark, I found this topic interesting as I found myself thinking about what a beautiful guitar meant to me ever since the start of my current build. I thought this Manchinga wood was very beautiful when I purchased it (and still do), yet it has limited some of the other features that I also thought contributed to what a beautiful guitar should have.

Joel and I discussed the fact that this material might require a simple elegance to help highlight the beauty of the wood as it was going to be the focal point of the guitar. I like the way it is turning out, yet it is very different to what I had envisioned when I decided to pursue a new commission. In affect, I have had to shift my perception slightly to accommodate this new paradigm of what constitutes a beautiful guitar to me.

Your comment on how as a luthier you need to understand what the client precieves as beautiful, makes me note now that I must have made Joel do a lot of mental gymnastics to reorient his thought processes to realign to this new paradigm. I guess no one has ever said a luthiers job was easy ... lol ... at least I don't think I have sunk Joel's career

[Alan Carruth]

As has been said, a lot depends on what we're used to. In the airplane world they say that 'if it looks good it will fly well', and I'm sure boat builders feel the same way. Partly, I think, it's because most of the stuff we see is exactly what works best; you don't see the boats that sank and the airplanes that crashed on takeoff. As I look into the acoustics of guitars I keep finding that 'traditional' aspects of the design, such as the wasted shape and the hole location are, in fact, things that shape the sound. If you don't do it that way it doesn't sound as much like a guitar. We associate those features with the tone we like, and they become part of the definition of a 'beautiful' guitar.

Sometimes makers will do things that seem incongruous. I remember one small bodied guitar that had a heavily inlaid fingerboard, reminiscent of a turn of the 20th century banjo, and a big headstock that looked like it came off an archtop. I didn't find it particularly attractive, but maybe that was just me.

In another instance my students and I were looking at pictures of some fancy inlay work. It was very well done, but something struck me as 'off', and I commented on it. One of my students , who was an art teacher, glanced over and said; "Wrong medium". Bingo. The artist was trying to use shell and other materials like paint, and it wasn't working, despite his skill.

One other aesthetic faux pax I'll mention was committed by a former student. I saw him at a show once, and he showed me the drawing of a new shape he'd come up with. It featured a cutaway, and he was convinced that it was the most beautiful shape ever. The problem was that the cut went in under the fingerboard before curving back out to the heel. It took me some time to convince him that no matter how lovely the shape in isolation it would look like a mistake if he built it. He kept coming back to how nice the outline was, without consideration of the functional aspects.

Aesthetics is, of course, a personal thing, and I'm sure other folks would not have been as affected by those things as I was. I'm also sure that I've made a few things that some others would think of as 'ugly'. How does that go: "Gustibus non disputandum"?

A couple of years ago I was at the big state wide craft fair that's held near here, and stopped by the both of a local turner who makes wooden lamp shades. He had a little placard that said something to the effect that while art can be ugly, craft has to be beautiful. In the end, we're tool makers to the real artists in the music world. We should make things that are attractive, and even artistic in their own right, but we must subordinate that to the use of the tool.

[TomB'sox]

What thoughtful and informative posts have been made on this thread. The AGF truly has some intelligent folks hanging around.

My comments will be much simpler. If I am going to commission a guitar built from any of the luthiers that I know from this site, I know for me it will not be a mahogany or the like. I just know the tone will be there from a Hatcher, McKnight, Sexuaer, Kinnaird, Doerr, Edwinson, etc. etc. I have complete confidence in that. So what I want in a commission is that tone, but also, the beauty! I could go buy a Taylor or Martin from GC that I like the sound of, but to have a guitar built, I want that and the beauty whether that is in the woods chosen or the fretboard inlay or purfling and really all of these. I want both, beauty and tone. I also do not deny that the beauty probably does add to the tone in my brain...that premise makes perfect sense to me.

The guitar to me is not just a tool (ie. I am not making my living with it), but it is a piece of art that makes music. I am not going to commission a plain guitar even if it sounds better than any I own....I would not enjoy that one as much. I even love the way they smell, give me spanish cedar linings anyday!!!!

Tom